Trump's Accreditation Guidance Sidesteps Core Higher Ed Safeguards

The U.S. Department of Education issued guidance this week that it claims would streamline the process of switching accreditors, the agencies that evaluate whether colleges are offering quality programs.

These are key entities in the American higher education accountability system—accreditors that the Education Department recognizes can distribute federal financial aid, taxpayer money known as Title IV funding, to their colleges.

The Trump administration’s new policies essentially allow colleges being scrutinized by their accreditor to shop around for a new one, thereby skirting accountability and keeping Title IV money flowing to them. The new Education Department guidance empowers predatory institutions seeking to evade accountability and dismantles key safeguards for quality in higher education. It also arms right-leaning states in campaigns to erode the accreditation system, suppress academic freedom, and tighten political control over their public colleges.

The federal Higher Education Act (HEA) contains a simple, but essential requirement for colleges seeking to change accreditors. The law says they must show "reasonable cause."

That's not a random bureaucratic mandate, it's a guardrail to ensure colleges don't ditch an accreditor for a different one just because they could potentially be punished.

Accreditors typically evaluate their colleges every five to ten years, looking at areas like colleges’ academic quality and finances. Institutions that don’t meet accreditor standards can face punishments like probation, and repeated violations can prompt an accreditor to drop a college, cutting off their access to Title IV money.

The new Trump guidance guts the principle of accreditation as a quality check. The Education Department said it would "conduct expeditious review of applications" to switch accreditors, likely inviting fraud.

That’s because if a college doesn't receive official word from the Education Department on switching accreditors after 30 days, their request is automatically granted. And even colleges with black marks on their accreditation records, like being put on probation, can change agencies if they claim an accreditor didn't respect its "mission."

It’s a transparent signal to colleges: If you don’t like the questions your accreditor is asking, just find one who won’t ask them.

By lowering the barriers to changing accreditors, the Trump administration will likely encourage institutions facing scrutiny to seek more lenient oversight, a phenomenon known as “accreditation shopping.”

For-profit colleges specifically employed this tactic, signing up with two accreditors simultaneously to ensure they could hold onto their Title IV funds if one of the agencies found they violated their standards, according to a Senate subcommittee investigation published in 1991.

Rampant accreditation shopping led Congress, in the 1992 reauthorization of the Higher Education Act, to require Education Department approval for accreditation switches.

Previous guidance on accreditors from the Biden administration also emphasized institutions should not evade accountability by switching accreditors. Under the Biden administration’s policies, colleges trying to change accreditors had to submit a full record of communications and actions taken by their accreditor, and justify their rationale for requesting it, so the Education Department could assess whether the institution was trying to dodge oversight.

The Trump administration’s new policy, however, oversimplifies the process, likely allowing institutions to bypass rigorous evaluation.​ The Education Department is now only requiring colleges to prove when their accreditor last evaluated them, which could be as much as a decade ago.

That review would likely not reflect whether a college is facing current investigations or sanctions. Yet that’s all the Education Department is now asking for. A lot can happen in ten years, but apparently, the Trump administration doesn’t want to know — but that’s because it isn’t just looking the other way on accreditation shopping, it’s encouraging it.

At the same time, the administration indicated a desire to approve new accrediting agencies, as called for in an executive order published last week. But many of the accrediting agencies seeking to gain Education Department recognition are led by or staffed with officials with a history of either working directly for low-quality, for-profit schools or for the accreditors approving them.

Combined, the Trump administration’s actions would open a back door for institutions looking to escape scrutiny and keep access to federal aid.

The Trump administration is also only requiring colleges to provide minimal documentation when they’re looking to change accreditors. Colleges must complete a brief checklist, as well as send the Education Department the most recent proof of its accreditation renewal.

That document could be nearly a decade old and would likely reveal nothing about recent concerns about colleges’ compliance with accreditation standards or accreditor investigations.

Furthermore, this seems to flout the HEA requirement that institutions submit “all materials relating to the prior accreditation, including materials demonstrating reasonable cause for changing the accrediting agency or association.”

To speed up these accreditation switches, the administration has imposed a 30-day automatic approval timeline, essentially guaranteeing that there will be no meaningful review.

Nearly 6,000 colleges and universities receive Title IV money. Reviewing just one switch request takes time and expertise, and the Trump administration gutted the Education Department office responsible for considering them, the School Eligibility and Oversight Group.

SEOSG had a staff of more than 190 when Donald Trump took office, but was cut to fewer than 30 as of a month ago, according to a LinkedIn post from a former Education Department employee.

This office is tasked not only with reviewing these applications, but also with overseeing vast responsibilities including reviewing colleges’ Title IV eligibility and determining how financially sound they are.

To pretend that meaningful reviews will happen under a resource-starved Education Department is delusional.

This guidance also throws a not-so-subtle bone to Florida and Governor Ron DeSantis, who has been waging a political war against an accrediting agency, the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools Commission on Colleges—and against the broad accreditation system—for several years.

After SACSCOC raised concerns in 2021 about political interference in higher education governance in Florida, DeSantis pushed legislation requiring all of the state’s public colleges to switch accreditors.

Now, according to the Trump administration’s new policies, if a state law mandates colleges shuffle accreditors, that alone satisfies the HEA’s "reasonable cause" requirement.

Under the Biden administration, the Education Department also wanted colleges to show that they chose their accreditors freely. That’s because the HEA also requires accreditation membership be voluntary, not something the government forces on institutions by dictating the accreditors they pick.

The Trump administration’s guidance is counter to this. It said that asking schools to prove they chose their accreditors freely doesn’t violate the HEA. In practice, though, this gives state governments more freedom to politicize accreditation decisions. States could pressure colleges to abandon long-standing accreditors for those that match their ideology.

DeSantis clearly has this goal in mind. In June 2023, DeSantis sued the Education Department, arguing the accreditation system violates the Constitution. That lawsuit was initially dismissed but Florida appealed and it remains ongoing.

During Education Secretary Linda McMahon’s confirmation hearing, Sen. Ashley Moody, who spearheaded the accreditation lawsuit as Florida’s former attorney general, asked that the Education Department reconsider accreditation guidance.

McMahon agreed the agency should, meaning that what was DeSantis’ solo crusade against the accreditation model now risks becoming a national blueprint for undermining higher ed accountability.

This guidance isn’t a technical change. It’s a backdoor that undermines accreditation, weakens oversight, and puts students and taxpayers on the hook. At a time when the country needs stronger guardrails and greater accountability in higher education, including in accreditation, the Education Department is handing out blank permission slips to institutions looking to dodge accountability.

Accreditation is supposed to serve as a quality check, a signal that a college meets basic standards including academic integrity and financial stability. But by making it easier for colleges to shop around for lenient accreditors, the Trump administration is not just eroding that guardrail, it’s inviting chaos. Students could end up enrolling in programs with subpar outcomes or deceptive practices, and taxpayers could foot the bill for billions in federal financial aid with little to no assurance that the money is being spent on credible, effective education.