1970 — the Digest of Chiropractic Economics reported the formation of the Association of Chiropractic Colleges (ACC — no relation to today’s organization of the same name).

Cover of the Digest of Chiropractic Economics for May/June 1970 featured these college presidents, co-founders of the Association of Chiropractic Colleges.

Established by the presidents of leading straight chiropractic colleges (Drs. Carl Cleveland, Sr. and Carl Cleveland, Jr. of the Cleveland Chiropractic Colleges; William N. Coggins of Logan College; William D. Harper of Texas Chiropractic College; Ernest Napolitano of Columbia Institute of Chiropractic; and David D. Palmer of the Palmer College of Chiropractic), the ACC sought to establish an accrediting agency independent of either national membership society (ACA and ICA).

Responding to the advice of the U.S. Office of Education, it was hoped that the ACC’s political independence from the feuding national societies would facilitate recognition from the U.S. Department of Health, Education and Welfare.

During the next four years, the ACC and the Council on Education (CCE) alternately competed for recognition and negotiated for a unified application to the federal government. Although the ACC’s combined enrollment represented three times as many students as those of colleges accredited by the CCE, the agency did not require two years of pre-professional (liberal arts) college coursework as an admissions criterion (as did the CCE) and at least one of its member institutions was still proprietary.

The ACC’s efforts were rendered moot in August 1974, when the U.S. Office of Education granted recognition to the CCE.