While most media focused on escalating global tensions, American higher education may have just experienced its biggest shakeup in decades. Last week in Boca Raton, Florida, six public university systems unveiled the Commission for Public Higher Education (CPHE), a new accreditor designed to serve public universities with a focus on academic excellence, student outcomes, and institutional efficiency.
It’s the first major attempt in years to disrupt the entrenched, opaque system of accreditation. And it’s long overdue.
Backed by systems in Florida, Georgia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, and Texas, this new consortium aims to create an alternative model to the accrediting bodies that currently hold near-total control over what counts as higher education in the United States.
The intent is to create, as Peter Hans, President of the University of North Carolina System, put it:
A more focused and effective approach to accreditation [that] will bring down costs, benefit students, and build confidence in public higher education. By creating an accreditor closely focused on the needs and responsibilities of public universities, we can help strengthen these vital institutions.
That’s the hope. But major questions remain.
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Who Will This New Accreditor Answer To?
The most pressing question is how the CPHE will be structured and to whom it will be accountable.
Most accreditors today are organized as 501(c)(3) nonprofits. This would provide some independence, but it also makes accreditors immune to transparency laws, such as the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA). Such an organization would still wield enormous power over academic content, faculty hiring, and student outcomes, while its bylaws could be entirely opaque.
A new accreditor that follows the exact model may quickly become indistinguishable from the gatekeepers it seeks to replace.
Still unknown is who will sit on the board? Will oversight come from state governments, university presidents, independent educators, members of the public, or some combination? Will it include provisions for transparency in its bylaws? How will its funding work? And what mechanisms will ensure that ideology doesn’t simply creep back in through the side door, or siphon state funds into the president and CEO’s pockets?
Until those questions are answered, this effort exists more as potential than promise.
We’ve Seen Accreditation Go Off the Rails Before
Raising such questions is not just about concerns that this new organization has firm boundaries against corruption. What should be considered above all is the function that accreditation was intended to provide. An assurance of educational quality. The question is, does accreditation succeed at that?
If history is any guide, accreditation has proven not just ineffective at verifying quality education, but it has been actively harmful to innovation and academic integrity.
Consider three of the most ideologically captured accrediting bodies in the country: CACREP for counseling, CSWE for social work, and the ABA for law. These organizations routinely mandate one-sided political curriculum, enforce discriminatory hiring and admissions practices, and penalize institutions that prioritize academic rigor over ideological conformity, especially conformity to “diversity, equity, and inclusion.”
While it’s still unclear whether CPHE will accredit professional programs—like law schools—or focus solely on institutional accreditation, as regional accreditors do, one thing is certain: existing bodies like WASC (Western Association of Schools and Colleges) and SACSCOC (Southern Association of Colleges and Schools Commission on Colleges) are deeply compromised. Accreditors like these have become regulatory parasites: draining resources, inflating costs, and pushing institutions to prioritize performative compliance over real educational value.
If CPHE wants to lead a new era of higher education reform, it will need to learn from those failures and actively guard against replicating them.
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Can States Reform Without Politicizing Education?
Of course, swinging the pendulum in the other direction—toward direct state control—comes with its own risks. Academic freedom still matters. Most Americans, even those deeply dissatisfied with campus culture, don’t want political appointees dictating syllabi.
What we need isn’t partisanship in the other direction, but genuine viewpoint diversity and rigorous standards grounded in real-world outcomes.
It’s possible to think of various solutions that might counterbalance some of the worst shortcomings of accreditation seen in the past, such as structural checks and balances, appointed civilian oversight, transparency mandates, and built-in ideological diversity.
But what if we take a step outside the box and consider a framework that focuses on what actually matters: what happens to students after they graduate?
What If We Stopped Accrediting Inputs and Started Measuring Outcomes?
Here’s a radical idea: What if we stopped pretending that detailed paperwork and bureaucratic procedures make schools better, and started measuring what students get out of their degrees?
The CPHE has stated that it will focus more on outcomes, without elaborating on what that entails. In some instances, it simply means recording final test results and requiring a collection of completed papers. But what does that really show?
What if an accreditor—if we must call it that—tracked whether graduates get jobs in their chosen fields, whether they can repay loans, and whether they’re able to economically prosper and build a foundation for a stable life? If that’s not the goal of higher education, what is?
An outcomes-based system wouldn’t just restore public trust—it would strip away the excuse, forcing universities to demonstrate their real-world value. And if a university can verify that its graduates have superior outcomes, do traditional concerns about accreditation, such as the size of their classrooms or the textbooks they use, matter?
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Don’t Waste This Opportunity
The timing of this move is no accident. With the waiting period required for federal approval of a new accreditor, the states are clearly racing the clock in the event that the White House flips back to the left in 2028. That’s smart politics, but rushing the structure could doom the effort.
If the CPHE becomes just another nonprofit with a friendlier logo, it will be a missed opportunity. If it becomes a serious alternative focused on transparency, accountability, and student success, it could be a game-changer.
And if states are truly serious about affordability and reform, they may want to question whether accreditation is even the right model at all.
With tuition at unsustainable levels, campus culture increasingly unmoored from reality, and student debt swallowing the most fertile years of many young adults’ lives, the status quo is indefensible. Slapping a new brand on it won’t change that.
This is the moment to be bold—not just to tweak the system, but to reinvent it.
Because if the purpose of college is to prepare people for work and life—not just to indoctrinate them or indebt them—then we don’t need a nicer version of the old gatekeepers. We need a revolution in what education is for, and who it should serve.
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