Robert S. Eitel is president of the Defense of Freedom Institute.
Last month, the Education Department announced it was initiating the process to issue new regulations for approving college accreditors.
To most people, that might not mean much, but at least one department official has promised a “revolution” in college accreditation. What’s on the table is an opportunity to reform the system that determines whether universities qualify for federal funding.
In 1965, President Lyndon B. Johnson returned to his alma mater Southwest Texas State College to sign the Higher Education Act. With a stroke of a pen, the federal government massively expanded its role in financing higher education.
But for the colleges and universities poised to reap the financial benefits, there was a catch. The HEA bestowed enormous and potentially problematic power on accrediting agencies. To qualify for the massive expansion of federal funding, schools had to be accredited by agencies recognized by the Office of Education, the precursor to the Education Department.
Accrediting agencies were nothing new. They were first established at the end of the 19th century as various colleges established voluntary associations to distinguish between secondary and higher education and develop peer review guidelines. Over time, accreditors took on an academic quality assurance role for member institutions as well.
The HEA drastically expanded their power and made them the gatekeepers of federal student aid dollars. Because financial aid is the lifeblood of nearly every college and university in the United States, that means that any meaningful reform to higher education starts with accreditation.
The higher education accreditation sector has never been especially dynamic; the dominant agencies seven decades ago remain so today. Given this stagnation, accreditation suffers from a host of problems. Agencies too often fail in their quality improvement and assurance role, leading to students burdened with unmanageable debt and ill-prepared for citizenship and the workforce. Yet when an accreditor does act against a failing institution, it’s rarely for low academic quality.
A 2022 study found that an institution’s low graduation rates, high student loan default rates and low median student earnings rarely led to disciplinary action by its accreditor. The authors examined 31,699 accreditor actions from 2012 to 2021 and found that only 2.7 percent arose from inadequate student outcomes or low-quality academic programs, and these were mostly concentrated in career programs. The other 97.3 percent concerned nonacademic matters, such as governance and finances. All the while, the schools in the sample received approximately $112 billion annually in HEA funds.
Rather than ensuring quality, accreditors have also seriously undermined civil rights. A recent congressional committee report revealed that accrediting agencies have promoted or even required discriminatory diversity, equity and inclusion policies and racial preferences in faculty hiring and employment and student recruiting and admissions. Although some accreditors have downplayed or suspended these policies in the past year, without serious reform now, many of them would bring those discriminatory policies back once the current administration leaves office.
The good news is that the Education Department is on strong legal footing if it were to withdraw recognition from accreditors whose standards steer institutions to discriminatory behavior and policies. The HEA expressly requires accreditors to enforce specific standards on curriculums, faculty, student recruiting and admissions practices. Accreditors, as part of their assessments, must also evaluate an institution’s “administrative capacity as appropriate to the specified scale of operations.”
Although the HEA does not define “administrative capacity,” American taxpayers, who annually fund more than $100 billion in federal student aid to schools, should reasonably expect these institutions to have the administrative infrastructure to prevent racially discriminatory practices in academic programs, faculty hiring and tenure decisions, and student recruitment and admissions practices.
That’s where the new rulemaking comes in. The HEA may allow accrediting agencies the discretion to enforce standards outside of those listed in the statute, but the Education Department shouldn’t allow public universities to defy the Constitution or allow private colleges to violate Title VI of the Civil Rights Act simply because an accreditor favors illegal DEI practices and racial preferences. Neither the Constitution nor Title VI provides an “accreditation exception” allowing discrimination. Institutions can’t ignore federal laws just to satisfy an accreditor’s requirements, and agencies can’t compel the school to engage in illegal activity as a condition of accreditation.
Any new regulations must draw a bright line: The government will not approve accreditors with standards that effectively lead to discrimination or that refuse to assess whether schools can ensure civil rights compliance.
By grounding its upcoming regulations in the HEA’s statutory assessment criteria, the department can strengthen the integrity of the accreditation system; ensure academic quality in educational programs free of discrimination; and protect students, institutions and taxpayers.
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