President Donald Trump on Wednesday signed an executive order aimed at improving outcomes in higher education by holding college and university accreditors more accountable.
“Accreditors – the gatekeepers that decide which colleges and universities can access over $100 billion in annual Federal student loans and Pell Grants – have routinely approved low-quality institutions, ultimately failing students, families, and American taxpayers,” the order reads. “Accreditors have failed to ensure quality, with a national six-year undergraduate graduation rate of just 64% in 2020.”
The order directs U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi and Department of Education Secretary Linda McMahon to investigate discrimination within higher education institutions including diversity, equity and inclusion policies; remove culturally “idealogical overreach,” require “intellectual diversity among faculty in order to advance academic freedom, intellectual inquiry, and student learning,” and restore competition within the accreditation community.
“America’s higher education accreditation system is broken. A small number of institutional accreditors – private, nongovernment entities – decide which institutions and their programs qualify to receive over $100 billion annually in Pell Grants, federal student loans, and other taxpayer-subsidized higher education funding,” McMahon said in a statement. “The existing accreditation monopoly raises costs, contributes to the ever-increasing tuition and fees faced by American families, favors legacy four-year institutions, blocks new accreditors from the market, interferes with states’ governing board decisions, and pushes universities in ideological directions when they should be focused on core subjects. The result is more bureaucracy, less innovation, sprawling DEI administrative complexes, and burdensome oversight by unaccountable accreditors rather than state education leaders and duly appointed governing board members.”
McMahon said the order will help improve student outcomes and, ultimately, the economy because students will be better prepared for the labor market.
Among the actions the order calls for:
Resume recognition of new accreditors to foster competition.Require institutions to use student outcome data to improve results.Launch an experimental site to test innovative quality assurance pathways.Increase the consistency, efficiency, and effectiveness of the accreditor recognition review process.
