Department of Education Releases New Accreditation Regulations

This week the U.S. Department of Education (ED) published its proposed revisions to higher education’s system of quality assurance. Building on the consensus reached by the Accreditation, Innovation, and Modernization Committee in May, Under Secretary of Education Nicholas Kent declared that this reform would result in a “transformation of our higher education system” aimed at “lowering costs, simplifying repayment, connecting education to workforce needs, strengthening accountability, and restoring confidence in our accreditation system.”

Broad reform is desperately needed, as accreditation has functioned as a closed loop for decades. Currently, six entrenched legacy accreditors act as the sole gatekeepers to over $100 billion in federal Title IV financial aid annually. Tasked with serving as the guarantors of academic quality, these accreditors instead spend the vast majority of their time focusing on administrative inputs while routinely ignoring catastrophic student outcomes. Even after the first Trump administration ended their regional monopolies, these legacy accreditors remained comfortably insulated from calls for reform, as the Biden administration both made it harder for institutions to change accreditors and declined to recognize any new accreditors.

The new proposed rules address these issues directly. By setting firm timelines that ED would be required to meet when considering new accreditors’ applications for recognition, simplifying the initial recognition process, and reducing the administrative burden for new accreditors, these new rules serve as a vital first step toward opening the marketplace to new, innovative accrediting bodies. In addition, institutions no longer need to seek the secretary’s approval to change accreditors or hold accreditation from multiple agencies at the same time. Though the secretary maintains the discretion to halt changes in accreditation that are likely to be illegitimate (such as attempts to evade disciplinary actions by their current accreditor), colleges and universities are no longer subject to the whims of political appointees when deciding to change accreditors.

The department has also made a laudable attempt to prod accreditors toward measuring student success by requiring that their standards be “sufficiently rigorous to ensure that the agency is a reliable authority” on the quality of the education offered by the institutions they evaluate. The regulations also recommend that accreditors consider, “as appropriate to [their] own standards,” important metrics such as student completion rates, debt-to-earnings ratios, and post-graduation employment metrics. Though this is a crucial philosophical shift, however, the rule unfortunately stops short of mandating strict, enforceable minimums. By not requiring accreditors to take action against institutions that consistently leave students saddled with unpayable debt, the rule lacks the enforcement mechanism needed to truly protect consumers.

This is not so much a failing of this rule, but rather a limitation of what can be accomplished via the rulemaking process. Regulatory reform is narrow and ephemeral by its very nature. Because it seeks to turn statutes into workable processes and procedures, regulation must remain subject to the letter of the law. In this case, the Higher Education Act specifically prevents the secretary from establishing additional criteria that accrediting agencies need to assess while giving accreditors the freedom to adopt any standards that they see fit. It is this stark language that forces these rules to include caveat after caveat in an attempt to ensure that these new regulations pass legal muster.

While the Department of Education’s proposed regulations contain several positive elements that move the needle toward a more open and innovative system, true reform cannot be achieved by the executive branch alone. Ultimately, congressional action will be needed to reauthorize and amend the Higher Education Act and build a modern statutory framework that truly champions student achievement and institutional accountability. Until then we must hope that the department’s approach results in the creation of new, high-quality accreditors that take seriously their responsibility to assess student success, and that this development drives legacy agencies to reform their stultified standards.