Trump’s “Secret Weapon” to Quietly Rewrite the Rules of Higher Education

Independent Accreditation is under attack, and we must raise awareness

There’s a room in Washington, D.C., where the rules of American higher education are being rewritten right now. The sessions start on April 13th. They will be livestreamed and open to the public.

Almost no one is watching, which is by design.

The Trump administration has made no secret of its contempt for American universities. But the most sweeping changes it’s pursuing aren’t happening through dramatic executive orders or headline-grabbing funding freezes. They’re happening through a bureaucratic process called negotiated rulemaking — a wonky, technical-sounding mechanism that is almost perfectly engineered to avoid public scrutiny.

Understanding what’s at stake requires investigating something most Americans have never had reason to think about: college accreditation. And once you understand it, the picture that emerges is one of the most significant threats to educational access and academic freedom in a generation.

What is Accreditation?

Accreditation is the quality assurance system that determines whether a college or university is eligible for federal financial aid: Pell Grants, federal student loans, and research funding. Private nonprofit agencies called accreditors review institutions against standards covering academic quality, student support, financial stability, and governance. If your institution passes muster, your students can access the more than $100 billion in federal aid distributed every year. Fail or lose your accreditation, and your students can’t.

This system has its roots in the GI Bill. After World War II, returning veterans flooded the higher education market with federal tuition money, and predatory fly-by-night schools flooded right back. Congress responded in 1952 by requiring that GI Bill money could only be spent at accredited institutions. The Higher Education Act of 1965 extended that principle to the entire federal student aid system. Since then, accreditation has been the financial foundation on which virtually every American college operates.

Accreditors are independent. That independence is key to the legitimacy of accreditation. Quality assurance only means something if the entity doing the assuring isn’t taking its cues from whoever happens to be in political power.

That independence is what’s under attack.

A Year of Breaking Down Independence

The Trump administration’s assault on accreditation has unfolded in methodical steps over the past year — each one quietly expanding its leverage before most people noticed what was happening.

April 2025: President Trump signed Executive Order 14279, Reforming Accreditation to Strengthen Higher Education. The order directed Education Secretary Linda McMahon to strip federal recognition from accreditors that maintain DEI standards — which the order characterizes as “unlawful discrimination.” It also called for making it easier for colleges to switch accreditors, recognizing new accrediting agencies, and requiring accreditors to prioritize what the order calls “intellectual diversity” among faculty.

May 2025: The Department revoked Biden-era guidance that required careful review before institutions could switch accreditors. It also lifted a moratorium on applications from new accrediting agencies — opening the door for new entrants whose standards might be more politically aligned with the administration’s priorities. A Dear Colleague Letter established a streamlined 30-day approval process for schools seeking to change accreditors.

Summer 2025: The administration escalated from rule-changing to direct institutional pressure. It notified the accreditors of both Harvard and Columbia that those schools may no longer meet accreditation standards — based not on the accreditors’ independent assessments, but on the administration’s own civil rights claims. Harvard’s accreditor received a notification citing “strong evidence” that Harvard’s accreditation should be revoked. Columbia received a formal non-compliance warning, resulting in a Submission of Monitoring Report to their accreditor and a campus follow-up visit in January 2026. (Columbia released a statement on March 19, 2026 confirming its accreditor affirmed the University’s compliance and accreditation status.)

Legal experts called these moves unprecedented. “It’s really an inappropriate overreach by the administration,” said Jon Fansmith of the American Council on Education. A Cornell law professor put it more bluntly: “The Trump administration has failed to follow any of the required procedures.”

June 2025: Six Southern public university systems — Florida, Georgia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, and Texas — announced the formation of a new accreditor called the Commission for Public Higher Education. The administration awarded $1 million in federal grants to support its launch, part of nearly $15 million allocated to support new accreditors and institutional transitions. Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, announcing the new agency, explicitly echoed the administration’s criticisms of existing accreditors’ diversity standards.

