Accreditation Under Fire with Mike Gavin

Accreditation sounds like a backstage technicality until you realize it controls the front door to college for millions of students. If an institution loses accreditation, it can lose access to Title IV funding like Pell Grants, and that single lever can reshape who gets served, what gets taught, and what leaders feel safe saying out loud.<br><br>I’m joined by Mike Gavin, president of the Alliance for Higher Education, to unpack why accreditation has become the next big battleground in Washington, DC. We talk through negotiated rulemaking, the growing rhetoric that treats accreditation as a political tool, and the real-world stakes of proposals that could restrict practices many campuses rely on, like disaggregating student data by race or gender. Mike also explains why a federally imposed view of “intellectual diversity” could narrow curriculum and trigger a chilling effect on classrooms, syllabi, and campus decision-making.<br><br>We don’t let the current system off the hook. We also dig into the toughest critiques of accreditation: uneven accountability, limited competition among accreditors, and the slow pace of approving innovation like competency-based education. From community colleges to four-year universities, we explore what meaningful outcomes should look like, why ROI is not the whole story, and how higher education can prove value while still protecting institutional autonomy and academic freedom.<br><br>If you care about the future of higher education policy, student financial aid, and campus freedom, listen, share this conversation with a colleague, and leave a review so more leaders find it.

https://allianceforhighered.org/resources

eloy@4leggedmedia.com

Transcript

Welcome And Why Accreditation Matters

0:10

Hi, this is Eloy Ortiz Oakley, and welcome back to the RAN podcast. The podcast where we pull back the curtain and break down the people, the policies, and the politics of our higher education system. My guest today is Mike Gavin, Dr. Mike Gavin, who heads the Alliance for Higher Education. The Alliance is a relatively new organization, which got its start in January of this year. And was organized to help organize higher education together to respond to some of the challenges that they see are coming from some of the national policies coming out of Washington, dc. They organized community colleges, four universities, and help them understand what some of the challenges are and how to respond to those challenges. One of the challenges that I'll speak with Mike about today. Is accreditation. Accreditation is seeing some significant talk about changing the way that we have accreditation in America and how that's going to impact higher education institutions. And for our listeners that don't know, every institution in America that receives Title IV funding that is gets access to Pell Grants or other financial aid has to be accredited. So you have to be accredited for your institution to have access to financial aid and be able to give financial aid to your students. So it's a critical part of operating for every higher education institution in America. so I'll talk with Mike about the challenges that he sees with some of the rhetoric and some of the. The challenges that he sees in negotiated rulemaking, which is just kicking off in Washington dc. He'll talk about how we as higher education leaders can lean in depending on what your opinions of accreditation are. Now is the time for all of us to lean into this so that we can have a better accreditation model, something that continues to respond to the needs of institutions and protects the independence of institutions. I'll also talk to Mike about some of the other things that the Alliance is thinking about and how it's leaning into some of the challenges around accountability in American higher education today. So with that backdrop, please enjoy my conversation with Mike Gavin, who leads the Alliance for Higher Education.

eloy-ortiz-oakley_1_04-24-2026_090425 2:38

Mike, welcome to"The Rant" podcast.

mike-gavin_1_04-24-2026_120425 2:40

Hey, thanks for having me. I really appreciate it. Thank you.

eloy-ortiz-oakley_1_04-24-2026_090425 2:44

it's great to have you and I know there's a lot going on in the higher education world that you're working on. let's start by just giving our listeners a little bit of background about you and your organization, Why did you come into existence, and what's your mission right now?

mike-gavin_1_04-24-2026_120425 3:01

All right. So I'll start with the me and how it is a through line to here, if that's okay. But

eloy-ortiz-oakley_1_04-24-2026_090425 3:05

Yeah. Perfect.

