The U.S. Department of Education released an extensive regulatory agenda Friday laying out its plans to reshape accreditation, civil rights enforcement and a range of other higher education policies in line with the Trump administration’s priorities.
The agenda arrives just after the department finished implementing education provisions from the One Big Beautiful Bill Act ahead of a July 1 deadline, including new federal loan limits and an earnings test that college programs must meet to keep access to federal student loans. With that effort behind it, the department is now turning to a broader set of changes.
Among the most immediate: a proposed rule on accreditation expected this month that would make it easier for new accrediting agencies to form and for colleges to switch accreditors. The rule would also give accreditors new oversight duties over campus free speech and “intellectual diversity” policies. The department also plans to amend its enforcement regulations this month to speed up the process for cutting off federal financial aid to colleges found to have violated civil rights law and declined to fix the problem voluntarily.
Education Under Secretary Nicholas Kent previewed part of the agenda last month at a student financial aid conference near Washington, saying the department intends to pursue rules making it easier for colleges to merge or close. Friday’s agenda confirms the department will issue a notice this month starting that process, kicking off a negotiated rulemaking session in which higher education stakeholders attempt to hash out consensus language; if they fail to agree, the department can write the rule itself.
The agenda also targets the decades-old 90/10 rule, which requires for-profit colleges to draw at least 10% of their revenue from sources other than federal financial aid. The department argues the current framework hands “public and nonprofit institutions a competitive advantage.”
Race-conscious programs are a recurring theme throughout the agenda. The department plans to strip race-based eligibility criteria from the Ronald E. McNair Postbaccalaureate Achievement Program, which supports doctoral aspirants from low-income and underrepresented backgrounds. A separate rule expected in August would rewrite Title VI regulations to spell out how the law’s ban on discrimination applies to diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives and other race-conscious programs — the same statute the administration has invoked in funding disputes with Harvard and UCLA. Other listed rules would eliminate the disparate-impact theory of Title VI liability in favor of a standard requiring proof of intentional discrimination, and would rewrite Title IX regulations to define sex strictly by “immutable biological classification,” consistent with an executive order issued last year.
Later in the year, the department plans to begin rulemaking on textbook packaging and credit transferability in September, followed by new reporting rules in November covering foreign gifts to universities under Section 117 and campus crime disclosures under the Clery Act.
Taken together, the agenda reflects an effort to unwind Biden-era rules and race-conscious programs while expanding federal leverage over campus speech and diversity policy — continuing a broader pattern of using regulation to reshape what colleges may teach and practice around race and identity.
