New Accreditation Rules Threaten Academic Freedom

Stakes are high as the Trump administration looks to rewrite the rules governing accreditation in the first of two week-long rule-making sessions starting today. The overhaul could dramatically change who is in charge of academic oversight and what they evaluate when determining whether an institution should have access to federal aid.

Right-leaning think tanks applaud the changes, released last week in a 151-page draft, calling them an overdue means to ensure campus civil rights compliance, address college costs and ensure institutions are held accountable for their students’ outcomes.

But accreditation experts, left-leaning policy analysts and student advocacy groups say the lengthy regulations, while vague and abstruse, pose a major threat to the future of institutional autonomy and America’s status as the crown jewel of global higher education.

Little of what’s included in the draft surprised either side.

President Trump and other conservatives have long seen overhauling the accreditation system as a way to reform higher ed more broadly. The draft regulations fulfill their pledges to make it easier for new accreditors to join the market and mandate what standards accreditors must and must not assess. Under Secretary Nicholas Kent has described the upcoming overhaul as “a revolution.”

Robert Shireman—a longtime accreditation expert and Democratic appointee on the Education Department’s accreditation advisory committee—said at an Accreditation 101 panel Wednesday that the most important aspect of America’s higher ed oversight system has been the autonomy it provides to colleges and universities, which is “obliterated by these draft regulations.”

“With the administration’s release of their draft rules earlier this week, I would characterize those as a cluster bomb being dropped on American higher education,” he said.

Some may see the dozens of policy changes individually as small or relatively insignificant, but Shireman and others warn they could be monumental. If finalized, the wide-ranging proposal could ultimately lead to more federal control over colleges and universities and compel accreditors and institutions to adhere to the Trump administration’s political priorities.

Critics on both sides of the aisle have long criticized the current accreditation system, arguing that it didn’t hold poor-performing institutions accountable. But Antoinette Flores—a former deputy assistant director of policy at ED and now director of higher education accountability and quality at New America, a left-leaning think tank—said the reforms proposed by Trump are an extreme overcorrection.

Turning the draft proposal into statute is a top priority for the administration, and Education Department officials have shown an ability in recent months to get their regulations across the finish line. So experts expect that the first-edition reforms—or something very close to them—will likely advance. (ED has also placed a political appointee, Jeffrey Andrade, on the negotiating committee as the department’s voting member, a role historically filled by a nonpartisan career staffer.) If the department finalizes the regulations by Nov. 1, they will take effect July 2027.

“They know what they want to do, and they’re likely going to do it,” said one higher education expert, who spoke to Inside Higher Ed on the condition of anonymity.

And when the department’s proposal takes effect, the source added, it could give the government too much control, regardless of who is in power.

“There are several areas where the proposed regs have accreditors doing things that are overly subjective and certainly very political,” they said. “There’s been a lot of that rhetorically as of late, but it’s a different thing to start putting some of this into regulations. It’s opening up issues that could be even more problematic down the road for the very folks who are putting them into action now.”

For now, here’s a breakdown of three key changes that sources say could be the most consequential.

Adding New Standards

Perhaps the change most praised by conservative policy experts and opposed by liberal ones is the Trump administration’s attempt to add new standards for accreditors and mandate more detailed versions of existing ones.

Currently, under the Higher Education Act, an accreditor must evaluate an institution or program on 10 standards in order to be recognized by the government.

And while the Higher Education Act says that accreditors must evaluate these standards, it doesn’t say exactly how. In fact, it limits the department’s ability to do so by saying, “The Secretary shall not promulgate any regulation with respect to the standards of an accreditation agency or association.”

Still, in its latest draft proposal, the department modifies the student achievement standard by requiring accreditors to “identify minimum expectations related to return on investment (ROI) of tuition, completion rates, placement rates and/or State licensing exam success,” using data “without reference to race, ethnicity, or sex.” Under the faculty standard, the department plans to require accreditors to “prioritize intellectual diversity among faculty.”

The Trump administration also introduces new affordability requirements, such as requiring the evaluation of facilities to “include cost/benefit analysis,” ensuring that program length is “appropriate” and training agency staff to “encourage low-cost models that can provide high quality education.”

Bob Eitel—a Republican-appointed member of the department’s accreditation oversight board and co-founder of the Defense of Freedom Institute, a right-leaning think tank—believes these further details are necessary and legal despite the limitations placed on the Education Department in the HEA.

“This administration has been very creative about using the tools that it has to change behavior that it considers to be illegal or contrary to good policy, and this accreditation rule-making proposal is a perfect example of that,” he said. “Congress has granted the department certain authority to conduct oversight of the accreditation system, and this administration is going to use those tools at its disposal to implement its policy goals. They’re going to do so in an aggressive way.”

