Trump Fuels Desantis’ College Oversight Shakeup

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis is at the center of a red-state rebellion against the organizations that oversee the nation's colleges — and he’s getting a boost from President Donald Trump.

The outgoing Republican governor has been on a yearslong campaign to break up the current system of college accreditors, the obscure gatekeepers that decide whether universities qualify for federal student aid. And he’s building support across several states looking to challenge “woke” policies.

Despite being occasional rivals, DeSantis and Trump have both slammed accreditors and accused them of being education “cartels” that force colleges to adopt diversity, equity and inclusion programs. The governor’s project, which is getting $1 million from Trump’s Education Department, is trying to establish an accreditor more aligned with conservative values — and he’s got a few takers.

University systems in primarily red states are moving to ditch their current accreditors in favor of the one being promoted by DeSantis. And lawmakers in at least five states are also taking steps to advance the breakaway system with legislation encouraging — and sometimes demanding — schools switch to the yet-to-be-approved accreditor.

The effort has the potential to create a chasm in how schools are evaluated for federal student aid eligibility that is deeply linked to their state’s politics.

“What you're seeing is a response from this administration communicating the fact that they want to see new accreditors in the field, reacting to actions of past administrations that restricted and constricted [them],” said Ray Rodrigues, chancellor of Florida’s state university system, which is a co-founder of the new oversight agency.

Accreditors set standards for student achievement and school curricula and faculty. They also certify schools after reviewing their self evaluations, which involves analyzing data on metrics like student retention and reporting on areas they can improve, and conducting peer reviews and site visits.

These organizations don’t typically get a lot of attention, but no school can access billions of dollars in federal student loans and grants without an accreditor’s approval. Losing access to those funds would essentially cut a school off from the vast number of students who rely on federal student aid to attend college.

The DeSantis-backed agency is focused on evaluating public four-year colleges and is being created by a group of state university systems in Florida, Texas, Georgia, North Carolina, South Carolina and Tennessee.

It’s a push that comes on top of an established reputation on the right for dismantling diversity programs on school campuses, rebooting a progressive liberal arts college into a conservative testing ground and providing an education blueprint that red states have followed.

Similarly, overhauling the oversight system is the next step in Trump’s use of executive power to force colleges and universities to enact policies in line with his agenda. Trump promised during his 2024 presidential campaign to fire “radical left accreditors” and impose “real standards.” Administration officials are now trying to make good on that pledge, awarding more than $14 million in January to those efforts from a grant program that is typically used to help students with basic needs, such as food and housing, and lifting a Biden-era moratorium on accepting new accreditors.

“We wanted to put money behind giving institutions the ability to leave an accreditor if they don't feel that it's the right fit. We also wanted to put money behind the opportunity to support new and emerging accreditors,” Education Undersecretary Nicholas Kent told community college leaders in February.

“By the time we leave office in three years, we will have a much more competitive system through the accreditation process that will include new choices for all of you,” he said.

Officials in the accreditation community agree the system could use more competition.

Some leaders of accreditors agree that if institutions have more options, it’ll push the oversight agencies to be more efficient and affordable for colleges and universities that use them. But they worry these traditionally independent organizations will be pressured into making politically driven approvals or analyzing colleges based on ideological elements such as the push by conservatives for “intellectual diversity” on campuses where they believe faculty and students lean too liberal.

DeSantis’ new oversight body, called the Commission for Public Higher Education, is meant to give participating states more say over the accountability standards for schools within their borders and be a conservative response to DEI.

DeSantis has said the new oversight body will “end the monopoly of the woke accreditation cartels” and give schools an alternative for evaluating student achievement rather than “ideological fads" like DEI. The Florida governor declined an interview request.

In January, his multistate effort received $1 million from the Education Department. That amount will make up nearly half of the evaluator’s forecasted budget for federal fiscal 2027, according to the group. The organization also plans to apply for recognition from the department during that time.

Accreditors are independent gatekeepers that decide which institutions can receive billions of dollars in federal student loans and grants, but their money comes from college membership dues and fees. They have not historically received funds directly from the federal government.

Education experts worry that the favorable treatment being given to this new agency ahead of its official approval by the Education Department could create a conflict of interest.

“It made me wonder if it blurs the line and makes it a project that is too close to the department,” said Jamie Studley, the former president of WASC Senior College and University Commission, which evaluates schools in California, Hawaii, and U.S. territories in the Pacific.

Trump administration officials “seem to have a preordained outcome in mind,” said Jeremy Bauer-Wolf, the investigations manager at the left-leaning think tank New America. “The department should be evaluating each accreditor on its own merits and it's very clear that there's a lot of politics caught up in this particular venture.”

David Barker, the Education Department’s assistant secretary for postsecondary education, said all the grant applications were sent to independent reviewers and do not reflect an endorsement from the department.

“This was just a [grant] competition to try and find interesting and innovative ideas on accreditation, and we funded that,” Barker said. “But that has no impact on our recognition decisions.”

In response to a question about the perceived politicization of the oversight system, Barker said the administration’s concern is “excellence in education, not ideology.” He said some institutions have been using the same evaluator for far too long, and it's time for a new set of eyes evaluating schools.

“There are institutions that have been accredited by the same accreditor for 100 years,” he said. “It makes sense to have a fresh look.”

Trump in his first term set into motion major accrediting changes. Some of those policies, like scrapping geographic limits on accreditors, were ultimately enacted by the Biden administration.

But Florida accused the Biden administration of putting up roadblocks to more comprehensive changes. The state, led by DeSantis, sued Biden’s Education Department in 2023 claiming that its policy requiring colleges to demonstrate “reasonable cause” for changing evaluators and securing federal approval was standing in the way of a GOP-backed state law mandating schools switch oversight boards.

“The accreditors basically became monopolies,” said Alan Levine, chair of Florida’s Board of Governors, which oversees the state public university system. “The favoritism was having regional monopolies protected by the Education Department, and then the Education Department slowing us down when we wanted to do what the law said we could do.”

The Florida governor’s organization is becoming a go-to option for red states.

Lawmakers in Iowa advanced a bill, H.S.B.550, in January that would require the state’s public universities to apply for accreditation from the new agency. A bill in West Virginia, S.B.476, would also direct universities to review their evaluators and mentions DeSantis’ organization as an option, but stops short of mandating the change. And North Carolina passed a bill, H.358, in September to amend its oversight requirements for its universities and included the new agency as its top “preferred accrediting agency.”

The DeSantis-backed agency bills itself as a consortium of higher education systems in its mission statement. But Florida’s Board of Governors provided $4 million in seed funding for the project and it’s currently housed under the board’s nonprofit organization. This structure has given some in higher education pause, said Bob Shireman, a Democratic appointee of the National Advisory Committee on Institutional Quality and Integrity, a panel that counsels the Education Department on recognizing accreditors.

Shireman said the emerging accreditor should be more candid in its mission statement about its ownership. He also said he was worried about the standards focus on “intellectual diversity,” and concerns of partisanship, given all the institution's systems coming together to form the new organization are primarily in red states.

“We have benefited a lot from accreditors having institutions from blue and red” states, he said. “I think something is lost if they create this accreditor and fail to attract some institutions from purple and blue states.”