What happens to my status if my school’s accreditation is revoked?

For you to maintain a legal status as a student in the U.S., the school in which you are enrolled must be accredited by an agency designated by the Department of Education. Recently, ACICS (Accrediting Council for Independent Colleges and Schools), one of the accreditation agencies, has lost its accreditation qualification, causing related problems regarding students’ legal status. Following covers how you may deal with such problems if your school has been accredited by ACICS.

If the school that issued the I-20 was accredited by ACICS, your I-20 is no longer valid. If you have applied for student status change or student status reinstatement on or after August 19, 2022, the Immigration Service will request additional documents. You will be asked to submit the Certificate of Eligibility for Nonimmigrant Student Status (I-20) from another Department of Education-certified school. Therefore, you must find one such accredited school.

When applying for a STEM OPT extension, you must have graduated from a school that has been accredited by a Department of Education-certified accreditation agency. If the filing date for the STEM OPT extension is on or after August 19, 2022, and if the school has been accredited only by ACICS, there may be problems. However, what matters here is the recorded date that shows when the school signed your I-20 for the extension application and left the record of that on SEVIS.

There is no problem if the school signed your I-20 and recorded that on SEVIS before August 19. Students affected by the Department of Education’s actions should contact their respective schools before they receive letters from the Immigration Services to make necessary preparations. If your STEM OPT extension application is denied, you must leave the country within 60 days or continue studying after receiving an I-20 from a new school that is accredited.

If a school is no longer accredited, its programs may not continue. Therefore, students at such school may only study up to the current semester, after which they must transfer to another school. However, if the school is accredited by another agency designated by the Department of Education or has already been accredited by other agencies, students can stay and finish their studies.

If you obtained your master’s or higher degrees on or after August 19, 2022, from a school accredited only by ACICS, you cannot use your earned degree when applying for a work visa. Similarly, you may not qualify for a work visa if you obtained your bachelor’s degree. This, however, does not affect you if you obtained your degree before August 19, 2022.

There may also be problems when seeking employment-based immigration and applying for an immigration petition (I-140) if the school form which you obtained your bachelor’s or master’s degree is accredited only by ACICS. However, this does not affect you if you received your degree before August 19, 2022. Therefore, it is important that you check the agency, or agencies, by which your school was accredited.

Law Offices of Gary J. Kim
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info@gjklawgroup.com