The next front in the battle over America's universities? Accreditation.

Boston Globe

2 days ago

The New England commission and other accreditors are independent nonprofits that do not answer directly to the federal government, though they are reviewed by the Department of Education.
Education Secretary Linda McMahon said in the notice Wednesday that the Trump administration will be closely following the commission's response to the Harvard mandate.
Advertisement
'By allowing antisemitic harassment and discrimination to persist unchecked on its campus, Harvard University has failed in its obligation to students, educators, and American taxpayers,' McMahon wrote. 'The Department of Education expects [the commission] to enforce its policies and practices, and to keep the Department fully informed of its efforts to ensure that Harvard is in compliance with federal law and accreditor standards.'
The commission confirmed receiving the letter, noted that the government cannot direct it to revoke accreditation, and pointed to its process to review 'significant accreditation-related information.'
Advertisement
The action against Harvard is only the administration's latest challenge to the accreditation system:
In April, Trump issued an executive order claiming accreditors have
All of it could alter the quiet role accreditors play as part of the longstanding 'triad' of regulators — the state and federal government included — who ensure a college operates as advertised.
A student in the Smith Campus Center at Harvard University.
SOPHIE PARK/NYT
The New England Commission of Higher Education is the largest such accreditor in New England,
enlisting some 2,000 volunteers — mostly university faculty and administrators — to conduct on-campus inspections of institutions every 10 years. A 32-member board of higher education insiders, attorneys, and business executives then review those evaluations and order colleges to make changes to keep their accreditation.
Its evaluation itself consists of
Altogether, the standards aim to ensure a school has enough money to operate and offers a worthwhile education, or face an accreditation revocation. But such a drastic step is rare and often tied to financial woes — such as at now-shuttered Pine Manor College in Newton or
Advertisement
Accreditors themselves can lose their federal approval, though that rarely happens, too; the only recent example came in 2022, when
More typically, the accreditation triggers an academic self-reflection on campus.
Suffolk University in Boston, for example, conducts a two-year process of self-study by hundreds of staff who review students' work, read course syllabi, and analyze graduation rates to prepare for its accreditation review. By the end, the person leading the process for the school 'knows more about the university than anyone else alive,' said Bob Rosenthal, a newly retired Suffolk professor. That in turn helps the commission assess whether to recommend changes, such as the creation of a faculty senate at Suffolk
'They're very good at doing their due diligence,' Rosenthal said. 'They ask tough questions, and they pull no punches. … Universities take accreditation very seriously, in part because there is a penalty if you don't get things right.'
With its focus on volunteers from academia, the current system rightly puts the bulk of the responsibility on those most familiar with colleges, said Larry Schall, president of the New England commission. But some critics say accreditors are too cozy with colleges, encouraging their preferred political ideologies and approving universities too easily, regardless of the quality of their academic programs or financial health.
In response, a House committee
provisions in accreditation. (One major West Coast accreditor already
Advertisement
A student walked across campus at Boston College in February.
Jessica Rinaldi/Globe Staff
Peter Wood, a former Boston University administrator who leads the right-leaning National Association of Scholars, said the proposals could reverse trends in accreditation that have hurt students and the educational experience.
'Institutions can change their mission quite freely and will bend to political goals rather than academic goals,' Wood said. 'We have a system of accreditation that accommodates that. The results have been that the quality of higher education has eroded.'
While higher education experts say there may be credence to the criticism, most generally support accreditation as it stands. A survey of 415 college officials by the Chronicle of Higher Education found that more than 80 percent believe accreditors ensure academic quality and hold colleges accountable.
And some warn the House legislation risks giving government
too much
power over the accreditation process. Six southern and largely-Republican states — led by Florida Governor Ron DeSantis — are trying
In a statement, Cynthia Jackson, president of the Council for Higher Education Accreditation, said the industry group is 'not opposed' to new accreditors, but that states have historically 'not had the staff, experience, or knowledge necessary to create a higher education accreditor.'
As for tying accreditation to student financial outcomes, Terri Cannon, a higher education consultant who formerly worked for the West Coast regional accreditor, said she worries institutions that specialize in lower-paying fields could be unfairly penalized under the changes. And she too warns about political motivations that may endanger academic freedom.
Advertisement
'No democratic nation has the content and the decisions about who gets to study made by the federal government. Then you're no longer a democratic country,' she said. 'Within the higher ed community, there should be a diversity of institutional missions. But the federal government shouldn't dictate it. ... They're using a hammer when they should be using a scalpel.'
Moreover, Cannon noted, accreditors already give more weight to metrics of student success than they did 30 years ago.
The New England commission now prioritizes 'outputs' at universities, such as educational effectiveness and graduation rates, rather than 'inputs' like the number of library books or support staff.
This year, the commission is updating its standards to further emphasize outputs and testing a new accreditation for non-degree and certificate programs that offer alternatives to traditional college at a lower cost, Schall said.
Trump's push aside, declining enrollment and
In 2018, for example,
the
Advertisement
Mount Ida College in Newton closed in 2018, sparking some criticism of regional university accreditors for not warning students of its financial struggles.
Craig F. Walker
'One of the impacts is that we haven't had another Mount Ida because of the [contingency] planning part of the law,' said Cynthia Brown, the associate commissioner for regulatory and veterans affairs at the Massachusetts Department of Higher Education. 'The law was created to prevent precipitous closures, to prevent closures without any warning, or notice, or planning.'
In the coming weeks, the confrontation over Harvard's accreditation will reveal whether the White House can significantly change how universities are reviewed, said Jeremy Bauer-Wolf, who studies higher education at the left-leaning think tank New America.
'While Harvard's accreditation I don't feel is at any real risk, the action that the administration is taking here, this really extreme overreach, is a major problem,' Bauer-Wolf said. 'It is eroding the barriers, the legal barriers, that have been set up to insulate higher education from government interference.'
Anjali Huynh of the Globe staff contributed to this report.
Diti Kohli can be reached at