FIRST ON THE DAILY SIGNAL—President Donald Trump will sign an executive order Wednesday prohibiting higher education accreditors from acting against colleges over diversity, equity, and inclusion rules, five sources familiar with the directive told The Daily Signal.
Ensuring that accreditors don’t require colleges and universities to require unlawful discrimination, such as DEI policies, could protect conservative colleges like Hillsdale, which don’t record students’ races or abide by racial admissions quotas.
The Wednesday order will ensure accreditors comply with federal anti-discrimination law like Trump’s Jan. 20 executive order prohibiting DEI practices in federally funded education. It will also create accreditation processes that reduce barriers to streamline programs; instruct accreditors to give more deference to state law; and target credential inflation; and the devaluation of educational or academic credentials over time, an administration confirmed to The Daily Signal.
The executive order will fast-track new accreditors, sources familiar say.
Trump hinted at a plan to change the accreditation process during his campaign.
“I will fire the radical left accreditors that have allowed our colleges to become dominated by Marxist maniacs and lunatics,” Trump said last summer. “We will then accept applications for new accreditors who will impose real standards on colleges once again and once for all.”
The medical school accreditation program, the LCME, has pushed DEI in medical schools for years. For instance, the University of Kansas Medical Center School of Medicine requires students to meet “diversity objectives and competencies” through assignments that demand a focus on “social determinants to health.”
A source familiar with the signing said the order will get healthcare education institutions back on track.
Trump will open the accreditation marketplace to new accreditors and lift the moratorium on the review of new accreditors, sources say. The order will make it easier for universities to switch accreditors, as the Department of Education will automatically approve requests if the agency doesn’t respond within 30 days.
The Department of Education will also publish a Dear Colleague Letter to supersede Biden administration’s 2022 letter, which said an institution seeking to change its accrediting agency must submit to the Office of Federal Student Aid “all materials relating to the prior accreditation and materials demonstrating reasonable cause for changing the accrediting agency.”
“This requirement helps prevent an erosion of accrediting agency standards and provides critical protections for students and taxpayers by ensuring that institutions do not switch accrediting agencies simply to evade accountability, avoid open inquiries, or seek approval from an agency with less rigorous or easier-to-meet standards,” the soon-to-be-void Dear Colleague Letter states.
