Accreditation-Reform Hopes for the Second Trump Administration

Minding the Campus 

Samuel Negus

January 31, 2025

Higher education seemingly played an important, if largely negative, role in the recent presidential election. Exit polls showed that non-college-educated voters overwhelmingly favored Donald Trump. Many voters associated Kamala Harris unfavorably with progressive trends and ideas prevalent on elite campuses, such as pro-Hamas protests and gender ideology.

The election’s outcome has sparked introspection in some typically left-leaning publications, such as the Chronicle of Higher Education, where William Deresiewicz opined bluntly, “The politics of the academy have been defeated. Its ideas … have been rejected.” But what any of this means for likely post-election policy is unclear.

Trump’s lengthiest statement on the subject came in a two-minute video released in July 2023, which Elon Musk recently reposted to a viral reception. Then-candidate Trump vowed to “fire the radical left accreditors that have allowed our colleges to become dominated by Marxist maniacs and lunatics.” Policies outlined for achieving that end included “accepting applications for new accreditors who will impose real standards on colleges,” such as requiring them to “defend the American tradition and Western civilization, protect free speech, and eliminate wasteful administrative positions that drive up costs.” Trump further promised to eliminate colleges’ “diversity, equity, and inclusion bureaucrats” and incentivize the adoption of “accelerated … low-cost degrees [with] meaningful job placement.”

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