mike-gavin_1_04-24-2026_120425 3:06

Perfect. So my-- I actually grew up on the north side of Chicago. And, I didn't have the language for what I'm about to say at that point in time, but in my experience as an somewhat of an athlete from K through 12, had a very diverse sports teams roughly a third Hispanic, a third white, and a third African American. But by the time I-- and the classrooms were the same until I got to high school And in high school, my honors and AP classes were almost monolithically white. And that same demographic tr-tracked to the housing in zip codes in our city. And like I said, I didn't have the language for it then, but I saw really quickly how education was part of an ecosystem that would sort people based on class, race, It either could be liberatory or part of the oppressive structures that you see in society. And that, that was the through line of my scholarship in general and my teaching. I became president of Delta College which I stepped down from in January to start the Alliance for Higher Education. But the piece of the story about the Alliance is that in'23, 2023, when Governor DeSantis became the governor of Florida and began his anti-woke campaign, I was the president of Delta with that same scholar-scholarly background. And at the time I would read the legislation with, I actually had critical race theory as the foundation of my dissertation and thought, Saw a lot of agency that presidents could have, even with the vitriolic rhetoric around bills, and just started to create tools for pe- for my friends that were presidents of, there's ways around this legislation. In fact, most of the legislation, stuff that's being claimed in the legislation is not true. So you could just write back and say something like,"We don't do anything you're accusing of us of doing, and we don't need to change anything." Over time, that kind of legislation has become refined and it's-- the agency is not there as it was. But in between'23 and'25, I was just-- This sort of grassroots committee called Education For All came to be, and it was looking at how we-- It was trying to prepare leaders for different political contexts in which they found themselves that were anti-diversity, equity, inclusion, or autonomy or academic freedom. And it became what is now the Alliance for Higher Education. I never expected to be doing this, but we have the Alliance is a new entity, somewhat. It began with that story that I just told. But it had, now has staff, whereas before it was, like, just a committee. And our remit is the following. It's real simple. We believe that for the democracy to thrive, higher ed needs to be what the metaphoric fifth pillar of democracy. And for that to work, partisan influence in higher ed needs to be absent. That doesn't mean we're not accountable to our

eloy-ortiz-oakley_1_04-24-2026_090425 5:53

Right.

mike-gavin_1_04-24-2026_120425 5:54

but the influence both in the decision-making and curriculum need to be void from our institutions. And so underneath that idea of autonomy different language for different folks, we u- like the concept of academic freedom, but we might say to a public You know, you should be able to free to learn everything, right? And the concept of equity or the idea that everybody deserves an education and be supported. That's our remit. We have no other advocacy or philosophical agenda. We have some work streams underneath it, which I could get into, but that is how we're distinct and we're, our membership and board is both higher ed and democracy

eloy-ortiz-oakley_1_04-24-2026_090425 6:33

It sounds like really controversial pillars.

mike-gavin_1_04-24-2026_120425 6:38

You would hope they'd be

eloy-ortiz-oakley_1_04-24-2026_090425 6:38

so anti-American. Let me ask you this. The alliance started, as you said in January, so you're still a relatively new organization. How are you organized? How are you funded? And how do you think about your mission right now, given all of the changes and what some would describe as chaos going on at the federal level?

mike-gavin_1_04-24-2026_120425 7:01

Yeah, that's a really good question. So we have six staff right now and are working to build out. We have a lot of interest from a variety of pretty well-named funders out there who, for reasons I can't really tell you who they are right now. But f- but I think the most important part of your question that's for me to highlight is that we are not dues dependent for revenue, which is where most of the organizations and associations and institutions are finding it to be very difficult to do the right thing or to speak up because of the dependence on dues. So that way we've structured ourselves is to not be dependent in that way. To the chaos question, one of our three work streams is actually to try to-- It starts with the premise, I should say, that it's probably been a strength for higher ed in a, in the past that we're so disorganized or decentralized, with different, community colleges have their own association, AASCU exists. That's all great, but when you're facing like an authoritarian takeover that's not great. So part of ours is to organize, but not necessarily take the place of already existing organizations, and also try to thematically pick the major or maybe even existential crises that are facing higher ed instead of trying to react to every single one. And the last part is contextualize that into what-- Right now we've arbitrarily picked a 10-year plan of even without or absent the current moment, the idea that we were serving everyone was not necessarily manifest. And so we're also trying to root any response in a con- in a context of a major project that we're-- we've organized many associations that you've heard of in a coalitional approach to what should we look like 10 years from now, 20 years from now so that we're not just responding all the time to intentional chaos, if you will.

