LIFE University Chiropractic Program's PROBATION Continued by CCE - & Additional Issues Added
Following the Council on Chiropractic Education placing LIFE's College of Chiropractic on PROBATION on February 5, 2019 for “significant noncompliance with accreditation standards or policy requirements” and following LIFE's loss of an appeal to that decision, LIFE's President Robert Scott, DC, Ph.D told LIFE's alumni, faculty and students that he anticipated the PROBATION sanction would be removed following the CCE's July 2019 meeting.
Despite President Scott's anticipation of that favorable outcome, it did not happen.
CLICK HERE to review the announcement from CCE
The critical review was part of the Council's review of LIFE's Program Characteristics Report.
Program Characteristics Reports (PCRs) are submitted by programs every 4 years and in-between their reaffirmation and interim site visit schedule. These reports are required as one of the reporting requirements the Council utilizes to continue its monitoring and reevaluation of its accredited programs, at regularly established intervals, to ensure the programs remain in compliance with the CCE Accreditation Standards in accordance with US Department of Education (USDOE) and Council for Higher Education Accreditation (CHEA) criteria.
As a result of this review the CCE will be reviewing and verifying issues in the areas of student information system policies and procedures while at the same time reviewing LIFE's struggling graduation rates.
The ongoing accreditation issues LIFE is struggling with comes amidst LIFE refinancing its $67,000,000.00 bond obligations in order to build housing for its undergraduate program. Life needs to grow the undergraduate program in order to boost enrollment and show its creditors that it has diversified its sources of income beyond the chiropractic program. Administrators are placing their bets on the hopes of increasing enrollment in the undergrad programs to offset losses from the DC college.
The refinancing of the bond debt came with the addition of another $30,000,000.00 in debt to pay for the housing, bringing the total debt to nearly $100,000,000.00 (one hundred million dollars). According to Moody's Investors Service, they had already downgraded the bond rating to Ba3. According to Moody’s, a Ba3 indicates a “substantial credit risk” with this rating indicating the lowest end of the category.
LIFE has scrapped its plans to open a branch campus in Italy after reportedly spending one million dollars on the project and blaming the CCE, the Italian government and the Italian Medical Association for its failure. It was refused a substantive change request by the CCE to open a branch campus in Hong Kong, and is attempting to re-organize its struggling downtown clinic after investing millions of dollars.
LIFE has laid the blame for their struggling graduation rates on CCE's policies which they state directly conflicts with the current state of inequity regarding program completion rates seen nationally. It is not known if LIFE is also blaming the CCE for the issues related to its systems, data governance & data integrity issues.
CLICK HERE for more on LIFE University's Accreditation Struggles
