Education Department Announces Major Reforms to Accreditation Process

The Department of Education on Thursday announced changes to the higher education accreditation process, making it easier for institutions of higher education to switch accreditors.

The reforms – communicated to universities and other institutions through a Dear Colleague Letter – come in response to President Trump’s executive order on accreditation.

That order, among other things, singled out medical accreditors like the Liaison Committee on Medical Education and the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education for imposing DEI requirements on medical schools.

The executive order was in turn influenced by Do No Harm’s report exposing education accreditors for injecting DEI mandates into their standards.

The Department of Education’s reforms include lifting a temporary moratorium that had been placed on accepting and reviewing applications for new accrediting agencies.

Additionally, the Department of Education will simplify the process of switching accreditors going forward, as well as review a greater number of potential new accrediting bodies.

Opening up the process by which new accreditors can be certified and approved is an important step toward limiting accreditors’ ability to inject DEI into higher education.

If accreditors lose their monopoly, then they have less leverage by which they can impose their particular ideological or political agenda on institutions of higher education.

Tackling accreditors’ political activism is essential to restore trust in medical schools and other institutions of higher education.