Kent Tells Accreditation Panel to “Buckle Up”

President Donald Trump’s skepticism of the current accreditation system bled into Tuesday’s National Advisory Committee on Institutional Quality and Integrity (NACIQI) meeting—the first since Education Secretary Linda McMahon and other officials were confirmed.

The Trump administration has cast accreditation as beset by alleged woke priorities, a theme repeated Tuesday along with pledges to shake up the system. Concerns about a supposed pervasive liberal ideology among such bodies prompted an executive order in April that threatened to strip federal recognition from accreditors that require institutions to engage in unlawful diversity practices. The Department of Education is also seeking public comment on accreditation reform, which officials have said is to increase transparency and efficiency, and is planning to update the rules for accreditors next year.

Tuesday’s meeting began with the election of a new NACIQI chair, a process that required two votes after the 18-member board tied on the first try. After the second vote, Jay Greene, a former senior research fellow at the Heritage Foundation staffer and sharp critic of diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives, was named chair. He was among the five Department of Education appointees named in November.

Greene promised “to be a fair, even-handed chair” despite the “awkwardness” of the vote, which he won after Jennifer Blum, a Republican appointee abstained after voting against Greene in the election.

The vote was followed by remarks from Education Under Secretary Nicholas Kent who was participating in his first NACIQI meeting since being confirmed by the U.S. Senate. (While the meeting was initially scheduled for July, ED postponed it until October, and it was later rescheduled to December because of the lengthy government shutdown in the fall.)

“Instead of focusing on student outcomes and accountability to taxpayers, accreditation has functioned as a shield for incumbent institutions, or worse, as a tool for political and ideological enforcement,” Kent said. “We will end the practice of using accreditation as a political weapon. As we correct past abuses, we might be accused of weaponization, but those accusations will be false.”

He added that “universities spend millions of dollars complying with trivial or even counterproductive demands imposed by accreditors, while glaring deficiencies that undermine student success go unaddressed” and argued that such organizations need to focus instead on graduation rates, academic rigor, job placement, earnings, student debt and related metrics.

Colleges have to accredited by a department-recognized accreditor in order to receive federal student aid, and that power has led to greater scrutiny on the accreditation system from both Democrats and conservatives. Accreditors have generally resisted efforts to hold institutions to “bright-line” standards and warned against an over-reliance on data. The Biden administration had sought to require accreditors to set student achievement benchmarks but didn’t move forward with that plan.

Kent also accused accreditors of failing to respond to campus antisemitism in the aftermath of the terrorist attacks on Israel on Oct. 7, which prompted a brutal military response in Gaza and subsequent pro-Palestinian protests, which many Republicans have cast as anti-Jewish.

The under secretary further argued that accreditors have inserted ideological criteria into standards that fuel “discriminatory practices, mandatory DEI requirements, racial preferences in hiring, compulsory sensitivity training and political litmus tests” that “undermine merit” and “chill free speech.” (Most institutional accreditors paused or suspended DEI standards earlier this year following an executive order seeking to crack down on DEI, others never had such standards.)

While Kent emphasized the importance of NACIQI members in holding accreditors accountable, he also highlighted the Trump administration’s efforts to make it easier to launch new accreditors, which he argued was necessary to “drive innovation” and disrupt the status quo. Some aspiring accreditors have responded to those changes, such as the Commission for Public Higher Education, which is working toward eventual recognition.

Kent’s remarks prompted an accusation of partisanship from Bob Shireman, a Democratic appointee and former ED official during the early years of the Obama administration. Shireman argued that, historically, concerns about accreditation have been bipartisan, as has NACIQI.

Shireman pointed out that NACIQI members were introduced at the top of the meeting with their political affiliation—whether they were appointed by a Republican or Democrat—and also that they were seated in the same manner, something which he described as “extreme partisanship.”

In response, Kent said that the Trump administration was taking a new approach.

“We’re breaking the mold in this administration. We’re doing things differently, we’re conducting negotiated rule makings differently … I think we all agree there are real issues with NACIQI, there are real issues with the accreditation recognition process. We’re going to fix a lot of it,” Kent said. “So everybody, buckle up, we got a lot of work ahead of us.”

Beyond Kent’s critiques, which echoed past Trump administration rhetoric, politics loomed large in other conversations throughout the meeting, particularly the topic of DEI in standards, which several NACIQI members asked about as they received compliance reports from accreditors.

Zakiya Smith Ellis, a Democratic appointee, pushed back on some of those concerns noting that such standards aren’t “particularly descriptive about what diversity, equity, or inclusion means” and executive orders, such as Trump’s anti-DEI memo, “do not have [the] force of law.”

Gary Ransdell, a Republican appointee, also asked about compliance concerns at Columbia University, which the department has accused of failing to enforce federal nondiscrimination laws related to pro-Palestinian protests in spring 2024. Earlier this year, Education Secretary Linda McMahon urged Columbia’s accreditor, Middle States Commission on Higher Education (MSCHE), to take action against the university, accusing it of being out of compliance with the organization’s standards.

The accreditor responded by hitting Columbia with a non-compliance warning.

MSCHE President Heather Perfetti noted Columbia provided a report in response to noncompliance concerns in November. Per MSCHE standards, Perfetti said Columbia would receive a campus visit from a MSCHE team, which would then make a recommendation to a committee that would bring it to the commission for a decision at its next meeting in March.

However, it would appear the issue is likely moot, given Columbia’s settlement with the Trump administration earlier this year. That agreement saw the federal government resolve investigations into Columbia in exchange for a $221 million penalty and sweeping changes to admissions, disciplinary processes, academic programs and more. Part of the settlement noted that the Trump administration would promptly notify MSCHE of the federal government’s “release of liability” following the deal.