New Executive Order Seeks to Reform Accreditation of Higher Education

On April 23, 2025, President Trump issued an executive order (the “Executive Order”) directing the Secretary of Education to investigate and hold accountable accreditors of institutions of higher education (“IHEs”) that engage in unlawful discriminatory practices through diversity, equity, and inclusion (“DEI”) initiatives and to reform and streamline the accreditation process to ensure that accredited IHEs offer high-quality, high-value education.¹

Significant efforts to reform the higher education accreditation process were undertaken during the first term of the Trump Administration (the “Administration”). In 2019, through a negotiated rulemaking process, the U.S. Department of Education (“U.S. Ed”) eliminated regulatory requirements dividing the accreditation landscape into geographic regions and, instead, allowed accreditors recognized by U.S. Ed to operate on a nationwide basis, with such regional accreditors becoming known as “institutional accreditors.” Not only does the Executive Order represent the Administration’s continued efforts to overhaul the higher education accreditation process, including by increasing competition among accreditors, key provisions in the Executive Order support the Administration’s widespread efforts to eliminate unlawful DEI practices, which have taken the form of executive orders,² investigations by the U.S. Department of Health and Humans Services (“HHS”) Office for Civil Rights,³ U.S. Ed’s Office for Civil Rights (“OCR”),⁴ and other agency action, including revocation of and bans on National Institutes of Health (“NIH”) grants to IHEs that have unlawful DEI programs.⁵

In this Alert, we explain the role of accreditors in higher education, review key provisions of the Executive Order, and provide an overview of the implications of the Executive Order on accreditors and the downstream effects on accredited IHEs and IHEs seeking to be accredited.

Background on Accrediting Bodies

Accreditors are responsible for ensuring that quality education is delivered by IHEs in the United States. Under Title IV of the Higher Education Act of 1965, as amended (“Title IV”), IHEs that are accredited by institutional accreditors recognized by U.S. Ed as reliable authorities regarding the quality of education or training offered by IHEs are eligible for participation in Title IV federal student financial aid programs. In addition to institutional accreditors, U.S. Ed also recognizes “programmatic accreditors,” which focus on ensuring the quality of specific academic programs.⁶ Accreditors already recognized by U.S. Ed must submit an application for continued recognition at least once every five years.⁷ Currently, the National Advisory Committee on Institutional Quality and Integrity, which advises the Secretary of Education on accreditor recognition, meets twice each year to review accreditors.⁸

Key Provisions of the Executive Order

The directives in the Executive Order can be characterized by two overarching mandates: (i) ensuring that accreditors are not requiring IHEs seeking accreditation or reaccreditation to engage in unlawful DEI initiatives, and (ii) reforming the accreditation process and the landscape of U.S. Ed-recognized accreditors to promote “student-oriented accreditation.” Under the first mandate, the Executive Order directs the Secretary of Education to:

• Deny, monitor, suspend, or terminate accreditation recognition of accreditors that fail to meet applicable recognition criteria or otherwise violate federal law, including by requiring IHEs seeking accreditation to engage in unlawful DEI initiatives;
• Investigate and terminate unlawful discrimination by U.S. law schools, medical schools, and graduate medical education entities; and
• Assess whether the American Bar Association’s Council of the Section of Legal Education and Admissions to the Bar (the “Council”), the Liaison Committee on Medical Education (“LCME”), or the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education (“ACGME”), or other accreditors of graduate medical education should be suspended or terminated as accrediting agencies under federal law.

Under the second mandate, the Executive Order, among other things, directs the Secretary of Education to:

• Resume recognizing new accreditors to increase competition and accountability and promote high-quality, high-value academic programs focused on student outcomes and viewpoint diversity rather than DEI programs;
• Encourage innovation in the delivery of higher education and spur new models of education, including by launching an “experimental site,” which are IHEs granted temporary waivers from certain Title IV statutory and regulatory requirements to test innovative practices;
• Provide accreditors with noncompliance findings relating to member institutions resulting from Title IV or Title IX investigations by OCR;
• Mandate that accreditors require IHEs to use academic program-level data to monitor and improve student outcomes and prohibit accreditors from engaging in credential inflation practices; and
• Streamline the processes by which accreditors are recognized by U.S. Ed and IHEs are able to change accreditors.

