Education Department Moves to Overhaul College Accreditation Rules

A new round of rulemaking aims to make it easier for new accrediting agencies to enter the market and for colleges to switch accreditors.

Secretary of Education Linda McMahon speaks at a rally in Washington on Jan. 13, 2025. Madalina Kilroy/The Epoch Times

The U.S. Department of Education is taking a major step toward rewriting rules on how colleges and universities are accredited, a key aspect of the Trump administration’s higher education agenda.

In a notice published Jan. 27, the department said it is soliciting nominations for an upcoming advisory committee that will participate in a process known as negotiated rulemaking. Through that process, the department plans to develop new regulatory language this spring.

The committee will include stakeholders such as representatives for students, colleges, and accrediting agencies. Aspiring accreditors will have a seat at the negotiating table, according to the notice.

The panel is slated to address 10 topics outlined in the notice, and much of the discussion is expected to center on the first: how to make it easier for new accrediting agencies to enter the market and for colleges to switch accreditors.

Other key questions on the table include increasing agencies’ reliance on data-driven student performance benchmarks; continuing efforts to remove diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) requirements from accreditation standards; and changing the criteria by which accreditors are evaluated for federal recognition.

The department said it wants to place greater emphasis on “student achievement and outcomes, high educational quality, and high-value programs.”

Accreditors serve as gatekeepers for more than $100 billion in taxpayer funds that the department distributes each year in student aid. Without proper accreditation, schools cannot participate in programs such as federal student loans and Pell Grants, which are critical for lower-income students.

The current U.S. accreditation system, the department said, is failing in this responsibility to taxpayers.

“Rather than focusing on whether member institutions offer high-quality programs that benefit students and the workforce, the current accreditation regime has become a protectionist system that shields existing players, fuels rising costs, drives credential inflation, adds administrative bloat, allows undue influence from related trade associations, and promotes ideologically driven initiatives,” Under Secretary of Education Nicholas Kent said in a Jan. 26 statement announcing the department’s intent to form the negotiated rulemaking committee.

“We welcome nominations from key stakeholders willing to challenge the status quo,” he added.

Nominations for committee members are due Feb. 27, and two rulemaking sessions are scheduled for April and May. The department is expected to share more specifics closer to the start of the sessions.

This round of rulemaking builds on President Donald Trump’s April 2025 executive order that, in part, directed Education Secretary Linda McMahon to make it easier for colleges to move to a different accreditor.

The order also targeted DEI standards used by accreditors, directing McMahon to deny, monitor, suspend, or terminate recognition for agencies that “fail to meet the applicable recognition criteria or otherwise violate Federal law.” It further mandates that accreditors require institutions use program-level data on student outcomes “without reference to race, ethnicity, or sex.”

A month later, the department revoked 2022 guidance issued under the Biden administration that had exerted more scrutiny over changing accreditors, which came after Florida enacted a law that year requiring its public institutions to switch accreditors regularly. At the same time, federal officials lifted a moratorium on reviewing applications from would-be new accrediting agencies.

Those moves helped pave the way for a June 2025 announcement by six Southern public university systems that they would form a new accreditor, the Commission for Public Higher Education. The consortium includes Texas A&M University, the State University System of Florida, the University System of Georgia, the University of Tennessee System, the University of North Carolina System, and the University of South Carolina System.

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, an outspoken critic of existing accreditation establishments’ use of DEI standards, described the new agency as one that would “offer an alternative that will break the ideological stronghold.”

Both Texas and Florida have since dropped requirements that lawyers graduate from a law school accredited by the American Bar Association, becoming the first two states in the nation to do so.