An accrediting agency that warned a Fremont university early this year that it was failing to place enough graduates in jobs said the school’s revised placement rates are above its required standard.
Northwestern Polytechnic University was hit with a “compliance warning” in January from the Accrediting Council for Independent Colleges and Schools, which said the school’s 56 percent placement rate for students in 2018 had fallen short of the required 60 percent. The school was ordered to complete an improvement plan and submit quarterly reports or face possible loss of accreditation.
ACICS said it removed the warning after reviewing a revised report from the university and verifying its job placements.
“The campus’s revised placement rate is 72 percent, which is above the Council’s benchmark standard,” said the accreditor’s CEO Michelle Edwards in an emailed statement.
David Linnevers, Northwestern’s director of student outreach and enrollment, said in an email to this news organization that the school was “very pleased” the warning was removed after Northwestern “demonstrated that it was in fact meeting the placement rate standards set under ACICS’s guidelines.”
Northwestern, a non-profit business and technology school, was the subject of a Buzzfeed article in May 2016 alleging that it was a “visa mill” improperly providing foreign students with opportunities to work in the U.S., and subsequent inquiries from members of the U.S. Senate raising concerns about oversight of Northwestern and other schools. The school has repeatedly denied that allegation and said it provides a high-quality education.
“Such claims are simply untrue,” Linnevers wrote.
He noted that in addition to being accredited by ACICS, Northwestern is approved to operate by the California Bureau for Private Post-Secondary Education and is a candidate for accreditation by the Western Association of Schools and Colleges’ Senior College and University Commission. ACICS last year re-accredited the school, until 2022, he added.
“These organizations and bodies have each recognized that NPU offers a quality education to its student body and is properly run in accordance with requirements governing other respected non-profit institutions of higher education. Their actions should leave no doubt about the veracity of the ‘visa mill’ allegations against NPU,” Linnevers told this news organization.
Buzzfeed also reported that the school spent less than $1.5 million in 2014 on faculty and staff salaries, citing an IRS filing by Northwestern dated July 2015. (The same figure used in the 2015 form was used in a form filed by the school in early 2016.) In a revised IRS filing dated a month after the article, Northwestern reported it had spent $7.5 million on faculty and staff salaries in 2014. In the revised filing, published online by ProPublica, Northwestern said the new version contained more complete and accurate information and that its previous IRS Form 990s had been filed erroneously.
According to a 2018 report from the Pew Research Center based on its analysis of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement data received through a Freedom of Information Act request, Northwestern had 11,700 foreign graduates with Optional Practical Training work permits between 2004 and 2016.
Northwestern said that figure is incorrect and that the university did not even have 11,700 graduating students during that time. The Pew Research Center did not respond to a request for comment. The OPT program, which grew out of the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952, essentially extends education visas for foreign college and university students so they can work during or after school.
Although there are other U.S. schools with more students in the OPT program, Northwestern ranked first among colleges of its type (those not categorized under a national system known as the Carnegie Classification of Institutions of Higher Education), according to Pew’s report. The report also found that San Jose and San Francisco are among the nation’s top destinations for graduates in that program.
