Trump Reforms Accreditation

[Armando Ramos]

President Donald J. Trump Reforms Accreditation to Strengthen Higher Education
The White House
April 23, 2025

HOLDING ACCREDITORS ACCOUNTABLE: Today, President Donald J. Trump signed an Executive Order to overhaul the higher education accreditation system, ensuring colleges and universities deliver high-quality, high-value education free from unlawful discrimination and ideological overreach.

• The Order directs the Secretary of Education to hold higher education “accreditors” accountable, including through denial, monitoring, suspension, or termination of accreditation recognition, for accreditors’ poor performance or violations of federal civil rights law.
  

• It directs the Attorney General and Secretary of Education to investigate and take action to terminate unlawful discrimination by American higher education institutions, including law schools and medical schools.
  

• The Order mandates the Secretary of Education realign accreditation with student-focused principles by:
  • Resuming recognition of new accreditors to foster competition.
    
  • Requiring institutions use program-level student outcome data to improve results, without reference to race, ethnicity, or sex.
    
  • Requiring high-quality, high-value academic programs.
    
  • Prioritizing intellectual diversity among faculty in order to advance academic freedom, intellectual inquiry, and student learning.
    
  • Launching an experimental site to test innovative quality assurance pathways.
    
  • Increasing the consistency, efficiency, and effectiveness of the accreditor recognition review process.
    
  • Streamlining accreditor recognition and institutional transitions between accreditors.
    
  
  

ENSURING AMERICAN STUDENTS RECEIVE A HIGH-QUALITY EDUCATION: President Trump is tackling the broken accreditation system that has left students with soaring debt, low graduation rates, and degrees of questionable value.

• Accreditors—the gatekeepers that decide which colleges and universities can access over $100 billion in annual Federal student loans and Pell Grants—have routinely approved low-quality institutions, ultimately failing students, families, and American taxpayers.
  

• Accreditors have failed to ensure quality, with a national six-year undergraduate graduation rate of just 64% in 2020.
  

• Nearly 25% of bachelor’s degrees and over 40% of master’s degrees offer a negative return on investment, burdening students with debt and limited earning potential.
  

• Accreditors have also abused their authority by imposing discriminatory diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI)-based standards, violating Federal law.
  • The American Bar Association’s (ABA) accreditation standards for law schools require unlawful race-based preferences, which the Attorney General recently reminded the ABA are illegal.
    
  • The Liaison Committee on Medical Education and Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education imposes similar discriminatory requirements, prioritizing ideology over quality medical training.
    
  
  
• These practices have diverted focus from student success to ideological conformity, undermining academic integrity and student achievement.
  

RESTORING TRUST IN HIGHER EDUCATION: President Trump is protecting American students, families, and taxpayers from exploitative and unlawful practices in higher education.

• In his first term, President Trump took historic steps to promote school choice, expand apprenticeship programs, and increase transparency in college costs.
  

• This Executive Order builds on that legacy by reforming the accreditation system to prioritize student outcomes, eliminate unlawful discrimination, promote academic freedom and intellectual inquiry, and restore accountability.
  

• These reforms will rebuild public trust in higher education, empowering students and families to make informed choices.
  

[Albert Hidel]

The Consumer Mindset Undermines Colleges
A nation of student-consumers, rather than student leaders and thinkers, cannot sustain itself.
May 1, 2025 Jovan Tripkovic

A recent Inside Higher Ed Student Voice survey found that over 60 percent of college students view themselves as customers, an alarming sign for anyone concerned about the integrity and future of American higher education. This growing trend, increasingly normalized by both students and institutions, undermines the university’s original mission of educating informed citizens and upholding academic excellence.

Traditionally, universities have provided education, conducted research, and advanced knowledge, all while engaging with the broader community. From the beginning, colleges and universities have served as cornerstones of the American republic, preparing future leaders, educators, and public servants.

In post–World War II America, a mix of factors—including a demographic boom and a surge in government funding—gradually pulled colleges and universities away from their original mission. Flush with G.I. Bill dollars and enrollees, institutions began broadening and democratizing their offerings, a shift that eventually led to today’s near-total emphasis on job training. Today, rather than cultivating civic and moral character or encouraging intellectual curiosity, many institutions have become little more than diploma mills and hedge funds with campuses.

The findings of Inside Higher Ed’s survey are alarming, though hardly surprising. Russell Kirk warned of this trend back in his 1978 book Decadence and Renewal in the Higher Learning. As early as the 1950s, Kirk was already describing colleges as expensive social clubs for the young and criticizing university presidents for turning institutions into little more than real-estate ventures.

When university administrators treat their institutions like businesses whose main product is a diploma, it’s no surprise that students begin to see themselves as customers. The spread of the customer-service mentality is a clear sign that many colleges and universities have lost sight of their academic mission, and it reflects a deeper cultural decline.

The damaging effects of the consumer mindset are visible across the higher-education landscape. In an effort to boost enrollment and student satisfaction, many universities have adopted policies that encourage grade inflation. By 2021, the average GPA at Harvard had reached a record 3.8, with 79 percent of students earning grades in the “A” range.

The rise of the customer-service model has shifted universities’ focus from academic excellence to expanding student services, fueling administrative bloat. Yale University is a striking example, recently drawing attention for having more administrators than students, with 5,460 administrators serving a student body of fewer than 5,000.

Hoping to attract more students, universities are now competing over who can offer the flashiest amenities. The race for luxury facilities has reached absurd levels—Louisiana State University’s lazy river, shaped like the school’s initials, has become a symbol of higher education’s wasteful spending.

In addition to becoming bloated with bureaucracy and equipped with luxury amenities, American universities—driven by a customer-service mindset—have shifted their focus from the pursuit of knowledge to virtue-signaling and comfort-seeking. DEI initiatives, safe spaces, and trigger-warning trainings have become standard offerings, all funded by student tuition and fees.

Who’s to blame for the fact that most students now see themselves as customers of their institutions? While student attitudes play a role, the larger responsibility lies with university administrators and outdated accreditation systems that put revenue and student satisfaction ahead of academic quality and institutional mission. Too often, colleges pour more money into recruitment and marketing than into actual instruction. Luxury amenities, DEI initiatives, and inflated tuition only reinforce the consumer mindset.

The student-consumer trend will only continue to grow unless colleges and lawmakers choose to push back. University leaders must start promoting education as a public good, not just a financial transaction. Common-sense reforms that emphasize a return to civics education, the liberal arts, and cost control are gaining traction as policy priorities nationwide.

States can play a major role in pushing back against the customer-service mindset by linking public funding to academic rigor rather than student-satisfaction metrics. Refocusing core curricula on civics education and the Western tradition is another way to challenge the rise of the student-as-consumer mentality.

Utah’s General Education Act and South Carolina’s REACH Act are encouraging steps toward meaningful higher-education reform. The General Education Act seeks to realign the core curriculum at Utah’s public universities with the Western tradition of liberal education, while the REACH Act requires students at South Carolina’s public colleges to complete a course in American history or government. Both measures address urgent gaps in today’s higher-education landscape.

We must rescue American higher education from the grip of the consumer mindset and marketplace mentality. This isn’t just a political or institutional problem—it’s a cultural one. A nation of student-consumers, rather than student leaders and thinkers, cannot sustain itself.