eloy-ortiz-oakley_1_04-24-2026_090425 8:59

Hopefully we won't be constantly responding to intentional chaos, but but we'll see. Let me pull on a couple of strings you just mentioned, just so-- I kn- I know many of our listeners here on"The Rant" are familiar with many of the organizations that that are involved in some way or another representing a segment, like you said. The dues-receiving organizations like the American Association of Community Colleges, you mentioned AASCU, there's ACE. All great people leading those organizations. They do wonderful work, but they are subject to their membership. And so that sometimes gets them a little stuck in terms of their advocacy. But there's also the advocacy organizations like The Ed Trust or the Institute for College Access and Success, TICAS and several others. How do you interact with those advocacy organizations? Do you try to work together? Or how do you coordinate your advocacy efforts?

mike-gavin_1_04-24-2026_120425 10:01

That's a really good question. So we have, The easy answer is the ones you just listed, we work very closely with. We have about 85 organizations and I wanna make sure I contextualize this. This is after... I was doing this work for three or four years before we became the alliance under a m- different moniker. Just making sure people understand how this occurred, meaning we, we were just a group of people meeting on Zoom and then had some meetings at-- off the books, like conferences. It was a very safe place for some of these associational leaders to come talk off the book with no threat. So we've, we've-- we have deep relationships, and I grew up in, professionally in higher ed. So we've got deep relationships with almost all of the lettered organizations in higher ed, almost all of the organizations in democracy. Ed Trust is one of them that you just mentioned, but, some of them th-that are outside. So the lettered soup of higher ed we've got covered in terms of our New America is a really helpful group in our policy. American Pride rises in terms of thinking about equity. Ed Trust has been amazing to us. But our the other part of our remit is different than all of those, right? So whereas all of these organizations, whether it's a higher ed one or the ones that you've mentioned, s- have a remit or a mission of Advocating for all of the institutions that are underneath them or the organizations that are underneath them. We're actually advocating for the notion that the democracy is better served with the three pillars that I've mentioned. so we try to find coalitional partners based on the issue at hand, if you will. And the alliance is really actually meant to-- the moniker is important there. We see ourselves an, as an alliance and a movement rather than an organization or an association for that reason, if you will.

eloy-ortiz-oakley_1_04-24-2026_090425 11:46

So let's jump into some of the, what some would consider existential threats to the higher education marketplace. And I say that broadly because higher education marketplace is a broad set of actors from Research I institutions to regional four-year institutions, community colleges technical colleges. Then, of course, you have the non- nonprofit and the for-profit sector all working sometimes together and sometimes at odds. One of the most recent areas of concern, particularly in negotiated rulemaking that's taking place now, is accreditation. I know you and your organization have been very vocal about what's happening in DC right now around accreditation, some of the threats that you see to accreditation. Help, help us put into context some of your primary concerns about what happening, one, in the rhetoric, but also in what coming through negotiated rulemaking.

