AMU Accreditation: What Me Worry?
Thu, Dec06, 2007 - Category: University
Have you ever seen a person stumble and then pretend
that he intended to stumble? It looks silly,
right?
Ave Maria University, if anything, is a hoot. Yesterday, the Naples Daily News ran a story whose title says it all - "Ave Maria not worried about losing federal funding amid uncertainty over accreditor's status". It is hardly a coincidence that this article appears only days after another story on AMU's latest inability to gain permanent accreditation. But, in AMU's attempt to pretend that it isn't stumbling, parents and students should ask what it says of administrators who are "not worried".
AveWatch has been a leader in covering AMU's accreditation, serving as a journalistic source to various new agencies. Be sure to read our extensive coverage here. Anyone who has followed AALE, the AMU accrediting agency in question, knows that they have been in trouble with the federal Department of Education for over 6 years, since 2001. The fact that AMU put its eggs into AALE's basket for so long, and that AMU has had such lengthy difficulty with accreditation, speaks much of its amateurish administration and a University lawyer-President preoccupied with building-up the real estate development owned by his client, AMU Chancellor Tom Monaghan. In AMU's typical style of using hubris as the best technique to cover for its problems, yesterday's NDN article says "In some ways, the school’s potential accreditation void is the result of its large ambition." This is the same "ambition" that is destroying the academic community at Michigan's Ave Maria School of Law. For all its "ambition", AMU could not earn full accreditation from a strongly conservative accreditor that has some of the least restrictive standards among accrediting agencies. How much better it is for the Healy-Monaghan administration to blame "ambition" for poor stewardship in "smaller" things... to blame "ambition" for valuing communities of steel and concrete above communities of flesh and mind.
The most interesting tidbit in the NDN article is additional insight into the firing of AMU's high-profile Fr. Joseph Fessio:
"Last year, then-Provost the Rev. Joseph Fessio referred to the school’s lack of final accreditation as contributing negatively to the school’s ability to attract students. But [AMU VP] Sites said tying enrollment figures to accreditation status was a "fallacious idea."
AveWatch readers will recall that we released a story on March 9, 2007 titled "AMU's Sole Accreditor in Big Trouble". Fessio was fired as Provost on March 21. It may be that the issue of how accreditation impacts enrollment was the "irreconcilable difference over administrative policies and practice" that was cited by AMU officials as the basis for Fessio's firing. In November 2006, prior to Fessio's booting, AveWatch reported on how Fessio was telling donors that lack of accreditation was part of AMU's "crisis".
According to the article, AMU's VP John "Jack" Sites went on to say, "We’re no longer in the first year... Everyone knows who we are and what we’re about." "
Indeed, we know who Ave Maria is and what the Ave Maria schools are about.
Ave Maria University, if anything, is a hoot. Yesterday, the Naples Daily News ran a story whose title says it all - "Ave Maria not worried about losing federal funding amid uncertainty over accreditor's status". It is hardly a coincidence that this article appears only days after another story on AMU's latest inability to gain permanent accreditation. But, in AMU's attempt to pretend that it isn't stumbling, parents and students should ask what it says of administrators who are "not worried".
AveWatch has been a leader in covering AMU's accreditation, serving as a journalistic source to various new agencies. Be sure to read our extensive coverage here. Anyone who has followed AALE, the AMU accrediting agency in question, knows that they have been in trouble with the federal Department of Education for over 6 years, since 2001. The fact that AMU put its eggs into AALE's basket for so long, and that AMU has had such lengthy difficulty with accreditation, speaks much of its amateurish administration and a University lawyer-President preoccupied with building-up the real estate development owned by his client, AMU Chancellor Tom Monaghan. In AMU's typical style of using hubris as the best technique to cover for its problems, yesterday's NDN article says "In some ways, the school’s potential accreditation void is the result of its large ambition." This is the same "ambition" that is destroying the academic community at Michigan's Ave Maria School of Law. For all its "ambition", AMU could not earn full accreditation from a strongly conservative accreditor that has some of the least restrictive standards among accrediting agencies. How much better it is for the Healy-Monaghan administration to blame "ambition" for poor stewardship in "smaller" things... to blame "ambition" for valuing communities of steel and concrete above communities of flesh and mind.
The most interesting tidbit in the NDN article is additional insight into the firing of AMU's high-profile Fr. Joseph Fessio:
"Last year, then-Provost the Rev. Joseph Fessio referred to the school’s lack of final accreditation as contributing negatively to the school’s ability to attract students. But [AMU VP] Sites said tying enrollment figures to accreditation status was a "fallacious idea."
AveWatch readers will recall that we released a story on March 9, 2007 titled "AMU's Sole Accreditor in Big Trouble". Fessio was fired as Provost on March 21. It may be that the issue of how accreditation impacts enrollment was the "irreconcilable difference over administrative policies and practice" that was cited by AMU officials as the basis for Fessio's firing. In November 2006, prior to Fessio's booting, AveWatch reported on how Fessio was telling donors that lack of accreditation was part of AMU's "crisis".
According to the article, AMU's VP John "Jack" Sites went on to say, "We’re no longer in the first year... Everyone knows who we are and what we’re about." "
Indeed, we know who Ave Maria is and what the Ave Maria schools are about.