Implications on Accreditors and IHEs

The Executive Order has both immediate and long-term implications on both accreditors and IHEs:

• Impact on Currently Recognized Accreditors: As described above, the Administration has taken several actions to target unlawful discriminatory practices through DEI initiatives, including investigations brought by OCR. As these actions are ongoing, what constitutes an unlawful DEI practice continues to evolve. However, as the Executive Order directs the Secretary of Education to take action against accreditors that require IHEs to engage in unlawful DEI practices, accreditors may freeze any policies or standards that facially appear to promote DEI or reform DEI policies and standards to focus instead on nondiscrimination. The Executive Order specifically puts the Council, LCME, and ACGME on notice of the risk of losing their “status as an accrediting agency under Federal law,”⁹ but all accreditors recognized by U.S. Ed may be at risk of suspension or termination of accreditation recognition. If U.S. Ed denies, limits, suspends, or terminates an accreditor’s recognition, the accreditor is afforded the opportunity under federal regulations to submit a written response addressing this determination, and otherwise is able to contest the Secretary of Education’s final decision in the federal courts.¹⁰
• Downstream Effects on IHEs and Students: If currently recognized institutional accreditors lose accreditation recognition, IHEs accredited by such institutional accreditors may no longer meet Title IV eligibility requirements. IHEs that are accredited by the Council or LCME, in addition to another institutional accreditor, would still have access to Title IV funding if the Council or LCME were to lose accreditation recognition because the IHEs are not reliant on accreditation by the Council or LCME for Title IV eligibility purposes,¹¹ but students graduating from law school or medical school ultimately may be impacted as state laws on professional licensure often require graduation from law schools or medical schools accredited by the Council or LCME, respectively. Further, given the ongoing OCR investigations and the Executive Order’s directive that noncompliance findings of such investigations be shared with accreditors, we expect that accreditors will be asked to take accreditation actions against member institutions that are found to be noncompliant with Title IV and Title IX requirements.
• Focus on Innovation in Higher Education: The Executive Order’s emphasis on innovation in higher education likely will spur new educational delivery and academic governance models in higher education. Several institutional accreditors, including for example the Middle States Commission on Higher Education and the Higher Learning Commission,¹² already have guiding principles or initiatives focused on promoting innovative governance models, structures of academic programs, and methods of higher education delivery.
• Reform of Landscape of Accreditors: Some of the provisions of the Executive Order represent a continuation of the Administration’s focus on increasing competition among institutional accreditors. A change in the landscape of accreditors may be slow-moving because significant time and investment is required for new accreditors to be formed and to achieve accreditation recognition by U.S. Ed. Further, additional time is needed for IHEs to seek accreditation from a new institutional accreditor; reviewing an IHE for new accreditation often is a lengthy and detailed process, which may deter an IHE from switching to another institutional accreditor, unless its current accreditor is no longer recognized by U.S. Ed. or material changes are made to accreditor processes and timelines for an IHE’s recognition by a new accreditor.

1. Executive Order, Reforming Accreditation to Strengthen Higher Education (Apr. 23, 2025), https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/04/reforming-accreditation-to-strengthen-higher-education/.
2. See, e.g., Executive Order 14151, Ending Radical and Wasteful Government DEI Programs and Preferencing, 90 Fed. Reg. 8339 (Jan. 20, 2025); Executive Order 14173, Ending Illegal Discrimination and Restoring Merit-Based Opportunity, 90 Fed. Reg. 8633 (Jan. 31, 2025).
3. HHS, “HHS’ Civil Rights Office Investigates California Medical School for Discriminatory Race-Based Admissions” (Mar. 27, 2025), https://www.hhs.gov/press-room/ocr-investigates-medical-school-discriminatory-admissions.html.
4. U.S. Ed, “Office for Civil Rights Initiates Title IV Investigations into Institutions of Higher Education” (March 14, 2025), https://www.ed.gov/about/news/press-release/office-civil-rights-initiates-title-vi-investigations-institutions-of-higher-education-0.
5. NIH, Notice of Civil Rights Term and Condition of Award, NOT-OD-25-090 (Apr. 21, 2025), https://grants.nih.gov/grants/guide/notice-files/NOT-OD-25-090.html.
6. In certain circumstances, programmatic accreditors also serve as gatekeepers for participation in Title IV, e.g., for certain single specialty professional schools.
7. 20 U.S.C. §1099b(d); 34 C.F.R. § 602.31(a).
8. 34 C.F.R. Part 602, Subpart C. See also U.S. Ed, “Federal Recognition Process for Accrediting Agencies – At a Glance,” https://www.ed.gov/sites/ed/files/documents/acics/materials/federal-recognition-process-for-accrediting-agencies-at-a-glance.pdf.
9. The Council and LCME both are programmatic accreditors recognized by U.S. Ed. As ACGME accredits residency and fellowship programs for purposes of medical licensure, ACGME’s accreditation practices are not directly within the purview of U.S. Ed. ACGME accreditation is relevant, however, to teaching hospitals’ receipt of payments for direct graduate medical education and indirect medical education to support the training of residents and fellows, physician services from Medicare. See 42 C.F.R. Parts 413 and 415.
10. 34 C.F.R. § 602.36(g); 34 C.F.R. § 602.38.
11. The Council serves as an institutional accreditor for a small number of standalone law schools. Should the Council’s federal recognition be suspended, those law schools’ access to Title IV funds would be at risk.
12. See, e.g., Middle States Commission on Higher Education, “Standards for Accreditation and Requirements of Affiliation (Fourteenth Edition),” https://www.msche.org/standards/fourteenth-edition/; Higher Learning Commission, “Innovation,” https://www.hlcommission.org/about-hlc/initiatives/innovation/.