From the Chronicle of Higher Education: A report from the Education Department is recommending that the accrediting arm of the American Bar Association, the Council of the Section of Legal Education and Admissions to the Bar, lose its federal recognition. If approved, the accrediting agency would no longer be eligible to serve as a gatekeeper of federal financial aid for the law schools it oversees.
The loss of recognition would mean that 13 free-standing law schools would have to find a new federally recognized accreditor to be eligible for federal student aid. The other 184 law schools that are accredited under the ABA could still get federal financial aid under the accreditation of the university that they are affiliated with.
That outcome could be months or even years away. The staff report will be reviewed next month by the National Advisory Committee on Institutional Quality and Integrity, an 18-member panel that makes recommendations to the education secretary on whether to grant federal recognition. After that, Nicholas Kent, the under secretary of education, will make a determination on whether to continue the accreditor’s status as a gatekeeper. The accreditor can then appeal the decision and could sue the department if it loses that appeal...
Florida and Texas have already removed a requirement that aspiring lawyers graduate from an ABA-accredited law school in order to sit for the bar exam, and several other states are considering a similar action...
Full story at https://www.chronicle.com/article/education-department-takes-first-step-to-revoke-recognition-of-law-schools-accreditor.
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