(Eitel’s co-founder Jim Blew will be a member of the rule-making committee.)

But others say the new mandates are yet another demonstration of executive overreach and an attempt to exercise illegal ideological control over higher education institutions.

“The federal administration has made clear that it seeks to assert ideological control over higher education—attacking the creation and dissemination of knowledge, as well as who has access to it,” said Mike Gavin, CEO of the Alliance for Higher Education, an advocacy organization representing colleges and universities across the sector.

Some parts of the draft—like the desire to place more weight on student outcomes and ensure a return on investment for student loan borrowers—are viewed positively by think tanks from both sides of the aisle. But from the perspective of more liberal policy analysts, what the Trump administration has proposed goes too far.

“The items that are positive in no way are enough to make the rest of it worth doing,” Shireman said.

Minimal Guardrails for New Accreditors

Left-leaning think tanks and student advocacy groups are also raising alarm about the new application procedures for aspiring accreditors.

Among the changes include: removing the two-year rule, which required new agencies to perform accrediting activities for at least two years before seeking federal recognition, and eliminating the need for letters of support with applications.

Kent and his staff say the changes to the recognition policy will eliminate red tape, reduce barriers that limit competition and create a smoother pathway for innovation. Just weeks before the draft proposal was released, the department issued guidance that sped up the process for new accreditors to gain recognition right away, noting that just four agencies with the power to make institutions eligible for federal student aid have been approved since 1999. The proposed regulations would codify that guidance.

But groups like Third Way, a left-of-center think tank, fear that the department’s proposal could allow bad actors to gain entry to the market without proper vetting. In addition, the regulations allow colleges to more freely move between accreditors; with both changes combined, Third Way fears that poor-performing colleges at risk of penalization will be able to jump to new accreditors with lower standards.

Emily Rounds, a senior policy adviser at Third Way, worries that these changes could fuel “a race to the bottom.”

“On one hand, it could be good if new accreditors really value student outcomes … But also, at its worst, it could allow federal dollars to continue to flow to institutions with really poor outcomes,” she said. “That could have pretty immediate impacts for students and institutions.”

At this point, Rounds and others say, it won’t be possible to prevent new accreditors from joining the market, as the Trump administration has repeatedly said doing so is a top priority, nor do they want that to be the case. But they do hope ED will ensure that reducing barriers doesn’t come at the cost of ensuring quality standards.

“What I would love to see happen in the rule making is to hear from the negotiators representing aspiring accrediting agencies about the value that they bring to the ecosystem,” she said. “It’s really important that negotiators don’t just fully, blindly support those opinions or completely negate them. I’d like to see negotiators engage in tough but fair questioning of these organizations and what they bring.”

Overhauling Peer Review

Since colleges came together to form what’s become the modern system of accreditation, the concept of peer review among institutions overseen by the same accreditor has been at the heart of the process. But the Trump administration’s draft regulations could change that.

Based on regulatory text, it appears that the Education Department would no longer recognize an accreditor whose decision-making body includes current administrators, faculty members or staff of the institutions it accredits, as well as public appointees who were previously employed by a higher education institution.

In a summary of the draft proposal, department officials describe this change as a means of boosting “accreditor integrity” and strengthening the legal requirement that accreditors be “separate and independent” from any related, associated or affiliated trade association or membership organization.

But one accreditation expert, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said the changes would mean that few—if any—existing accreditors could continue to operate as they currently exist, because they are dependent on employees from the institutions they oversee.

The draft proposal “says that members of the commission can’t participate in setting policies or standards that might impact their institution. So the way I read it, all of the institutional members of the commission would have to resign,” the source said. “Accreditors could likely continue to operate with a commission that looks entirely different, but they would have to convince more than two dozen volunteers to serve six-year terms who have no relationship and thus commitment to the institutions being overseen.”

Policy experts say that Congress or the courts could halt many of the proposed changes, including the elimination of peer review, as federal law clearly limits what the Education Department can and can’t tell accreditors to do on multiple occasions.

But even then, many warn that stopping the administration’s accreditation overhaul will be an uphill battle given gridlock in Congress and the hurdles in the legal process.

“Based on what lawyers have said about the Higher Education Act for many years, I would say these regulations are in conflict and go way beyond what is allowed,” Shireman said. “However, we have seen an administration here that in every area of government seems to think the restrictions don’t apply. So we could see years of implementation before a Supreme Court—maybe—overturns some of these things.”