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Accreditors May Not Be Fond Of Stopgap Funding

Alan Levine
/
Creative Commons

Stopgap funding to provide Illinois colleges and universities with enough funds to make it through the fall semester may not satisfy the agency that accredits schools.

Over the winter, that agency, the Higher Learning Commission, required schools to formulate plans for how they'd operate without state funds. More recently, lawmakers approved about 1.6 billion dollars of stopgap funding, but James Applegate, director of the Illinois Board of Higher Education, says the accreditation agency looks for more.

“Because the accreditors are not looking at next semester or even next year. They're saying: Are institutions financially able to serve students they enroll for four or five years? And I would not be surprised if we continue to garner attention from regional accreditors,” Applegate said.

Accreditation is necessary because if a school doesn't have it, students cannot get federal students loans and their credits won't transfer to other accredited institutions.

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