What’s New
One of higher education’s largest accrediting organizations has put a hold on requiring its member colleges to demonstrate commitments to diversity, equity, and inclusion.
The WASC Senior College and University Commission, which accredits colleges mostly in California and Hawaii, announced late Tuesday that it was enacting a temporary “stay” on requirements that reference diversity efforts. The commission is one of the seven accrediting agencies that oversee the vast majority of the nation’s public and private nonprofit colleges.
The reason for that pause, the commission said, is to review all its standards to “ensure that we remain in compliance with federal law,” following President Trump’s recent executive order on accreditation.
In that order, Trump blames accreditors for forcing colleges to adopt policies promoting DEI and for not forcing them to uphold rigorous academic standards. Accreditors themselves contend that while they require colleges to show how they’re improving graduation rates for increasingly diverse populations, how colleges do so is up to administrators and faculty.
Trump’s order does not change any laws or regulations, but it warns that the administration may seek to remove accreditors’ federal recognition if they don’t remove requirements for DEI. It also admonishes the agencies against encouraging or forcing institutions to violate state laws, ostensibly those that prohibit public colleges from maintaining DEI programs and staff.
The Details
The Western commission’s current standards include mentions of diversity, equity, and inclusion in each of the four broad areas it considers during the accreditation process, such as institutional mission, student success, and finances.
Under the core standard for mission, for example, the college must show evidence that it “promotes the success of all students and makes explicit its commitment to diversity, equity, and inclusion.”
For now, colleges that are seeking approval from the commission will still have to demonstrate how they support the success of all students, but are not required to use any explicit reference to DEI, according to the commission’s Q&A webpage explaining the suspension of its DEI standards.
Colleges that are responding to a finding that they are not meeting a standard because of issues “related to underrepresented faculty, staff, or students” do not have to scrub references to DEI but can adapt the language they think is appropriate, the commission said.
“What’s important is that the institution demonstrates its commitment to ensuring the success of all students regardless of background,” the commission wrote. “The institution will be held accountable for this broader educational focus while having flexibility in how it describes and frames its approach.”
The Backdrop
The Western commission considered changing its DEI standards in December, just weeks after Trump was elected. During the presidential campaign, Trump had promised to “fire the radical left accreditors that have allowed our colleges to become dominated by Marxist maniacs and lunatics.”
The commission rejected those changes at the time, but since then, powerful politicians have escalated their anti-DEI campaign — and other accreditors have made changes to avoid conflict with the Trump administration.
The American Bar Association and the American Psychological Association have both suspended their DEI standards for member institutions.
The Higher Learning Commission, the largest of the seven traditional accreditors, approved changes last year to its standards that scrubbed references to “inclusive and equitable treatment of diverse populations” and “a climate of respect among all students, faculty, staff, and administrators from a range of diverse backgrounds, ideas, and perspectives.” The accreditor also removed a requirement that a college’s faculty and staff reflect “human diversity as appropriate within its mission and for the constituencies it serves.”
Those changes reflect the pressure that accreditors are facing not only at the federal level but from states as well. The Higher Learning Commission, for example, accredits colleges in six states — Arkansas, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Ohio, and North Dakota — that have passed laws banning public colleges from supporting DEI programs or staff.
In addition, several public colleges in Florida and North Carolina, where lawmakers also enacted anti-DEI laws, are seeking membership in the Higher Learning Commission.
The Western commission accredits two institutions in Texas, which has also banned DEI at public colleges. And the commission has another challenge: supporting colleges in places where the president’s efforts to eliminate DEI may conflict with state policies that require commitments to certain kinds of diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts, such as support for transgender students and staff.
“In such cases, institutions should consult legal counsel and communicate” with the commission “about how they are navigating compliance. We will work with institutions to understand the context and support reasonable adaptations.”
The Stakes
The temporary change in standards at the Western commission means that, among the seven largest traditional accreditors, four still have direct references to diversity, equity, and inclusion in their standards.
The association that represents those organizations, the Council of Regional Accrediting Commissions, has opposed the president’s claims about accreditors forcing colleges to adopt particular policies or language on DEI.
“It is disingenuous for the administration to imply accreditors require institutions to take actions that run counter to existing law or are promoting adherence to what the administration has termed ‘illegal DEI,’” the group said in one response to the executive order.
Accreditors also point out that current laws and regulation provide protection for accreditors to set their own standards and would make it challenging for the administration to remove an accreditor’s federal recognition.
But accreditors and their members also have seen the chaos and uncertainty unleashed by the administration’s efforts to penalize Harvard University and other institutions that oppose Trump.
If the White House or the Education Department were to try and remove federal recognition of an accrediting agency, it could threaten the ability of the accreditor’s member colleges to receive federal student aid.
