The U.S. Department of Education on Wednesday released a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (NPRM) that would rewrite how the federal government recognizes college accreditors, the latest and most concrete step yet in a year-long campaign by the Trump administration to remake a system that governs access to more than $100 billion in federal student aid annually.
The rule would change how the Secretary of Education recognizes new and existing accrediting agencies, eliminate accreditation standards the administration characterizes as discriminatory, and add new requirements around what it calls academic freedom, intellectual diversity, and research integrity. The Department frames the changes as a response to a system dominated by a small number of entrenched accreditors, which it says has driven up costs for students while, in some cases, prioritizing ideological agendas over outcomes like graduation rates and job placement.
Under Secretary of Education Nicholas Kent defended the proposal in a statement accompanying its release. “Instead of ensuring institutions offer high-quality educational programs that justify the time and cost of a college education, the antiquated accreditation system has contributed to inflated tuition, administrative bloat, and ideology-driven mandates on college campuses,” Kent said.
The NPRM implements President Trump’s Executive Order 14279 and follows a rapid sequence of federal actions since last year’s order first directed the Department to ease the path for new accreditors and strip out standards tied to diversity, equity, and inclusion. In February, the Department issued an interpretive rule lowering barriers for new accrediting agencies. In March, Kent sent warning letters to the Middle States Commission on Higher Education and the Commission on Accreditation in Physical Therapy Education, threatening to pull federal recognition unless they formally eliminated DEI-related standards — even though both agencies had already suspended those standards following Trump’s executive orders. Middle States president Heather Perfetti called the Department’s rationale confused, saying she was “surprised” given that her commission had “demonstrated unequivocally and repeatedly that institutions are expected to follow federal and state law.”
The rule itself is the product of the Accreditation, Innovation, and Modernization (AIM) Committee, a negotiated rulemaking panel that met in April and May and reached consensus on the full package, according to the Department. But that consensus followed a contentious start: negotiators got through fewer than 100 of the draft’s 151 pages in the first week, and Kent told the committee the administration’s explicit goal was to “upend higher education,” according to the American Council on Education. ACE’s Jon Fansmith pushed back on Kent’s earlier suggestion that higher education leaders needed to move through the “stages of grief” toward accepting the administration’s approach, saying acceptance meant “partnership, not acquiescence.”
Critics have consistently argued that the administration’s aim is less about educational quality than about political control. Todd Wolfson, president of the American Association of University Professors, wrote in March that “accreditation must remain independent of political control,” arguing that a parallel push by newer, ideologically aligned accrediting bodies threatens to pressure universities into compliance under the shadow of losing federal aid. Separately, the think tank New America has warned that provisions making it easier for institutions to switch accreditors could let underperforming colleges evade accountability while continuing to collect federal aid.
The stakes are heightened by the committee’s structure: had negotiators failed to reach consensus, the Department would have been free to finalize its own version of the rule without stakeholder agreement — a dynamic critics say gave the administration outsized leverage throughout the process.
The public comment period is now open. The Department is accepting comments through the Federal eRulemaking Portal at regulations.gov through September 21; it will not accept comments by fax or mail.
