The Trump administration just issued an Executive Order to prohibit accrediting organizations from imposing “diversity, equity, and inclusion” (DEI) policies on universities.
The Secretary of Education shall, as appropriate and consistent with applicable law, hold accountable, including through denial, monitoring, suspension, or termination of accreditation recognition, accreditors who fail to meet the applicable recognition criteria or otherwise violate Federal law, including by requiring institutions seeking accreditation to engage in unlawful discrimination in accreditation-related activity under the guise of “diversity, equity, and inclusion” initiatives.
This is marvelous news—because accreditation reform is an essential component of education reform. The activist education establishment uses interlocking bureaucracies to impose ever-tighter social justice requirements on universities, including DEI requirements, without the consent of policymakers or of citizens, and to avoid responsibility for what they’re doing. Accrediting organizations use an administrator from one university to impose a race preference requirement on the neighboring college in the name of diversity. The next year they use an administrator from yet another postsecondary institution to return the favor. Effective higher education reform depends on taking back control of America’s colleges and universities from the accrediting organizations.
But federal executive orders may not be enough to achieve accreditation reform. The education establishment is using lawfare to nullify as much as possible the Trump administration’s education reform initiatives. Even should the Trump administration prevail in court, a hostile successor administration can undo these reforms. The federal government cannot be the only champion of accreditation reform.
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That’s why the National Association of Scholars (NAS) drafted the Accreditation Autonomy Act for the Civics Alliance in 2022. The Act is a model bill for the use of state policymakers, which is intended to limit the activist education establishment’s ability to use accrediting organizations to impose ideologically extreme requirements on our public universities. We focused on ending university consent to such requirements.
State policymakers can do so. The accreditation system requires the consent of every accredited institution of higher education. The state government has given the higher education establishment the power to give this consent, but it can take this power back. The state legislature and governor should act together and send official guidance to the college presidents of its public university system. This guidance should direct college presidents to vote for or against any preferred candidate or policy in accreditation organizations. State policymakers can use official guidance to cripple the ability of activists to use accrediting organizations to impose their policies on the public universities. The Act authorized state policymakers to give instructions to university officials on how to vote in accreditation organizations.
That’s what we suggested in 2022—and we still think it’s a good idea. But state policymakers have come up with other good ideas since. Iowa, for example, just passed House Bill 295 (2025). That’s got some wonderful new ideas for how to immunize the state public universities from sabotage by accrediting organizations, and to take legal action to prevent such sabotage:
An accrediting organization shall not take any adverse action against any institution of higher education for complying with a state law or refusing to violate a state law.
Any adverse action taken by an accrediting agency against an institution of higher education based, in whole or in part, on the institution’s compliance with a state law or refusal to violate a state law constitutes a violation of this section that is subject to section C below.
A public institution of higher education that is negatively affected by adverse action taken against the institution by an accrediting agency in violation of section B above may bring a civil action against the accrediting agency in this state if authorized by the attorney general. The attorney general may bring the action on behalf of the institution.
[RELATED: Trump’s Accreditation Crackdown Begins]
This is such a good idea that we’ve revised our model Accreditation Autonomy Act to include it! Our model law now both authorizes state policymakers to give instructions to university officials on how to vote in accreditation organizations and gives state policymakers the ability to resist and respond to accrediting organization interference in state supervisory power over public universities. Iowa state legislators had a great idea. Now we’re recommending it to the other 49 states.
That’s part of our general philosophy for state policy. We’re trying to publicize good policy, not make people take our policy. Our model Syllabus Transparency Act is pretty much a copy of Texas state law. Our model Legislative Review Act comes from Oklahoma. Now, a good part of our model Accreditation Autonomy Act comes from Iowa. And if people don’t care for our particular recommendations, we have a webpage of Model Legislation Resources, so people can see what our friends recommend instead. We want the public and policymakers to have a good range of choices as they pursue education reform, and we think Best Existing Practices in the states are a good place to start education reform.
And maybe the Executive Order will mean none of this is necessary. We support the Trump administration’s campaign to remove DEI from accreditation requirements, and we hope it works. But if it doesn’t—we’re offering model policy on the state level, and we’ll keep on changing our model to incorporate the best policy coming out of the states. All Americans should know the best results emerging from our laboratories of liberty.
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“A public institution of higher education that is negatively affected by adverse action taken against the institution by an accrediting agency in violation of section B above may bring a civil action against the accrediting agency in this state if authorized by the attorney general. The attorney general may bring the action on behalf of the institution.”
The Higher Learning Commission, which is in Chicago, accredits in Iowa, along with Arizona, Arkansas, Colorado, Illinois, Indiana, Kansas, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska, New Mexico, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Dakota, West Virginia, Wisconsin, and Wyoming.
If sued, it would remove to Federal court under Diversity of Citizenship — it’s an Illinois resident. It would hen probably try to argue that Federal regulations supersede state law and I’m not sure where that would go.
And even if the HLC doesn’t require DEI, will it prohibit it?
I think the safer route, at least for public IHEs, is for the state to do the accreditation — and to get ED to recognize the state DoE as the accreditor that makes the institution eligible to receive Federal funding.
This wasn’t done in 1944 because Congress needed to get the GI bill up and running fast lest the country fall back into the Depression so they used the already existing regional accrediting which all of the IHEs already had. The plague of DEI was never anticipated, and the states didn’t have the ability to do their own accrediting.
The State of Maine had a state superintendent of schools — one man, his desk is on display in the lobby of the Maine Department of Education, which now occupies an entire floor of the state office building. The states now have the ability to do their own accreditation, and that is the route I would go. States pass lots of laws as to what is to be taught in their state universities (I wrote my dissertation on just some of them) and if the states are doing their own accreditation, they can enforce these laws as part of the accreditation process.