How the Trump Administration Is Undoing College Accreditation

This month, on April 3, the U.S. Department of Education completed the first part of its monthslong effort to deregulate higher education in the name of “innovation.” The Education Department and a group of stakeholders reached an agreement on the new set of rules, which would rewrite how the department oversees college accreditation agencies and how these organizations are supposed to ensure college quality. The agreed-upon language still needs to be published for public comment, but—if finalized—the Trump administration will have accomplished the largest unraveling in history of rules that guide accreditation, weakening the ability of accreditors to serve as watchdogs over colleges and removing mechanisms to hold accreditors responsible for their oversight. This issue brief looks at seven of the most troubling changes that emerged in the proposal » These new rules have the potential to get worse before they are finalized. The Education Department will need to release a notice of proposed rule-making based on the consensus it achieved and solicit public comment. That creates another opportunity for industry to lobby the department and the White House to make the language even weaker; groups could lobby, for example, for colleges to be allowed to make even more changes without the approval of an accreditor. But even if the language does not change further, what was agreed to last month raises the likelihood of new risks that students and taxpayers simply cannot afford.