Columbia Faces the Nuclear Option
HEADLINES
Columbia Faces the Nuclear Option (Washington Jewish Week, June 10, 2025) In President Donald Trump’s intensifying war against higher education, Columbia University has become the first to face the nuclear option. The U.S. Department of Education has urged the Middle States Commission on Higher Education to revoke Columbia’s accreditation. Accreditation is what allows students to access Pell Grants and federal student loans. Without it, an institution like Columbia — where nearly a quarter of first-year students receive Pell Grants — becomes functionally inaccessible to the majority of Americans.
In Fight with Columbia, Trump Seeks ‘Death Sentence’ (The Hill, June 8, 2025) While other schools have faced devastating funding cuts and new investigations from multiple federal agencies under Trump, the Education Department is now calling for Columbia University to lose its accreditation, endangering its access to the entire federal student loan system. The accreditor determines if a school is allowed to have access to student aid, including federal loans and Pell Grants.
Inside UNC’s Effort to Launch a New Accreditor (Inside Higher Ed, June 6, 2025) Last month, Peter Hans, president of the University of North Carolina system, casually dropped a bombshell announcement that the system and others were in talks to launch a new accreditor. “We’ve been having a number of discussions with several other major public university systems, where we’re exploring the idea of creating an accreditor that would offer sound oversight,” Hans said at a UNC system Board of Governors meeting last month.
Higher Education Accreditation Under Scrutiny (National Law Review, June 5, 2025) The Administration’s Executive Order titled “Reforming Accreditation to Strengthen Higher Education,” along with an accompanying fact sheet. It set a goal to streamline the process by which Institutions change accreditors and provides that an institution should be permitted to change accreditors without interruption to Title IV funding, so long as the institution’s accreditation has not lapsed. The ability to change accreditors may allow institutions to do so when they perceive their accreditor to be “at risk” for enforcement action. Institutions of higher education should closely follow the Department of Education’s approach with respect to the three accreditors identified in the Executive Order, as well as other higher education accreditors.