The accreditation process is critical to the survival of institutions of higher education.
When six Southern public university systems this summer formed a new accreditation agency, the move shook the national evaluation model that higher education has relied on for decades.
The news wasn’t unexpected: It arrived a few months after President Donald Trump issued an executive order in April overhauling the nation’s accreditation system by, among other things, barring accreditors from using college diversity mandates. It also came after U.S. Secretary of Education Linda McMahon in May made it easier for universities to switch accreditors.
The accreditation process, often bureaucratic, cumbersome and time consuming, is critical to the survival of institutions of higher education. Colleges and their individual departments must undergo outside reviews — usually every few years — to prove that they meet certain educational and financial standards. If a school is not accredited, its students cannot receive federal aid such as Pell grants and student loans.
Some accreditation agencies acknowledge the process needs to evolve. But critics say the Trump administration is reshaping accreditation for political reasons, and risks undermining the legitimacy of the degrees colleges and universities award to students.
Trump said during his campaign that he would wield college accreditation as a “secret weapon” to root out DEI and other “woke” ideas from higher education. He has made good on that pledge.
Over the summer, for example, the administration sent letters to the accreditors of both Columbia and Harvard universities, alleging that the schools had violated federal civil rights law, and thus their accreditation rules, by failing to prevent the harassment of Jewish students after Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, terror attack on Israel.
The administration’s antipathy toward DEI has prompted some accreditors to remove diversity requirements. The Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business, for instance, removed diversity and inclusion language from its guiding principles earlier this year. Under White House pressure, the American Bar Association this year suspended enforcement of its DEI standards for its accreditation of law schools and has extended that suspension into next year.
But state legislatures laid the groundwork for public university accreditation changes even before Trump returned to the White House.
In 2022, Florida enacted a law requiring the state’s public institutions to switch accreditors every cycle — usually every few years — forcing them to move away from the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools Commission on Colleges, known as SACSCOC.
North Carolina followed suit in 2023, with a law prohibiting the 16 universities within the University of North Carolina system and the state’s community colleges from receiving accreditation from the same agency for consecutive cycles.
Then, the consortium of six Southern university systems this summer launched its new accreditation agency, called the Commission for Public Higher Education. The participating states include Florida and North Carolina, along with Georgia, South Carolina, Tennessee and Texas.
Florida Republican Gov.