mike-gavin_1_04-24-2026_120425 12:53

it's really good. So thank you for that setup. And we have resources for the following on our website for activation of any person who might see it the way we do. And it-- The pr- most important part and salient element is that accreditation is being used as a tool in a way that we see as very detrimental to democratic society for this reason. Whether you look at back at the history from what was happening in DeSantis' Florida to Texas to Wisconsin, and now at the federal government with what we saw in fall semester of'25 with the compact as well as cutting of funding for research grants, money is being used as a weapon to ideologically control the sector. In order for an institution to deploy Title IV funds, they have to be accredited. And so what we've seen, and the undersecretary is very clear about this when he says that a-accreditation is our secret weapon. The reason it's a secret weapon is the two things that they're looking for to come out of the new accreditation process is that this is new for an accreditor or an accreditation handbook. Usually, the accreditation handbook would say,"You must do something, but find out your own way." Now they're saying you cannot do things, and if you do, you will not get access to Title IV funding. And two of those are you cannot disaggregate data by race or gender. That, that would be a prohibition in all s- all institutions doing that, which is different than an executive order that came out where the idea was that accreditors couldn't require it, but institutions could still do it. This would prohibit institutions from disaggregating data. And you know this. That's the bread and butter of a significant portion of the sector, almost all of community colleges. And the second is that the-- a federal definition of what is called intellectual diversity would have to be deployed in all campuses. The federal definition that has been-- or the definition that has been bandied about is one that has been created by a very right-leaning think tank that means no race, no gender, no sexuality in the curriculum. We have a toolkit on our website that people can use to lift up and raise social consciousness, but more importantly, right about Memorial Day, we will have templates for public comment that actually matter that people can use and fill out that in ways that were-- are meaningful to the process. The-- Just to put a point on that, for those of you who are not in the know, and I certainly was not before all of this public comment that says you don't like something doesn't necessarily mean anything in the process. Public comment that constructs an argument about why this is lacking precedent, it could chill free speech, or it'll take too much operational time, those are the kind of themes that we need. So the templates will be out there. They have to be individualized but the templates will be there, and it'll only take a couple minutes. So for those people looking for something to do that means something, this is a s- a low lift with high impact, and that's the work of the alliance, if you will. But for those reasons, the accreditation issue is, in my mind, almost existential because it will impact, just to put a point on this to the very beginning of your question, that impacts every institution. Whereas some of the other things we've seen are impacting certain institutions. This is how each of us will be touched and the control about what we can think, read, teach, who we can serve would be very limited in a negative way Yeah.

Fixing Accreditation Without Losing Autonomy

eloy-ortiz-oakley_1_04-24-2026_090425 16:48

before this current administration, there was an ongoing concern about accreditation. So I'll point to, to, to three examples, and we can feel free and talk about those and how people who care about accreditation can or should respond to some of these criticisms. One, accountability did not exist in the current accreditation model. I certainly saw that in my experience as chancellor of the California Community Colleges. And not to pick on one community college district in California, but San Francisco City College was going through some significant challenges when I was chancellor. It had come very close to losing its accreditation which forced the resignation of the executive director of ACCJC, which is the accrediting body here in California. When I stepped in as chancellor, we continued to put pressure on City College of San Francisco, but, And I love the former speaker, but the former speaker Speaker Pelosi, was also the representative of San Francisco City College. And every time I would travel to DC, I would get the call to come into the speaker's office to talk about City College of San Francisco. Of course I think it all worked out in the end, but I think that is one example of some of the politics that creep into the accreditation process and the fact that it was almost impossible to pull a college's accreditation, even if they clearly deserved to for it to be pulled. That's one example. So the accountability piece. Another is a lot of institutions over the last several years, particularly pre- and post-pandemic were innovating significantly. I know when I was-- Again I'll keep pointing to my own experience as chancellor. We created Calbright College, which is a fully online, competency-based college in the community college system. It was very difficult to find an accreditor. They had to go to DEAC. And there was not a huge appetite for that kind of innovation amongst the accreditors. And then the last piece of criticism that I hear a lot is that there, there isn't a whole lot of competition amongst the accreditors. That it's it's o-once you're locked into your regional accreditor you're locked in. And if you're unhappy with the way that things are going or you're trying to try something new it's very difficult to kick that off. So as you think about the existential challenges, which I agree with you, there's some pretty significant rhetoric that would significantly damage, I think the, at least the peer accreditation process that we have now, which I think by and large works, but there are these criticisms. How would you want listeners or people in the public who care about accreditation to, one, push back on the current rhetoric, but how do we also improve accreditation so we're not in this position again in two or three years?