October 2025: The WASC Senior College and University Commission (WSCUC) is the accreditor overseeing roughly 170 colleges in California and Hawaii, and it officially adopted updated standards removing DEI language, replacing its previous requirement of an “explicit commitment to diversity, equity, and inclusion” with broader phrasing about “success for all students.” Shortly thereafter, the New England Commission of Higher Education (NECHE), the accreditor that oversees Harvard, Columbia, and other New England institutions, separately proposed removing DEI from its own standards.

The chilling effect was working. Accreditors were self-censoring before any new rules even came into effect.

December 2025: The Department issued a Request for Information seeking public comment on rewriting the Accreditation Handbook — the operational guide governing how accreditors are reviewed and recognized.

January 2026: The Department announced the Accreditation, Innovation, and Modernization (AIM) negotiated rulemaking committee. This is the formal regulatory process that will produce binding rules implementing everything outlined above. The first public session begins on April 13th.

“Negotiated Rulemaking” and Our Window of Opportunity

Negotiated rulemaking is a specific legal process under the Higher Education Act. Before the Department can publish new regulations governing Title IV programs (the ones tied to federal financial aid) it must convene a committee of stakeholders to try to reach consensus on the proposed rules. Sessions are public. They are required by statute.

The administration has manipulated the AIM committee’s composition: it consolidated the seats representing public two-year and four-year institutions into a single negotiating spot, which is a break from longstanding precedent that advocates say reduces the representation of community colleges and regional universities at the table.

If the committee reaches consensus, the Department publishes a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking with a public comment period. If it doesn’t reach consensus, the Department can draft its own proposed rule. The earliest any final regulation could take effect is July 1, 2027. This window of time exists specifically to allow for advocacy, public comment, and legal challenges.

The window (from April 13 to 17) is our opportunity. But it requires everyone to pay attention.

A “Plain Worthy” Legal Argument

Buried in the advocacy briefings circulating among higher education lawyers is a pointed legal argument that hasn’t gotten enough public attention: the proposed regulations may blatantly violate the statutory limitations on the Secretary of Education’s authority under the Higher Education Act. Congress gave accreditors their own independent statutory authority. The administration cannot simply override that by executive order or regulatory fiat.

The Supreme Court’s 2023 decision in Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard (the affirmative action ruling) is also relevant here. The Court held that race-conscious admissions were unconstitutional, but it also affirmed that universities’ diversity-related mission interests are “commendable” and “plainly worthy” and may be achieved through lawful means. The administration’s characterization of all DEI standards as “unlawful discrimination” goes well beyond what the Court actually held.

The administration already lost once in court when it tried to withhold funding from universities that wouldn’t comply with its demands. This rulemaking effort is, in part, a procedural workaround, attempting to embed political compliance requirements into the regulatory infrastructure itself, where they’re harder to challenge and less visible to the public.

Understanding the Risks

The administration frames these changes as promoting competition and student outcomes. It’s worth taking that framing seriously for a moment, because some criticism of the accreditation system is legitimate. Accreditors have been slow to act on low-performing programs. Quality assurance should be rigorous. These are real issues.

But the cumulative effect of what’s being proposed goes well beyond fixing a slow bureaucracy.

Consider that when accreditors drop DEI standards (as WSCUC and NECHE are already doing under political pressure), the programs most affected are the tutoring, mentorship, and support services that help first-generation students, students of color, veterans, and adult learners stay enrolled and graduate. These aren’t abstract ideological commitments. They are practical interventions that move graduation rates.

When it becomes easier to shop for more lenient accreditors — or to create new ones aligned with administration priorities — the rigor that makes accreditation meaningful erodes. Predatory schools, which have a long history of targeting low-income students and veterans with federal aid dollars, become harder to hold accountable. The biggest losers are the students who trusted that an accredited school meant something.

When the government can use accreditation as leverage against specific institutions (as it has against Harvard and Columbia) it gains an unprecedented tool for political coercion. The mechanism being constructed doesn’t require actually revoking anyone’s accreditation. The threat alone is often sufficient.

And when the federal government can pressure accreditors to enforce its own interpretation of civil rights law — rather than courts or Congress — it effectively becomes the final word on what universities can teach, who they can hire, and how they can serve their students.

Anyone who wants to see nurses at bedsides, teachers in classrooms, and engineers contributing to our cities and communities should care about whether the institutions that trained them are protected or narrowed.

