Trump wields his ‘secret weapon’: College accreditation

President Donald Trump and his allies are using a little-known but powerful corner of higher education — college accreditation — to exert pressure on colleges and universities, an effort that threatens the independence of accreditors and the stability of the institutions they approve.

Accrediting agencies, which have existed for more than a century, determine whether colleges meet standards of quality by evaluating every aspect of their finances, operations and student achievement. If a college lacks an accreditor’s seal of approval, its students cannot obtain the federal education loans and grants that are the lifeblood of many schools.

Trump has seized on the critical role of accreditation in his escalating fight with elite institutions.

This week, the Education and Health and Human Services departments encouraged Harvard University’s accreditor to take action against the Ivy League school for allegedly violating the civil rights of Jewish students. The New England Commission of Higher Education, which accredits Harvard, said it has given the university until Aug. 15 to respond and will take up the matter at a previously scheduled meeting in September.

The administration took a similar step in early June over Columbia University’s alleged civil rights violations. By the end of June, Columbia’s accreditor, the Middle States Commission on Higher Education, issued the school a noncompliance warning. Middle States did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Federal agencies often communicate with accreditors when there are concerns about a school’s quality, and one of Trump’s executive orders directs the education secretary to alert accreditors to the investigation findings of its Office of Civil Rights.

But higher education experts say publicizing those concerns in news releases is peculiar and gives the appearance of the administration trying to sway an outcome.

“It’s unusual for [the Office of Civil Rights] to directly involve itself in accrediting matters,” said John R. Przypyszny, a lawyer who specializes in accreditation. “Have I seen the office try to put pressure on accreditors this way? No.”

The government works with more than 60 accreditation agencies. Every five years, each accreditor is reviewed by the Education Department to assess its effectiveness in ensuring the quality of the schools in its purview. If an accreditor lacks the recognition of the Education Department, it loses the power to act as the gatekeeper to billions of dollars in federal financial aid.

While the Trump administration has no directcontrol over whether the schools remain accredited, it could punish accreditors for failing to act by stripping them of the authority needed to operate. And a recent move by the Education Department is raising questions about whether the administration is dangling that possibility over Harvard and Columbia’s accreditors.

A day after notifying Columbia’s accreditor of the Ivy League school’s alleged violations in June, the Education Department postponed a meeting of the federal advisory committee that oversees accreditors from July to October. The 18-member committee was scheduled to vote this summer on whether Middle States and the New England Commission should remain certified to accredit colleges.

By the time the committee meets this fall, the terms of six of its members will have expired. The House, Senate and education secretary take turns appointing members, and this time the secretary will fill all six seats. That gives the Trump administration a chance to select people who are aligned with its ideology on higher education.

The scheduling change, which was first reported by the Wall Street Journal, has some members of the committee concerned that the administration is trying to push a political agenda.

“It seems like they’re trying to fix the vote,” said Robert Shireman, a member of the committee who is also a senior fellow at the left-leaning Century Foundation. “Maybe it’s a coincidence, but the two accrediting agencies that received notices happen to be the two agencies that are up for review. Theoretically, it’s an opportunity for the Trump administration to cause trouble for these agencies.”

Several committee members said the Education Department flouted the rules of the panel, which says only the chair can set a meeting schedule. When Zakiya Smith Ellis, who assumed the role of chair in February, pointed that out, she said the department told her it did not recognize her as chair because she took over the position when the previous chair resigned.

“I didn’t assert myself as chair; [department staff] told me at the last meeting that I was chair,” Smith Ellis said. “When I pointed out the discrepancy to them, they just said there is no chair, and they get to do whatever they want in the absence of one.”

A transcript of the February meeting obtained by The Washington Post corroborates Smith Ellis’s account of her selection as chair. All of the department webpages that previously noted Smith Ellis as chair are labeled “unavailable due to maintenance.”

Education Department spokesperson Madison Biedermann said there was some confusion at the last committee meeting that led to “an erroneous announcement” that Smith Ellis had become chair. She said the department has the authority and discretion to reschedule committee meetings and needed to make the change to balance the administration’s “priorities and resources.” Biedermann declined to comment on whether the decision had anything to do with Columbia and Harvard’s accreditors being up for review.

Some committee members say the department’s actions are confusing because the agency can ignore the committee’s recommendation on whether to renew an accreditor. But the administration’s abrupt decisions are still concerning, said Michael Poliakoff, a member of the committee and president of the conservative American Council of Trustees and Alumni.

“I am troubled, as I suspect many of us are, by the coincidences of the timing, the issues now with Columbia, the issue therefore with its accreditor,” he said. “These [accrediting] agencies need to be respected as independent, and our committee needs to be respected as independent.”

Accreditors are independent of the federal government to insulate them and colleges from political meddling. Conservatives have accused Democratic administrations of waging political fights against accreditors in the past, specifically in the case of the Accrediting Council for Independent Colleges and Schools, which oversaw for-profit colleges.

But Trump has explicitly said he would use the accreditation system to his ideological benefit.

Trump has called accreditation his “secret weapon” in reshaping higher education, promising on the campaign trail to replace the “radical left accreditors” that he accused of lowering academic quality and pressuring colleges to adopt diversity, equity and inclusion policies.

In April, Trump signed an executive order to expedite the federal approval of new accreditors, prioritize intellectual diversity as a standard for colleges and abandon the use of racial, ethnicity or gender data to track student outcomes. The order also threatens to deny, suspend or terminate the recognition accreditors need from the department to operate if they take into account a college’s diversity.

Education reformers across the political spectrum have called for changes to the accreditation system, demanding tougher standards for graduation rates, less bureaucracy and more support for innovation.

Poliakoff, a vocal critic of accreditation, said he supports some of the aims of the president’s order, such as intellectual diversity and more measurable academic standards. But he takes issue with any effort to politicize the system.

“Making accreditation into a weapon in some kind of grudge match is really quite wrongheaded,” Poliakoff said. “It needs to be focused on the best possible education at an affordable cost. Every bit of energy among our leaders ought to be poured into making sure that’s what happens.”

Shireman worries the administration is above all else “promoting its own ideology and forcing it on colleges. And that’s unprecedented for a president.”

The federal push to remake accreditation is being replicated at the state level, with Florida leading a coalition of public university systems in North Carolina, Georgia, Texas, South Carolina and Tennessee in forming a new accrediting agency — the Commission for Public Higher Education.

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) has had public spats with the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools Commission on Colleges, accusing the agency of strong-arming state schools into adopting DEI measures, a charge the accrediting agency has vehemently denied.

When DeSantis announced the formation of the new accrediting agency in June, he said he hoped to break “the activist-controlled accreditation monopoly” and “offer an alternative that will break the ideological stronghold.”

Cynthia Jackson Hammond and Jan Friis, of the Council for Higher Education Accreditation, an advocacy group, said they are not opposed to adding new accreditors to the 60 that already exist but are concerned about the states having the staff, experience and knowledge necessary to create one. Przypyszny worries whether schools in the university systems will be judged on objective standards of quality or their adherence to conservative ideology.

“Education was always political but never ideological. Now people want to put everything about education, including accreditation, in an ideological box,” Przypyszny said. “It’s not a healthy dynamic for institutions or accreditors.”

This piece was originally published by The Washington Post on July 12, 2025.