mike-gavin_1_04-24-2026_120425 20:02

I think the two of the three are real easy for me'cause we-- I think we agree on them, to be honest. Our sector as a whole, and I, I've worked in the community college sector, part of the sector my entire career, so I speak with that lens on it. We have to own accountability, and we ha- we are accountable, but I also think in-- we are accountable for equitable outcomes as well. And so the-- that-- the-- what's happening in the negotiated rulemaking is counter towards the actual missions of our institutions, and I think most people would agree with that, actually. We need that kind of data to be operationally successful in the strategy of serving our democracy, right? And I do think there's all kinds of tentacles underneath that to include funding models, et cetera, that need to be, reimagined. But from an accreditation pros-prospect I think it's-- I think we also as a sector have been Loathe, to your point, to threaten or take away accreditation from institutions that might need it. And that is part of being accountable for saying that, we have some institutions here that have failed and not done the work that's necessary. I think those things have to be recognized and realized, and that goes all the way down to programmatic accreditation too, in my mind. The second thing is in- the innovation part. Quick story, s- similar experience of trying to get competency-based certificates-- certifications done was very difficult in a project that I was involved with. Luckily Rufus Glasper at League of Innovation worked with HLC, and we did find a pathway forward. But it shouldn't take that long, right? Our paradigms are too arcane for the current moment. And so with the innovation part of the, what's called the Accreditation Innovation and Modernization Committee, I think we have to... That's the name of the accreditation committee looking at the handbook rules. I think we should latch onto that. And you were also asking about competition, and they in my mind, I think they're connected, which is, I actually think that we are, as a sector, we continuously are trying to respond to criticisms from the outside rather than the inside, right? The so some of the problems that we're trying to address are those given to us, but the problems are ones that you just mentioned, right? Our equity gaps exist. I think we have to also own the fact that I come from this from a equity practitioner and scholar. We really didn't do a very good job with equity in the first place. And I don't, I don't, I don't-- I mean that in a systemic approach to being very committed to changing outcomes, not the, Often what we hear from our criticizers is that, my, my kid was-- had their feelings hurt in, in a classroom, and that may or may not be true. It may be because the teacher doesn't really know what they're doing. Most of the time they do. But there is this element that we've h- we have, as a sector, put people in leadership positions because of their lived experience instead of their study and scholarship and practitioner ability to change outcomes in some c- in some cases. We have also-- You know, equity is a relatively new concept for higher ed. We haven't let it go into the continuous improvement arena, and we're letting it be cut right away because I perceive it to be an anti-Black and brown agenda. We don't do that with anything else. We do that j-just with equity. And so I think what we should own is that we haven't done a good enough job yet, but we haven't had the time to develop it in a 400-year-old insti- or sector. And I think that's where we need to be comfortable, and the competition element is part and parcel of that. And that competition element with accreditors began with, again, DeSantis' Florida, where the idea was that, just for those who have not been following this as closely, that every institution in Florida had to find or shop around for a new accreditor. And the outcomes for both the anti-woke agenda at higher ed and the competition-based approach have come out in the last two years, where you've got one in eight kids in high school, in public schools in f- in Florida saying,"I don't want to go to a public school in Florida because of their anti-DEI legislation." We've got one in t- one in 20... or excuse me, 25% of people who are in higher ed institutions in Texas saying they wanna leave the state. That's bad outcomes for the economy. It's bad outcomes for students, for higher ed. One, we saw today even today's the 24th, Inside Higher Ed did a great article on all these faculty in Texas are trying to leave. So no matter which way you slice it the approach is wrong, right? The idea that we need to innovate, the idea that we need to have the outcomes driven, good. But the approach of we-- they've made a hop to the solution that is wrong. And we need to say we can own these things and try to be better for outcomes in general. I think that is the pathway forward.

eloy-ortiz-oakley_1_04-24-2026_090425 24:55

That is certainly my hope, and a lot of the discussion I have on this podcast with guests is exactly that. H-how do we H-h-how do we do a better job of owning our own outcomes, our own story? And this is particularly true in our sector, Mike community colleges, which is very different in some regards to regional four years or Research 1 universities or small private liberal arts colleges. I spent most of my career talking about how unique community colleges are, and they are. They're the only uniquely American segment of higher education And I would love to say that we accept the top 100% of students, not the top 50, not the top 40, not the top 1%, the top 100%. So when you're talking about outcomes at a community college, and you know this as well as anybody, what outcomes and for which students are you talking about? Are you talking about the English language learner who just came to America and needs to have language skills to find work? Are you talking about the person trying to get an associate's degree in welding? You talking about the person who's-- wants to become a nurse, transfer to University of California? There are multiple ways of doing that, and people still think about community colleges in terms of graduation rates. The graduation rates don't work in community colleges. When we talk about accreditation, I know I, I'm in a state that's somewhat unique. In California, we have ACCJC, which is primarily California community colleges. How do you think about accreditation in terms of how it relates to the different missions of the different segments of American higher education?

