After four days of dense and occasionally contentious discussions over the Trump administration’s proposed overhaul of accreditation, an advisory committee tasked with reviewing the plan reached consensus on the slate of changes.
Now, the Education Department can move forward on the next steps to finalize the regulatory changes, which include receiving and reviewing public feedback. If the department issues the final accreditation rule by Nov. 1, the overhaul will take effect July 1 of next year.
Negotiators on the Accreditation, Innovation and Modernization Committee spent the better part of four days this week in a windowless room at the U.S. Department of Education hammering out the proposal. While there were occasional flashes of tension in public view, many of the disagreements were hashed out behind closed doors with ED officials and committee members calling multiple caucuses across the rule-making session to resolve points of contention.
Education Department officials argue that the proposals advanced this week will overhaul a broken accreditation system, which they cast as a costly barrier to innovation and competition. They also claimed that the package will help lower the cost of higher education.
“Accreditation is no longer a reliable indicator of quality, but with this committee’s work, we are moving toward a system where accreditation once again means something,” Education Under Secretary Nicholas Kent said Thursday. “The changes agreed to today will make it easier for new accreditors to gain federal recognition, introducing competition and choice into a stagnant system. It will make it easier for institutions to leave dysfunctional relationships with legacy accreditors that engage in ideological coercion or interfere in decisions properly reserved for state governments, boards of trustees or institutional leadership.”
What Changed?
The administration’s proposal will extend the responsibilities of accreditors in significant ways, requiring such organizations to police institutional First Amendment compliance and research misconduct. Both provisions proved contentious this week.
As part of the proposed package, accreditors will be required to ensure that public institutions uphold First Amendment freedoms on campus. Some committee members raised concerns about whether it was appropriate for accreditation agencies to take on that role.
“As I said in the first [rule-making] session, I would love to see the references to the First Amendment struck altogether throughout, because I just don’t think it’s the role—it’s not that I don’t support the First Amendment—it’s that I don’t support the role here for the accreditor to be the enforcer,” Jennifer Blum, one of the committee members, said Wednesday.
Proposals that advanced this week will also task accreditors with creating procedures to evaluate the integrity of academic research. Those procedures must address concerns about plagiarism, misrepresenting research findings, manipulating citations and other potential misconduct.
Mark Becker, board chair of the Commission for Public Higher Education, an accreditor seeking federal recognition, argued that the research misconduct policies went too far. In remarks Monday, Becker suggested adding the obligation to police research misconduct “is another example of increasing the cost of higher education by creating new burdens and new lawsuits.”
Accreditors will also be asked to develop policies for institutions to measure intellectual diversity—a provision championed by conservative negotiators who argued academe has tilted too far left.
Ray Rodrigues, chancellor of the State University System of Florida and a former Republican lawmaker, was one of the strongest proponents of the intellectual diversity provision. While the regulatory package already included language to protect academic freedom, Rodrigues argued that “it is much more important that we lay out to accreditors that it is expected of them that they’re going to oversee a marketplace of ideas among the institutions they accredit.”
Other points of negotiation in the 173-page proposal were less politically fraught, such as revisions of transfer credit policies. Under the proposal, institutions will have to provide clearer information to students about how transfer credits are evaluated, including why they are denied, and appeal processes.
Despite a litany of concerns raised by a variety of negotiators across four days, consensus was reached, even as ED refused to compromise on some thorny issues. Among the primary negotiators, two abstained: representatives for students and veterans. A single no vote would have upended consensus, which would have provided the department more latitude to craft its own proposals to release for public comment.
Outside Reactions
While the Department of Education has cast efforts to overhaul accreditation as much-needed reforms, critics sharply disagree. They argue that the administration’s changes are an effort to weaponize accreditation, and many worry that the latest proposals weaken accountability and will pave the way for more bad actors.
“These are hugely sweeping changes that are just going to completely undermine the accountability system as we know it in higher education,” said Jeremy Bauer-Wolf, investigations manager at New America, a left-leaning think tank. “This is going to allow for rampant accreditor entrants into the field, accreditation switching, which will allow colleges that have already poor oversight to potentially evade punishment. It introduces a whole host of ideas and concepts accreditors shouldn’t be touching, including enforcement of civil rights laws and the First Amendment.”
Other critics took exception to the voices that were excluded from negotiations.
Zach Waymer, executive director of the Association of Specialized and Professional Accreditors, criticized both the consensus vote and the lack of a recognized programmatic accreditor among negotiators in a statement posted on LinkedIn after the meeting. (Programmatic accreditors were represented by the National Accreditation Commission, which is still seeking recognition.)
“No Secretary-recognized programmatic accreditors were given a vote at the table, even though they make up 60 percent of all recognized accreditors,” ASPA wrote. “The primary negotiator selected by the Department to represent programmatic accreditors is not affiliated with a recognized programmatic accrediting agency. Recognized programmatic accreditors, speaking with one voice, made clear to their primary negotiator that they did not support consensus.”
ASPA, like many critics, noted concerns that new regulations will “impose new burdens on institutions and accreditors and drive up costs” and undermine peer review in favor of “top-down government prescriptions that do not support the needs of students, institutions, or the public.”
Other observers noted that the committee worked on a compressed timeline that limited discussion. Emily Rounds, senior higher education policy adviser at Third Way, a left-of-center think tank, told Inside Higher Ed by email that the limited time frame allowed negotiators to go in depth on only a “handful of topics.” She also questioned how such changes will decrease the cost of higher education, as Kent claimed, given the demands ED wants to place on accreditors, which she believes will require such organizations to hire more personnel with related expertise.
“So, while the Department touts these proposals as a way to lower costs, I don’t see how that’s possible. Accreditors are being asked to reduce burden on institutions while also being asked to take on more work and oversee complex, politically charged issues across their campuses,” Rounds wrote.
