The WASC’s team said Ashford officials were “cooperative and open” throughout the accreditation process, praising the university for its “affordability and accessibility” and “evident spirit of innovation” largely related to the school’s use of online classrooms, like most for-profit institutions that have experienced explosive enrollment growth since the mid-2000s.
Congressional Democrats were critical of Ashford University during a March 2011 Senate panel hearing, when it was revealed that Ashford was spending about four times more on student recruitment than on educating those students. Senate staffers released industry statistics that showed Ashford employed more than 1,700 student recruiters, but only one career placement expert.
Sen. Tom Harkin (D-Iowa), a frequent critic of the for-profit college industry, said during the 2011 Senate panel hearing that accreditation agencies faced unprecedented challenges in monitoring “billion-dollar multi-state corporations” like Bridgepoint and its schools.
“We either have to change the accrediting agencies and what they do and how they do it, or set up some new kind of regulatory framework in how they deal with these multi-state corporations,” he said.
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