mike-gavin_1_04-24-2026_120425 26:46

Yeah, I-- that's a really good question. I've-- I think So from an accreditation standpoint, which is different from a democracy standpoint which I might take a minute to talk about too, but the-- I do think rates and numbers matter, right? Both rates and number matter. At Delta, we increased our graduation rate by 20-some percent when I was there. And so I was like: what-- how many people is it?" So I made them go back to... And it was 20%. Thank goodness. But that's a very different number be- you know what I mean? To get you all these... We're all wonky people. The IPEDS number is helpful, but not to community colleges. But I do think, to your point, most of our students do come with some sort of goal at the end of their time with us, right? And we do need to think about how we reorganize our institutions, transform them, et cetera, and always try to improve so that those dreams are met in some ways, and they will be different, right? They may leave us without graduating with a degree, but I think it's also worth our while. I come from a very dislocated association, which I loved, not a system. But, that allowed both autonomy and problems in terms of transfer, right? But making sure they got a degree before they transferred was an opportunity for us. And I think that's the kind of thinking that has to happen continuously. From a sector perspective, I think also from a democracy area concept, and maybe this is an accreditor answer too, but we are so ROI heavy that we forget the civic element of the-- what we provide to people. And you-- There are metrics that we could imagine and create that are beyond graduation rates, like prison recidivism goes down or, health, health-related costs go down because you have an education. There's always to start to measure community localized approach, like impact that are beyond number of degrees, but inclusive of them, right? That I think should-- It's a both/and, not a either/or. But the-- we're not really focused on the social and civic impact in our accreditor element, and I think that should be... If I had my way, that would be part of the story that we're telling,

ROI Versus Civic Impact Metrics

eloy-ortiz-oakley_1_04-24-2026_090425 28:54

yeah. I think that's a great question and perhaps a topic for another podcast, but there's this whole notion of, and I'm certainly in my organization, we're knee-deep in this in here in California and across the nation. Every large higher ed focus funder right now is having conversations about how do you measure value in higher education. And clearly, we've all taken off on the ROI metric, economic mobility. It's hard to be civic-minded if you're struggling to make ends meet, if you're working two and three jobs. But I do agree that there's gotta be a civic element. Is that the job of accreditation, do you think? Or is it part and parcel of the responsibility of every higher education organization to make that a transparent part of what they expect students to be doing?

mike-gavin_1_04-24-2026_120425 29:47

That's a good question. Certainly the latter is true, I think. I think each institution should be doing it. I do think in the longer term, if you're looking at the sector holistically, we should somehow use some sort of data capture. And I mean that in the most broad sense, data capture, right? It doesn't have to be metric. It could be some other thing. But to try to answer the question, is the sector serving the democracy? Like how do you-- how do we know that besides ROI and value? What-- There are other ways to measure that, that include how many people got a deg- like you can't get away from that. To me, like I don't think we should ever get away from that. But we can't answer that question. Some of the solutions that we have for how we make higher ed more of a fifth pillar of democracy and the like might be right in front of us, right? Like community colleges, for instance, are affordable comparative to other org- other institutions. That doesn't mean they're cheap for everybody, but that might be part of the solution to reemphasize and restructure and reimagine and refund how we think about our sector as a whole and how it can serve more people. And that's not taking away from anybody, it's just pulling the levers that already exist, in my mind. So I know that's a tangent, but I just wanted to throw that in there.

eloy-ortiz-oakley_1_04-24-2026_090425 31:08

No, I think it's an important tangent. Survey after survey that I've been involved in of learners across the country, the number one reason that, that they wanna go to college is to improve their economic future. The number one reason that they don't go to college is because of the affordability.

mike-gavin_1_04-24-2026_120425 31:25

Yeah.

