For-profit colleges. Accreditors. Endowments. Loan servicers. Debit card companies. Federal policymakers have blamed just about everyone associated with higher education but themselves for the Ivory Tower’s myriad problems. The most recent target just happens to be one specific accreditor: the Accrediting Council for Independent Colleges and Schools (ACICS), which accredits lots of those icky proprietary schools.

Now, ACICS might be as bad as its detractors say. I don’t know because, frankly, I don’t have the time or resources to launch a full and fair investigation into the group. Of course, that is itself a huge problem: Unless you have umpteen free hours on your hands, it is very hard to know whether “bad actors” are really bad, their accusers are jumping to conclusions or are political opportunists, or some combination of those things.

Here is what I do know: Washington gives out big sums of money to people to pay for college without meaningfully determining whether those people are prepared for higher education. That fuels rampant price, credential, and luxury inflation, and seriously mutes incentives for students to think critically about their higher education choices. In other words, “caring and generous” federal policy – policy that lets politicians telegraph how “concerned” they are with education, the poor, and the middle class – is very much at the self-defeating root of all of higher ed’s biggest problems.

So go after ACICS, the openly for-profit schools they accredit, and anyone else you think looks bad (while ignoring crucial context needed to see reality). But don’t expect doing so to fix higher ed. Expect it to just lead to other hunts when these scapegoats are dispatched, and the Ivory Tower getting no better.