Miami-Jacobs Career College
Founded: 1860
Accredited since 1957 by the Accrediting Council for Independent Colleges and Schools (ACICS) to award certificates, diplomas and associate degrees. Individual programs are accredited or approved by different organizations.
College president: Darlene Waite
Main campus: 110 N. Patterson Blvd., Dayton. Local satellite campuses in Troy and Springboro.
Total enrollment: 2,500
DAYTON — State Rep. Clayton Luckie, D-Dayton, said Friday, April 9, he received nearly 60 phone calls to his office in recent weeks about programs at Miami-Jacobs Career College and other for-profit colleges in Ohio.
Surrounded by current and former Miami-Jacobs students, Luckie stood outside the school at 110 N. Patterson Blvd. and addressed license and accreditation problems with several of the school’s health care programs.
Proprietary colleges such as Miami-Jacobs should be required to assure students they will graduate with an accredited degree, Luckie said.
“Don’t come back two years later and say we finally got our accreditation,” he said.
Miami-Jacobs is going to arbitration with seven former students who sued the school in 2008 claiming the college told them that its surgical technology program was accredited when it was not.
The program was accredited in March 2007, after six of the students had graduated and one had dropped out. The graduates’ degrees were retroactive, but many of them were ineligible to take the required national certification exam for nearly one year after graduation.
Last month, the Ohio Board of Nursing issued notice to Miami-Jacobs about the possible withdrawal of state approval for its practical nursing program. The college is appealing the board’s decision to withdraw the college’s conditional license and also deny its application for a permanent license, said Faith Mitchell, campus director.
The Commission on Accreditation for Respiratory Care in November voted to withhold initial accreditation for Miami-Jacobs’ respiratory therapy program because the program was not meeting required thresholds for credentialing success on the national therapist exam, said Tom Smalling, the commission’s executive director.
The commission upheld its decision on Feb. 24, following an internal review requested by Miami-Jacobs.
The college plans to appeal the decision, said Darlene Waite, Miami-Jacobs’ president. The school has responded to issues raised by the commission and is confident it will “be able to meet their needs,” Waite said.
During the appeal, the respiratory therapy program will continue to operate under its current status. All students who are enrolled or graduate from the program are eligible to take the credentialing exam, Smalling said.
Loss of program accreditation wouldn’t necessarily affect Miami-Jacobs’ overall institutional accreditation, said Albert Gray, chief executive of the Accrediting Council for Independent Colleges and Schools.
If the council felt the program met the criteria from an institutional standpoint “they could still have a program within the institution that is not necessarily accredited by a programmatic accreditor,” Gray said.
However, the council encourages program accreditation, “because many states would require that for licensing purposes,” he said.
Contact this reporter at (937) 225-2419 or dlarsen@DaytonDailyNews.com.
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