Improving Higher Education Through Accreditation Reform

By: Amelia Vernon & Rose Laoutaris

Protecting free speech and improving higher education are major priorities for the states and the federal government in 2025. In April, President Trump signed an executive order to improve higher education through accreditation reform, following efforts from Congress and states like Florida and North Carolina. These reforms focus on improving academic outcomes and protecting free speech.

Trump’s Executive Order

President Donald Trump’s executive order reforms higher education accreditation by promoting transparency and accountability, limiting the influence of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI). The order aims to change how institutions receive federal recognition by revamping the role and power of accreditation agencies. It instructs accreditors to focus on academic quality and institutional outcomes rather than ideological compliance.

The executive order also encourages the development of new accrediting agencies and compels colleges and universities to prove concrete outcomes in areas like student performance, graduation rates, and cost. President Trump’s order argues that current accreditation systems contribute to the bloated bureaucracy, which raises the cost of tuition, and increases ideological bias that limits academic freedom.

Previous Federal Efforts

Last year, the House of Representatives passed an accreditation reform bill with many of the same objectives as President Trump’s executive order. The Accreditation for College Excellence Act prohibits accreditors from requiring institutions of higher education to commit to DEI standards or a certain political ideology to receive accreditation funding.

Reform in the States

Before Trump’s executive order, states like Florida and North Carolina passed legislation to reform accreditation and limit DEI influence at their state colleges and universities.

In 2022, Florida passed Senate Bill 7044, which mandated public colleges and universities rotate their institutional accreditors every cycle, thereby reducing dependency on long-standing agencies, such as the Southern Association of Colleges and School Commission on Colleges (SACSCOC). The law also introduced new requirements for transparency in tuition, syllabi, and textbook pricing, while requiring post-tenure reviews every five years. These reforms align closely with President Trump’s executive order, highlighting Florida’s leadership in challenging the traditional accreditation structure.

Similarly, North Carolina passed House Bill 8 (2023), which also requires public universities and community colleges to switch accreditors every cycle unless they can show no alternative exists. The law allows for legal action against individuals who deliberately submit false information to accreditors and establishes a state commission to explore alternatives to traditional accreditation systems. Like Florida, North Carolina’s legislation promotes institutional independence and focuses on academic quality over ideological compliance.

Together, these state-level changes provided a foundation that the Trump administration has now elevated to a national level. By prohibiting DEI mandates for accreditation and emphasizing concrete outcomes, both state and federal leaders are working to restore merit, transparency, and accountability in higher education.

ALEC Annual Meeting

Department of Education Secretary Linda McMahon recently spoke at ALEC’s 52^nd Annual Meeting on the Trump administration’s education efforts, including accreditation reform.

“One of the things that I heard the most about when I first came on as Secretary of Education was accreditation and what a monopoly it is. You have five or six accreditors all over the country responsible for… giving the ‘good housekeeping’ seal of approval for colleges and universities,” Sec. McMahon said. “Think about the power that that accreditor has… to hold back their accreditation and to force policy then into colleges and universities… We need more accreditors, but we also need to change all the regulations, so we’re taking a hard look at all of that.”

She also applauded the states for their efforts, like Florida and North Carolina, and said, “we need to have more of that kind of a regional approach.”

ALEC believes free markets allow for competition, which creates incentives for all businesses, in this case, accreditors and the universities they evaluate, to provide a better service and create a better outcome. We have seen the success of free market principles through the K-12 education freedom movement in allowing families more educational options than just one public school. These principles can also be used to improve the higher education system, and that is what these efforts aim to do.

For more of ALEC’s education policy solutions, please read our annual publication, Essential Policy Solutions for 2025.