Overhauling higher-education accreditation could be on the agenda for conservative lawmakers and policy mavens now that Donald J. Trump has been re-elected president.
Trump and his allies have floated a number of changes, such as barring accreditors from requiring that colleges adhere to diversity, equity, and inclusion standards. Republicans have also proposed creating new accrediting agencies that promote conservative values and allowing state governments to take on the role of accreditors.
Colleges have to be accredited for their students to be eligible for federal student aid, such as loans issued by the Education Department and Pell Grants for students from low-income families. That role as a gatekeeper of federal dollars has put accreditors in the crosshairs of groups across the ideological spectrum that see the organizations as a barrier to change and improvement.
Project 2025, a policy wishlist written by a constellation of conservative groups that support Trump, described accreditation reviews as “wildly expensive audits by academic ‘peers’ that stifle innovation and discourage new institutions of higher education.”
Worse, the report contends, is that accrediting agencies force colleges to adopt DEI standards that may conflict with private colleges’ religious missions and fail to uphold standards for freedom of speech. The solution, the authors argue, is to limit what accreditors can require only to what is contained in federal law. Trump has gone a step further, calling for the creation of new accreditors that would “defend the American tradition and Western civilization.”
Robert Shireman, a senior fellow at the Century Foundation, a left-leaning think tank, warned that the Trump administration’s proposed overhaul of accreditation would weaken academic freedom by allowing the federal government to intrude into what kinds of courses are required and how they would be taught.
Even without new laws or regulations, Shireman said in an email, the Education Department could undertake a series of punitive investigations of existing accreditors, meant to pressure them legally and politically to limit their oversight of colleges. At worst, he wrote, federal officials could try to remove an accreditor’s recognition, forcing its member colleges to seek accreditation with another organization.
Much of Trump’s sweeping accreditation vision would take considerable time, require legislation or new regulations, and likely be challenged in court.
But any changes would be disruptive, at the very least, and the cost to accrediting agencies and the colleges that support them through membership fees could be significant, policy experts say. More importantly, the chaos could cast a shadow of uncertainty for students concerned whether the colleges they attend will remain accredited.
How Accreditation Became Political
Bashing accreditation has generally been a bipartisan exercise. Democrats have tended to criticize accrediting agencies for being too slow to take action against colleges with low graduation rates or those that leave students with high levels of student debt, especially in the for-profit sector.
Republicans have criticized accreditors for favoring traditional programs over start-ups and technological innovations, and overreaching by requiring institutions to uphold governance standards that necessitate faculty involvement or guard against partisan meddling in academic matters.
Critics on both sides of the partisan divide complain that higher-education accreditation is not driving big improvements in student outcomes.
“A real overhaul is long overdue,” said Michael B. Poliakoff, president of the American Council of Trustees and Alumni, a nonpartisan group that typically endorses conservative views and has long argued for greater restrictions on accreditors’ oversight. “We can get to the point where the educational options are wholesome for everybody instead of one where students are incentivized to go into programs where they are not likely to succeed.”
Accreditation is important but wonky. For decades, it had not made headlines or attracted politicians’ attention. That changed when an accreditor crossed paths with Gov. Ron DeSantis.
In 2022, the Florida Republican and his allies in the Legislature pushed through a bill requiring the state’s public colleges to seek a new accrediting agency. DeSantis’s move came after the accreditor for Florida’s public institutions, the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools Commission on Colleges, raised concerns about Republican political interference and conflicts of interest at the state’s two best-known universities.
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Several other accrediting agencies faced conservative scrutiny for requiring their member colleges to report on efforts to improve diversity, equity, and inclusion. (The Southern Association of Colleges and Schools considered but did not approve a similar DEI requirement for its institutions.)
Before long, then-candidate Trump was talking about college accreditation.
In May 2023, Trump vowed to “fire the radical left accreditors that have allowed our colleges to become dominated by Marxist maniacs and lunatics.” Instead, Trump said, the federal government would approve a new slate of accreditors with standards requiring a defense of nationalist ideology; the elimination of diversity offices; and a focus on affordable, work force-driven degrees.
Firing the accreditors is easier said than done, however.
The federal Higher Education Act (HEA) includes specific measures that accreditors must take into account, such as the fiscal viability and educational quality of programs. The law also explicitly prohibits the government from imposing any kind of academic requirements or dictating what colleges can teach in the classroom.
Under that law, the Trump administration can’t remove any current requirements regarding what accreditors review or add new ones — such as only allowing accreditors to evaluate institutions based on student-outcome measures. Accreditors, which are independent, nonprofit associations, also have some flexibility in current law to set standards that go beyond federal regulations.
An update to the law, which last passed Congress in 2008, seems politically impossible now, said Jonathan Fansmith, senior vice president for government relations at the American Council on Education. But the Trump administration could create new regulations addressing areas like DEI that are not covered under statute.
In addition, the Education Department could initiate a review of an accreditor’s federal recognition, which normally takes place once every five years. In that review, the department could demand that a given accreditor explain its standards, including asking why an accreditor may require an institution to have a diversity statement when the HEA doesn’t mandate that.
Even that scenario would be a tough road. As the department has found in the past, the process of withdrawing recognition is extremely lengthy and subject to legal challenge.
In 2016, the department under the Obama administration revoked the recognition of an accreditor that oversaw mostly for-profit colleges, after a review found the agency had failed to comply with more than 20 federal regulations. A court forced the department to reconsider, and the Trump administration brought the agency back. In 2021, the Biden administration again revoked recognition, and the accreditor was shuttered.
Improvements or ‘Blow Up the System’?
Other proposals for overhauling accreditation are in a bill called the College Cost Reduction Act, written by Republicans in the U.S. House of Representatives, which aims to remove some of the limits on who can accredit colleges. The legislation would allow states and even trade or professional groups to become accreditors.
The idea isn’t entirely new: Several states take on responsibility for accrediting nursing or vocational programs within their borders. The New York State Board of Regents also served as a recognized accrediting agency from 1952 until 2023, but shed that authority because of the growing cost and complexity of the endeavor.
States already have degree-granting authority and play a key role in consumer protection, said Thomas Harnisch, vice president for government relations at the State Higher Education Executive Officers Association.
But there is little incentive to get into the accrediting business, because states don’t have the staff or capacity to protect the federal government’s investments in higher education. In other words, Harnisch said, “they don’t have enough skin in the game.”
Some of this really depends on whether we get sensible disagreement on policy change or all-out war.
Having states handle accreditation would also create a patchwork of standards that could more easily be politicized, he said, and add complications for transferring college credits across borders.
The Education Department could, however, take a page from the previous Trump administration and make changes that most accrediting agencies can work with. Under Education Secretary Betsy DeVos, the department issued new regulations that were meant to create more competition for accreditors by removing the regional boundaries of the seven major organizations.
That change is what allowed Florida to pass a state law that required its public colleges to move to a new accreditor. Despite concerns about a broader shift in which institutions would seek accreditors that provide the least oversight, few colleges outside of Florida have made a move.
The department under DeVos also created new regulations that gave accreditors more leeway in managing institutions that had minor issues with submitting documentation to show compliance or similar concerns, or that wanted to add academic programs or branch campuses.
“Some of this really depends on whether we get sensible disagreement on policy change or all-out war,” said Edward Conroy, senior policy manager at New America, a left-leaning think tank.
“Saying you are going to get rid of accreditors who are a key part of the higher-education system, without any plan to replace that part of the system is not governing,” Conroy said.
“I’m on record advocating for lots of improvements,” he added, “but I don’t want to blow up the system.”
