Kent’s Warning Signals a Shift in Accreditation Oversight

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Kent’s Warning Signals a Shift in Accreditation Oversight

Harvard President Alan Garber on May 29, 2025, in Cambridge, Massachusetts. (Libby O'Neill/Getty Images)

Madison Marino Doan is a Policy Analyst for Heritage’s Center for Education Policy.

This week, Under Secretary of Education Nicholas Kent put college accreditors on notice: comply with federal civil rights law or risk losing the authority that gives them control over billions in taxpayer-funded student aid.

Kent’s warning was directed at the Middle States Commission on Higher Education and the Commission on Accreditation in Physical Therapy Education. The National Advisory Committee on Institutional Quality and Integrity (NACIQI), a federal oversight board, recently documented concerns about these accreditors.

Established by Congress in 1992, NACIQI is an 18-member independent advisory board that evaluates accrediting agencies and makes recommendations to the Secretary of Education on whether to recognize them. Its members are appointed by Congress and the Secretary and serve six-year terms.

While NACIQI doesn’t make final decisions, its recommendations carry significant weight.

Concerns about one of the accreditors, the Middle States Commission on Higher Education, center on its “Guiding Principle 3.” This standard encourages institutions to consider racial diversity in areas such as student learning, employment practices, strategic planning, and institutional governance. Kent concluded that the standard effectively “prioritizes racial diversity over merit.”

As for the other accreditor, the Commission on Accreditation in Physical Therapy Education, that group’s “Standard 2B” goes even further. It requires programs to promote “justice, equity, diversity, inclusivity (or JEDI), belonging, and anti-racism,” and to demonstrate how their mission and outcomes align with those aims. The Commission didn’t clearly define diversity in race-neutral terms, as Kent also pointed out.

Accreditation used to be a voluntary, peer-review process for colleges and universities. It wasn’t until federal lawmakers introduced the second G.I. Bill in 1952, which provided federal assistance to servicemembers to attend college in honor of their service to the country, that institutions were required to be accredited to enroll students using federal loans.

In 1965, Congress decided to expand the role of accreditors to promote academic quality among accredited institutions.

Yet that influence has not translated into meaningful accountability. A 2022 report from the Postsecondary Commission, an aspiring, nonprofit institutional accreditor that’s focused on student economic outcomes, found that “less than three percent of accreditor actions involved penalizing an institution due to poor student outcomes or academic programming.”

Instead, accreditors are focused on enforcing DEI standards or wrongly engaging in institutional governance decisions. This has been documented previously by scholars at the Texas Public Policy Foundation and The Heritage Foundation.

Kent’s letters rightly call attention to these issues. Both the Middle States Commission on Higher Education and APTA were deemed “substantially compliant” and must now submit reports detailing how they will eliminate standards that violate federal law. Failure to do so could result in denial, suspension, or termination of their federal recognition.

The Trump administration has made accreditation reform a priority. A 2025 executive order directed the Department of Education to expand opportunities for new accreditors and make it easier for institutions to switch agencies.

The Department is also convening a negotiated rulemaking committee to revisit regulations governing higher education accreditation, reversing the previous administration’s reluctance to allow new entrants.

Today’s system of accreditation has allowed accreditors to become ideological gatekeepers of federal dollars rather than guarantors of quality. Ultimately, Congress should decouple federal aid eligibility from federally sanctioned accrediting bodies. This would open the door to state and private quality assurance entities that evaluate institutions on student outcomes rather than ideology.

In the meantime, it is reassuring to have Kent and others at the Education Department holding accreditors accountable to federal law.

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