President Donald Trump signed a series of executive orders Wednesday aimed at reshaping higher education, with a sharp focus on ending diversity programs and reforming the college accreditation process.

One of the orders targets the accrediting agencies that determine whether colleges are eligible to receive federal financial aid. Andrew Gillen, a research fellow at the Cato Institute, released the following statement in response:

“This executive order seeks to do three big things. First, it seeks to revoke recognition of accreditors that require their colleges to discriminate. In contrast to other anti-DEI initiatives from the administration, this keys in on unlawful discrimination as the focus, which puts any resulting action on more solid ground. Second, it directs the Department of Education to accept applications from potential new accreditors, ending a freeze put in place by the Biden administration. This is great news as recent research of ours documents that ‘in 73 years, the federal government has not recognized a single new institutional accreditor to compete with the original accreditors without placing severe restrictions on what types of colleges they can accredit.’ Third, the order directs the Secretary to launch an experimental and voluntary Quality Assurance Program. Done right, such an experiment could serve as a prototype for a much better accountability system in the future.”

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