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Nick Swayne is president of North Idaho College. He served as president of Coeur d'Alene Community College. From March 2023 or August 2022, depending on your point of view.
The discrepancy is because Swayne was placed on administrative leave by the university's Board of Trustees in December 2022 for undisclosed reasons. He was replaced by an interim president. He then sued the board to get his job back.
“I didn’t come here to sit at home and collect a paycheck,” he said in an interview. “I came here to be president.”
Swain's personal story is just one aspect of the dysfunction that continues to plague him. North Idaho College's board of trustees threatened its accreditation. Several lawsuits challenging the board's actions have also attracted attention, along with votes of no confidence by university staff and frequent leadership changes. The institution's accrediting body is the Northwest Commission on Colleges and Universities.
NWCCU placed North Idaho College on a show cause order. This is the final step before the organization becomes accredited. — It gave officials until April 2025 to address key issues..
Losing accreditation is a death sentence for most colleges and universities. We rely on this stamp of approval to receive federal financial assistance. More than one-third, or 38%, of our students received Pell Grants in the 2021-22 school year. Twenty-eight percent had federal student loans, according to government data.
but, swain And others say the campus community is cautiously optimistic that the university will be able to overcome its past and remain a core, accredited institution. Northern Idaho.
A culture war unfolds
Last year, North Idaho College received approval from the accrediting body. Debt downgraded Swayne was ordered reinstated by the court for “governance and management dysfunction.”. The agency has also been juggling litigation, including the board's appeal of the Swayne case.
Attorney fees, board training and administrative leave costs were reached. tens of thousands of dollars.
many North Idaho College The community says the problems that brought the institution to this point are ideological at their core. The situation was compared with the situation at the time. The New School of Florida, where staunch conservatives sought to reorganize the school in opposition to “woke” doctrines.
In November 2020, nonpartisan elections for the University of North Idaho trustees concluded, with the conservative political bloc winning a majority. Just a few months later, Regional Human Rights Task Force I have sent a complaint Request an investigation by the university's accrediting body.
One of the organizations, the Kootenai County Task Force on Human Relations, was formed in the 1980s when the Aryan Nations used Kootenai County, Idaho, as their headquarters. But the 2021 task force set goals instead. The chairman of the North Idaho College Board of Trustees is a Republican named Todd Banducci. The task force accused Banducci of aggressive behavior and suppressing academic freedom..
He told one student in an email that he wanted to help change the grade he received for a class presentation on abortion.
“I fight the ‘deep state’ of the NIC almost every day. The liberal progressives are pretty deeply entrenched,” Banducci wrote in a January 2021 email to students.
In response to an email requesting comment, Banducci “I will not give credence to the various fabrications, falsehoods and fictions that have been maliciously used against me,” he wrote. Other board members did not respond to requests for comment.
In September 2021, the board voted to fire then-President Rick McLennan without cause. No explicit reason was given for the dismissal, but the board was outraged by MacLennan's decision to implement a mask mandate in response to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Shortly after, the board promoted University of North Idaho wrestling coach Michael Sebali, who holds a doctorate in educational leadership, to interim president.
According to mclennanHis dismissal triggered an exodus of senior officials.
“The university was probably in the best shape it had ever been,” he said. mclennan, He is currently the president of the Ventura County Community College District in California. “This is the best executive leadership team I have ever been a part of. Within a few months of me leaving, everyone left.”
By the end of 2022, the board had hired a new president named Swayne and placed him on leave.
But last fall, North Idaho College told its accrediting body that it had made significant progress in the following areas: Filling Senior Leadership PositionsIncludes Swayne restoration.
fight for survival
Peter Eckel, co-director of the University Governance Project at the University of Pennsylvania, said: He said it is rare for poor governance to reach a point where certification is threatened. However, dysfunction can severely limit the organ's ability to grow.
“There is an important relationship between the board and the president that has never been established in North Idaho.” Eckel said. “Institutions can survive in many situations, but they cannot survive bad governance.”
In September, North Idaho College said it was working with community college boards to educate trustees and help members improve governance. For example, ACCT advised boards to follow rules when meeting to “avoid surprises”.
Nonetheless, the fight over the board and accreditation had far-reaching implications for the university. North Idaho College is academically and financially sound. swain But the threat of losing certification has further exacerbated the decline in enrollment. Enrollment fell nearly 35 percent, from 6,565 students in fall 2012 to 4,296 a decade later.
However, enrollment of first-time degree-seeking students this spring is up 19% from last year.
College advocates say the loss of accreditation would be a major blow not only to the college, but also to the businesses and organizations that rely on the institution.
“The loss of accreditation, based on our data, we believe could be a $60 million hit to the community,” he said. Krista Hazelmember of Save NIC Nonprofits. hazel He is a graduate of North Idaho College, where he served as student body president. “I got the feeling that NWCCU was literally building a plane in the air about how to deal with a board that was bent on a political agenda.”
Certification issues were a constant challenge for employees. swain That said, colleges still focus on the basics like nursing programs and transfer plans.
“We are going to make this a phenomenal facility for North Idaho,” he said. “Everyone knows we have to take some steps to get back on top.”
Problems beyond the University of North Idaho
Accreditation is becoming an increasingly hot issue in the higher education culture wars. Last June, after the accrediting body clashed with certain public universities in Florida., Republican Governor Ron DeSantis sued the Ministry of EducationChallenges federal law requiring colleges to be accredited by independent accrediting agencies.
“I will not allow Joe Biden’s Department of Education to defund the nation’s best higher education system,” DeSantis said. “Because we refuse to bow to the irresponsible accrediting agencies that believe Florida’s public universities should be run.” From the press release.
Recent actions by the North Idaho College Board of Trustees show that politics remain front and center in the fight for accreditation.
To work with approvers, the board hired a lawyer who has appeared in far-right media; expressed extremist views about child protective services; Spokesperson – Reviews It has been reported. He got a 60% on his college self-assessment, and his next competitor would have got a 97% and charged the same hourly rate.
But the Kootenai Journal, a conservative media publication, suggested that there is no real risk of NWCCU revoking its accreditation, and there never has been in the past.
Charity Joy, the publication's editor-in-chief, also suggested that the media had misinterpreted issues related to North Idaho College and that progressive activists had sparked the accreditation saga.
“If governing educational institutions are supposed to be non-partisan, why do they only want people who are favorable to the ruling institution’s progressive ideology?” Joey wrote.