BUZZ
Education Department leader promises big fixes, ‘so everybody, buckle up’
The Trump administration has bold plans to end the political “weaponization” of higher education accrediting groups, a senior Department of Education official said Tuesday.
Education Under Secretary Nicholas Kent made the remarks during a meeting of the National Advisory Committee on Institutional Quality and Integrity, its first under new Trump-appointed leadership, Inside Higher Ed reports.
The committee offers advice to the Secretary of Education about the “recognition process for accrediting agencies,” “institutional eligibility for federal student aid,” and related matters, according to its website.
“Instead of focusing on student outcomes and accountability to taxpayers, accreditation has functioned as a shield for incumbent institutions, or worse, as a tool for political and ideological enforcement,” Kent said.
He told the committee that the Trump administration plans to take bold steps to “correct past abuses” and “end the practice of using accreditation as a political weapon.”
“We’re breaking the mold in this administration. We’re doing things differently, we’re conducting negotiated rule makings differently … We’re going to fix a lot of it,” Kent said. “So everybody, buckle up, we got a lot of work ahead of us.”
Trump and other conservatives have expressed concerns in recent years about accrediting groups pushing a leftist ideological agenda on higher education institutions.
While some accreditors have abandoned diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives in response to an April executive order, others still have DEI goals, The College Fix has found.
During the Tuesday meeting, Kent told the committee that these goals have led to “discriminatory practices, mandatory DEI requirements, racial preferences in hiring, compulsory sensitivity training and political litmus tests” that “undermine merit” and “chill free speech,” according to Inside Higher Ed.
Meanwhile, “glaring deficiencies that undermine student success go unaddressed,” he said.
The remarks received pushback by Democrat-appointed committee members, according to the report:
Kent’s remarks prompted an accusation of partisanship from Bob Shireman, a Democratic appointee and former ED official during the early years of the Obama administration. Shireman argued that, historically, concerns about accreditation have been bipartisan, as has NACIQI. …
Zakiya Smith Ellis, a Democratic appointee, pushed back on some of those concerns noting that such standards aren’t “particularly descriptive about what diversity, equity, or inclusion means” and executive orders, such as Trump’s anti-DEI memo, “do not have [the] force of law.”
During the meeting, the committee also elected Jay Greene, a former senior research fellow at the Heritage Foundation, as the chair, according to the report. Greene, now the research director at Do No Harm, has been a prominent voice about the damaging effects of DEI in higher education.
One institution mentioned at the meeting was Columbia University, which has faced continued criticism for its responses to antisemitism, according to the report:
[Middle States Commission on Higher Education] President Heather Perfetti noted Columbia provided a report in response to noncompliance concerns in November. Per MSCHE standards, Perfetti said Columbia would receive a campus visit from a MSCHE team, which would then make a recommendation to a committee that would bring it to the commission for a decision at its next meeting in March.
MORE: Social work accreditor says colleges should teach students to ‘advocate for’ DEI