What You Can Do Before April 13

The first of five scheduled AIM committee sessions begins on April 13. The sessions are livestreamed and open to the public. This is one of those moments where showing up — even just digitally — creates pressure that bureaucratic processes respond to.

Sessions will be held from 9:00 a.m. to 12:00 p.m. and 1:00 p.m. to 4:00 p.m. ET

Watch the sessions. You can register to watch the livestream on the Department of Education website. Make no mistake, if this goes into effect, everyone (not just current or prospective students seeking financial aid) will see the impact and ripple effects. Even 30 minutes of engagement shows committee members and the administration that we, the public, are invested and paying attention.

Talk about it. The most powerful thing content creators, writers, and citizen voices can do right now is make this legible for people who have no idea it’s happening. Accreditation is designed to be invisible. Make it visible.

Prepare to comment. Once the committee publishes draft regulations, there will be a formal public comment period. Public comments have real impact — especially when they’re grounded in specific lived experience. Whether you attended college or not, if you believe accreditation should be a measure of quality, not compliance with ideology, submit a comment and let your voice be heard. Start thinking now about what you’d like to say.

The regulatory process has a clock. Our window for advocacy is here. But it requires people to pay attention to a room that was designed not to be noticed.

Pay attention.

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Sources & Further Reading:

1. U.S. Department of Education — AIM Rulemaking Announcement (January 2026) https://www.ed.gov/about/news/press-release/us-department-of-education-announces-negotiated-rulemaking-reform-and-strengthen-americas-higher-education-accreditation-system

2. The White House — Fact Sheet: Executive Order 14279 (April 2025) https://www.whitehouse.gov/fact-sheets/2025/04/fact-sheet-president-donald-j-trump-reforms-accreditation-to-strengthen-higher-education/

3. CNN — Trump targets college accreditation process in new executive order (April 2025) https://www.cnn.com/2025/04/23/politics/trump-college-accreditation-process-executive-order/index.html

4. NPR — All the ways the Trump administration is going after colleges and universities (June 2025) https://www.npr.org/2025/06/10/nx-s1-5424450/ways-trump-administration-is-going-after-colleges

5. Boston Globe — Trump targets Columbia’s accreditation and Harvard’s international students (June 2025) https://www.bostonglobe.com/2025/06/04/metro/columbia-accreditation-harvard-trump/

6. WBUR — Trump administration threatens Harvard’s accreditation (July 2025) https://www.wbur.org/news/2025/07/09/harvard-trump-administration-accreditation-status

7. TIME — Trump administration warns Harvard risks losing accreditation (July 2025) https://time.com/7301306/harvard-trump-administration-accreditation/

8. Harvard Magazine — Trump administration threatens Harvard’s accreditation, subpoenas student records (August 2025) https://www.harvardmagazine.com/2025/07/trump-harvard-accreditation

9. WBUR — More than money: What a Harvard deal with Trump could mean for academia (August 2025) https://www.wbur.org/news/2025/08/07/ivy-league-schools-trump-settlements-harvard

10. Inside Higher Ed — Accreditors offer flexibility on DEI standards (February 2025) https://www.insidehighered.com/news/governance/accreditation/2025/02/28/accreditors-offer-flexibility-dei-standards

11. Inside Higher Ed — Northeast accreditor proposes removing DEI standards (August 2025) https://www.insidehighered.com/news/quick-takes/2025/08/05/northeast-accreditor-proposes-removing-dei-standards

12. Higher Ed Dive — Trump executive order on accreditation sparks concerns over government intrusion (April 2025) https://www.highereddive.com/news/trump-executive-order-accreditation-dei-intellectual-diversity/746331/

13. Council for Higher Education Accreditation (CHEA) — February 2026 Update https://www.chea.org/february-2026

14. NAICU — Negotiated rulemaking to tackle accreditation reform (January 2026) https://www.naicu.edu/news-events/washington-update/2026/january-30/negotiated-rulemaking-to-tackle-accreditation-reform/

15. Ithaka S+R — Regional Accreditation Standards research brief (2026) https://sr.ithaka.org/publications/regional-accreditation-standards/