The Washington Post has learned that the Department of Education may be taking the unusual step of temporarily closing down graduation caps at public colleges and universities that are no longer accredited by the Council of American Colleges (COACH).
The Department of Health and Human Services announced last week that colleges that do not meet COACH’s accreditation standards will no longer be allowed to offer graduation caps.
The department said that since COACH is no longer a reliable source of information for students, it will now provide students with information from other sources on the subject of graduation caps that are still available.
But this information will not be updated to reflect changes to the accreditation requirements.
The Department said that if colleges continue to not meet their accreditation criteria, they will no long be able to provide graduation caps for the coming academic year.
In a statement released late Thursday, the Department said, “If colleges are unable to provide their students with this information, the department will not consider them accredited for the upcoming academic year.”
But in a memo to colleges last week, the Education and Labor departments of the departments of Health, Education, and Labor, said that the department would be required to issue new guidance that will include information on how to access information that is no more than two years old.
In addition, schools that have not yet been accredited by COACH and are still in the process of accreditation will not have access to this information.
The Education and Labour departments of HHS and Health and Education are working with the department of Health to revise their guidance.
For colleges that are accredited by either the Council on Accreditation of Graduate Schools (CAGGS) or the Graduate Schools Council of America (GSCOA), these new guidelines will apply to the graduation caps as well as other types of information.
But for colleges that have neither accreditation nor GSCOA accreditation, these guidelines will only apply to graduation caps and other information.
While this information is still available on the Department’s website, it has been removed from the Department website and cannot be found on other websites, according to a department spokesperson.
In an email sent to students and parents, the spokesperson noted that this is a change that is consistent with guidance issued by the Departments Office of Information Technology.
But that guidance has not been updated to take into account the new requirements that have been released.
For some schools, this information may no longer work out for the students, according a parent.
“Students at many colleges and schools that do NOT meet the COACH accreditation requirement will no more be able [to] access graduation information and will not even know the current status of the graduation information they have received,” said a parent of a student at a community college in Virginia.
The parent said that while she has never been able to access the information that the student received, the student has been able see a letter that the institution had sent that said that they had received their diploma.
The student had no idea what that meant, the parent said.
The parents said that this information could help them understand how graduation information works and what information is available to students.
“I was hoping that I would get a letter in my mail, but it doesn’t say where that letter was sent, so I don’t know what to do,” the student said.
A parent of another student at the same community college said that she received a letter from the school that said, if she were to receive her diploma and still had to take a college course, she could request a certificate of completion from the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) to prove that she had completed the course.
This information is not available to all students who do not have a COACH-accredited degree, said a person who answered the phone at the community college.
“The students are just confused,” the person said.
“What is this?”
The student said that he had to go to the school and request a letter.
“If they do not give me a letter, I can’t get a diploma,” the individual said.
When reached for comment by The Washington Public Radio Program, the Office for Civil Rights, the OPM, and the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services did not respond to requests for comment.
Students are also worried that they will not receive any information that they have been promised.
“We’ve heard the news about COACH, and now we have to ask, What are we supposed to do?,” said the student who is not speaking on the record.
“Are we supposed [to be] a good student and learn about these things and not be a bad student?”