Advice To Leaders And Boards

eloy-ortiz-oakley_1_04-24-2026_090425 31:26

there is this important question and not to go back in history, but we did have a president not too long ago that pushed for free community college, and hopefully we have that conversation again one of these days. But in the meantime, let me ask you o-one last question as we begin to wrap up. You talked about the resources on your website, and I will make sure that in the notes section of this podcast, we put the web link so that people can easily get to those resources. What is your advice to higher ed leaders right now? How should they be engaged? Many of them have their heads in the sand because they're afraid of speaking out or afraid of pushing back. What would be your advice to them right now?

mike-gavin_1_04-24-2026_120425 32:10

Thank you for that question. That's where my sweet spot has been the last number of years. And I would say a couple of things. One is, being silent is not a strategy. You might have a strategy that requires you to be silent, but als- there's a distinction in that we've seen from the current administration in the White House, but also in the states, the 26 states that have passed legislation that are what I would call anti-educational. Those... The leaders, whether they're quiet or loud, got hit by that legislation. And the ones who have complied have actually got hit again, right? Harvard complied and they stood-- they put up a good fight,

eloy-ortiz-oakley_1_04-24-2026_090425 32:50

they didn't win anything.

mike-gavin_1_04-24-2026_120425 32:51

right? So quiet, being silent and thinking keeping your head down is not a strategy at all. I do think if people want a 101 on how we got here and seeing the big picture, we're always happy to provide that at the Alliance. But I also... This is the one thing I've learned over my last couple years. People assume that the leader understands all of the political, social, racial contexts of what's happening, and they may not because of their... So some managing up to people, like politely, and also leaders are not necessarily communicating in the hallways or through the hallways where their red lines are, and that's leading to a lot of chill in classrooms, self-policing of syllabi, and we have plenty of data to show that. But what-- one of the tools we have on our website is for cabinets and boards and the like to come to alignment on what the red lines are, and then being able to communicate them over and over again so nobody's over complying if, as long as they're paying attention to the email or speech of the president, which is sometimes happens, but not all the time, but the communication's really important and the substance of the communication matters, and we can get you to the substance with some of our tools. So

eloy-ortiz-oakley_1_04-24-2026_090425 34:02

It's a great point that you just mentioned that I don't wanna lose. We're not just talking about higher education presidents and executive team members. We're also talking about governing boards, which play a really important role in this conversation. Encouraging and supporting a leader to actually stand up to these issues is an important part of what needs to happen. So it sounds like you also have resources for governing boards.

mike-gavin_1_04-24-2026_120425 34:26

We do. Same kind of tools and also work very closely with AGB in developing such tools, so they do as well. We link to each other on that, so yeah.

eloy-ortiz-oakley_1_04-24-2026_090425 34:36

Mike, I really appreciate you taking the time to come on and talk about this issue. Accreditation is something that impacts all of us learners faculty, administrators, communities, but it's one of those areas that very few people know how it actually works and what the federal role is. And so it's great to have organizations like yours that are paying attention, that are trying to sound the alarm. So thank you for being on the"Ran" podcast, and thank you for your leadership.

How To Engage And Subscribe

mike-gavin_1_04-24-2026_120425 35:04

Likewise. I really appreciate being here. Thank you for the invi-invitation. Yeah.

eloy-ortiz-oakley_1_04-24-2026_090425 35:08

All right. Thanks for joining us, everybody. You've been listening to my conversation with Mike Gavin, who heads the Alliance for Higher Education, and pushing back on some of the rhetoric and some of the challenges that we see coming out of Washington, D.C. with regard to accreditation. Please visit their website. I'll make sure that we have a link in the notes section of this podcast so you can see the resources that are there, some of the information that's there, some of the things they've written about the challenges in accreditation to date. And please engage. Engage locally, engage in your colleges, engage with policymakers. This is an important issue to learners and to faculty and staff throughout the country. So thanks for joining us, everybody. If you're watching us on YouTube, please hit subscribe and continue to follow us. And if you're listening to us on your favorite audio podcast platform, download this episode and continue to follow us. Thanks for joining us, everybody, and we will see you all again soon.