Accreditors brace for Trump’s promised higher ed shakeup
Ben Unglesbee and Natalie Schwartz
January 31, 2025
At Council for Higher Education Accreditation’s annual conference, sector leaders shared the policy shifts they’re expecting under the new administration.
WASHINGTON — On the 2024 campaign trail, then-presidential candidate Donald Trump accused the nation’s faculty of being “obsessed with indoctrinating America’s youth” and declared, “The time has come to reclaim our once great educational institutions from the radical Left.”
His administration’s “secret weapon” in this conflict would be the accreditation system for colleges and universities.
“When I return to the White House, I will fire the radical Left accreditors that have allowed our colleges to become dominated by Marxist maniacs and lunatics,” he said in a July 2023 campaign video. “We will then accept applications for new accreditors who will impose real standards on colleges once again and once and for all.”
Earlier this week, officials and professionals from the accreditation system that Trump vowed to upend met in Washington, D.C., for the Council for Higher Education Accreditation’s annual conference to discuss the major topics facing the sector — not least among them being the second Trump administration that took office a week earlier.
