Response to the New Accreditation Principles of the Commission on Colleges and Universities (formerly SACSCOC)

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June 18, 2026

AAUP members across the southeast note with dismay that central tenets of the American Association of University Professors have disappeared from the Principles of Accreditation of the Commission on Colleges and Universities (formerly SACSCOC). The omission of both academic freedom and shared governance from the Commission’s draft standards is cause for alarm, and we urge the Commission to reconsider this rash move that threatens students’ right to learn as well as faculty’s right to teach.

The concept of academic freedom, defined in the AAUP’s 1940 “Statement of Principles on Academic Freedom and Tenure” and in the eighty-five years of practice that followed it, is central to the American university. SACSCOC current standards rightly demanded that institutions publish and implement “appropriate policies and procedures for preserving and protecting academic freedom” (6.4). This fundamental guarantee of educational quality has disappeared in the Commission’s standards, which replace it with “freedom of inquiry.”

Academic freedom has a long history of reflection, practice, and precedent that is an asset that universities should not abandon. The AAUP 1940 statement specifies that academic freedom encompasses students’ freedom to learn as well as faculty’s freedom to teach. The statement asserts that the foundation of academic freedom is scholarly expertise and that it is consequently not unfettered: academic freedom operates within disciplinary norms, and its purpose is the creation of knowledge and the discovery of truth. This definition of academic freedom allows us to identify error as well as to search for truth, and it imposes “special responsibilities” on faculty, notably, to recognize the limits of our proficiency and “to avoid persistently introducing material which has no relation to [our] subject.”

“The principles of free inquiry and intellectual autonomy” that the new Commission defends are, in contrast, undefined and untested. What limitations might govern it are unclear. Its salience to both research and teaching is unstated. In the absence of definitions and precedent, the demand that institutions demonstrate “implementation of appropriate policies and procedures for preserving and protecting the principles of free inquiry and intellectual autonomy” is unlikely to protect the academic freedom of students or faculty.

Giving up on the principle that academic freedom is fundamental to the university has clear, and clearly damaging, consequences: first, the abandonment of shared governance and, second, the weakening of the curriculum.

Academic freedom undergirds faculty participation in university governance, and we fear that the omission of “shared governance” from the Commission’s draft principles is not coincidental. The AAUP’s 1994 statement “On the Relationship of Faculty Governance to Academic Freedom” made the relationship between the two explicit: “protection of the academic freedom of faculty members in addressing issues of institutional governance is a prerequisite for the practice of governance unhampered by fear of retribution.” “Freedom of inquiry,” in contrast, does not in any way assure faculty participation in the governance of universities.

SACSCOC principles previously defended the “tradition of shared governance within American higher education” and asserted faculty responsibility “for directing the learning enterprise including overseeing and coordinating educational programs to ensure that each contains essential curricular components, has appropriate content and pedagogy, and maintains disciplinary currency.” This statement acknowledges the importance of faculty expertise and reflects the AAUP’s 1966 “Statement on Government of Colleges and Universities.”

When we abandon respect for faculty’s role in governance and, especially, its primary responsibility for the curriculum, we should expect to see standards decline. The Commission’s draft standards invite institutions to sideline faculty expertise and water down their curriculum. The disappearance of standards for “Educational Program Structure and Content” (section 9 of SACSCOC’s “Principles of Accreditation”) follows naturally from the abandonment of academic freedom and shared governance, and it opens the door for a curriculum established by bureaucrats responding to market pressures while ignoring faculty expertise and academic rigor.

If the Commission on Colleges and Universities seeks to defend academic freedom and shared governance, its principles should say so. If it proposes to guarantee academic excellence, it should maintain its previous commitment to academic freedom and shared governance and rethink its intention to jettison principles and practices that have been central to American higher education for over half a century.

Matthew Boedy

University of North Georgia

President, AAUP of Georgia

Belle Boggs

North Carolina State University

President, AAUP of North Carolina

Timothy A. Gibson

George Mason University

President, AAUP of Virginia

Carol E. Harrison

University of South Carolina

President, AAUP of South Carolina