Trump’s new accreditation reform effort targets a broken, politicized higher education system that leaves students poorer, less prepared, and drowning in debt.
On January 26, Trump’s Education Department announced it would begin accepting applications for a new committee — the Accreditation, Innovation, and Modernization Committee (or “AIM”), which will study the current accreditation system for colleges and universities and then recommend reforms. Right now, higher education institutions can only participate in the federal student loan program (also known as Title IV funding, in reference to the Higher Education Act of 1965) if they receive approval, or accreditation, from an organization recognized by the Education Department as competent and trustworthy for this purpose.
Needless to say, however, the accreditation system is broken, as is much of higher education. One need only look at today’s college graduates, who are more indebted and ignorant than ever, including in areas such as financial literacy (hence the debt), American civics and history, and world geography and politics. Tragically, college students and their families pay more and more to get and learn less and less.
Any effort for reform, therefore, deserves support, including this most recent initiative by President Trump.
Accreditation is supposed to ensure that schools are not fly-by-night shams that collect student loan money and run, neither educating students nor conferring worthwhile degrees. But increasingly, that is what most colleges and universities do. In dishonest fashion, news reports often focus solely on “for-profit” schools as risky; the Biden Administration, for example, forgave student loan debt for graduates of newer schools that went out of business.
But this is a diversionary tactic to distract Americans from the reality of the situation, which is that the mainstream institutions, the Big State University, are also producing ignorant, indebted graduates who later realize that college failed to prepare them for much of anything, while leaving them older and poorer. (Meanwhile, university administrators, staff, and faculty enjoy handsome salaries paid for by student loans. What kind of society does this to its young people?)
Obviously, some college graduates do ok. For years, degrees in STEM (science, technology, engineering, and math) were said to be safer majors, leading to better jobs. But cracks in this wall are also now appearing as engineering firms often prefer to employ foreigners on H1-B visas, who work for less, over Americans with superior qualifications.
Also, contrary to the STEM conventional wisdom, liberal arts degrees for serious and industrious students can translate into remunerative and stable work over time. But one should always ask: Is such professional success due to college? Or due to a student’s industry and seriousness before college?
Let’s not put the cart before the horse the way the higher education shills do.
So why is the accreditation system broken?
One might just as well ask why the education system itself is broken, or the justice system, or the medical system.
They fail because they’re prioritizing politics over competence.
The politicization of choice in recent decades is called “diversity” or “DEI,” for “diversity, equity, and inclusion.” But labels can change while the destructive politicization stays the same. Formerly called affirmative action, or multiculturalism, or anti-racism, or critical race theory (“CRT”) — by whatever name, the goal remains to pit Americans against each other based on race or ethnicity or sexual politics (think feminism or gender ideology), producing endless conflict and politicization rather than excellence and achievement.
Diversity ideology is obviously illegal discrimination against men as well as those of Christian heritage and European ancestry, since such individuals are said to not contribute diversity and are therefore disfavored for jobs, school admissions, etc.
This politicization, or political favoritism, in any human activity — whether education, business, sports, or the arts — is always an attack on excellence and therefore always results in mediocrity or ruin. That’s what happens when the focus is not on competence and excellence but on identity politics.
Notably, no one demands female professional football players in the National Football League for the obvious reason that this would so change the game as to ruin it. Yet this kind of race and sex bean-counting, under the guise of “diversity,” happens all the time in government and academia.
In March of 2022, for example, the Council on Higher Education Accreditation, or “CHEA,” an oversight body that “represents more than 6,000 U.S. colleges and universities and recognizes six major U.S. regional accreditors,” began to require official commitment to DEI from schools. Bar associations require diversity classes for lawyers to maintain their law licenses. Medical education is doing the same. And allegiance to diversity ideology is now routinely demanded in applications for professorships.
Accordingly, the first step for reform in accreditation, and in education generally, is depoliticization.
Specifically, the Trump Education Department should consider two obvious starting points: First, clarify that top-down political ideologies such as DEI, by whatever name, have no place in American educational institutions and demand that all current and future accrediting agencies (as well as schools seeking accreditation) drop references to them in mission statements, programming, and hiring and focus instead on academic excellence. Second, enforce this depoliticization by adopting an audit system whereby a federal official regularly monitors both accreditors and schools to ensure that these specific depoliticization measures are underway.
Let’s hope that the Education Department’s Accreditation, Innovation, and Modernization Committee gets off to a strong start with this kind of commonsense reform — depoliticize!
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