School slammed as ‘visa mill’ gets OK’d

University had been accused of faking grades and forbidding failures

A controversial Bay Area school with strikingly high numbers of foreign students has received permission from its controversial accrediting agency to continue operating.

Northwestern Polytechnic University in Fremont has repeatedly denied it’s a “visa mill” that churns out graduates able to stay and work in the U.S. under the Optional Practical Training program for people on student visas. Its accrediting agency, the Accrediting Council for Independent Colleges and Schools, was stripped of its U.S. Department of Education recognition before gaining it back under the administration of President Donald Trump.

The accrediting agency warned the university in April that it would lose accreditation if it didn’t produce information about student demographics and satisfaction levels among students and employers who hire its students and graduates.

Now, the school has had its accreditation renewed by the agency for four years.

“NPU was reviewed in accordance with our criteria, demonstrated their compliance as the result of an on-site peer review evaluation, and was subsequently awarded a four year grant of accreditation,” the agency’s CEO Michelle Edwards said in an email Friday.

Founded in 1984, Northwestern Polytechnic was targeted in a March letter from Sen. Chuck Grassley to the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, in which Grassley, an Iowa Republican and head of the Senate Judiciary Committee, referred to “multiple credible reports” that the school was a visa mill.

Northwestern Polytechnic was the subject of a 2016 Buzzfeed investigation that concluded the school used “a system of fake grades” and barred professors from

issuing failing grades.

The school, a registered non-profit, and the accrediting council did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Earlier this year, Pew Research in a report on use of the Optional Practical Training program — which provides a work permit to foreign students and graduates for up to three years — ranked Northwestern Polytechnic first among all colleges of its type in

the number of students receiving OPT work permits. In a 12-year period, 11,700 Northwestern Polytechnic students and recent graduates were granted the OPT, Pew reported in May.

Widely seen as an alternative to the lotterybased H-1B visa, the OPT saw growth of 400 percent since 2008, Pew reported.

The accrediting agency, which renewed Northwestern Polytechnic’s accreditation Sept. 7, had been stripped of Education Department recognition in 2016, shortly after a report from Sen. Elizabeth Warren. The Massachusetts

Democrat alleged the agency had ignored clear warning signs of wrongdoing by schools, provided lax oversight, and accredited schools that produced “astronomical debt levels and terrible outcomes for students.”

In March, Education Secretary Betsy DeVos reinstated the agency’s federal-government recognition, despite an Education Department staff report that found the council “had failed to meet 57 of 93 federal quality and management compliance standards,” The New York Times reported in June.

Edwards, the agency’s CEO, said that over the past two years it had “implemented significant reforms designed to address concerns, strengthen the accreditation process and, ultimately, enhance our ability to hold schools accountable for meaningful student outcomes.

“These efforts are comprehensive and ongoing, and we look forward to working with the Department to ensure we are in full compliance with cur- rent requirements.”