Supreme Court Allows Mass Layoffs at Education Department
HEADLINES
Supreme Court Allows Mass Layoffs at Education Department (Inside Higher Ed, July 14, 2025) The decision paves the way for President Trump to continue dismantling the agency, including moving career and technical education to the Labor Department. The unsigned, one-paragraph order does not explain why a majority of justices decided to overturn a lower court injunction that an appeals court upheld. It did, however, explain that the injunction will remain blocked as lawsuits challenging mass layoffs at the department continue.
Secretary McMahon Statement on Supreme Court Victory for Future of American Education (Ed.gov, July 14, 2025) U.S. Secretary of Education Linda McMahon released the following statement in response to the Supreme Court’s decision to allow the U.S. Department of Education to carry out its reduction in force (RIF) and implement President Trump’s Executive Order to improve education for families by returning education authority to the states: “Today, the Supreme Court again confirmed the obvious: the President of the United States, as the head of the Executive Branch, has the ultimate authority to make decisions about staffing levels, administrative organization, and day-to-day operations of federal agencies. While today’s ruling is a significant win for students and families, it is a shame that the highest court in the land had to step in to allow President Trump to advance the reforms Americans elected him to deliver using the authorities granted to him by the U.S. Constitution.”
Trump Wields ‘Secret Weapon’: College Accreditation (The Washington Post, July 12, 2025) President Donald Trump and his allies are using a little-known but powerful corner of higher education — college accreditation — to exert pressure on colleges and universities, an effort that threatens the independence of accreditors and the stability of the institutions they approve. Cynthia Jackson Hammond of the Council for Higher Education Accreditation, an advocacy group, said they are not opposed to adding new accreditors to the 60 that already exist, but are concerned about the states having the staff, experience, and knowledge necessary to create one.
Despite Reservations, Florida Approves New Accreditor (Inside Higher Ed, July 11, 2025) The Florida Board of Governors voted last week to create a controversial new accrediting agency, in coordination with five other state university systems. State University System of Florida’s Chancellor Raymond Rodriguez argued that the new accreditor, called the Commission for Public Higher Education, would eliminate the bureaucracy that comes with existing accrediting agencies and focus specifically on the needs of public universities. But before voting in favor of the motion, board members repeatedly pushed back, arguing that the plans for starting an accreditor from scratch were half-baked. They raised a litany of questions about how the CPHE would work in practice.
Trump Targets University Accreditation — a Non-Governmental Designation (Axios, July 11, 2025) In most countries, university accreditation is a governmental process. In the U.S., accreditors are private organizations responsible for reviewing institutions and programs for quality, according to the Council for Higher Education Accreditation (CHEA). The U.S. is split into six accreditation regions: New England, Middle States, North Central, Southern, Western, and Northwest.
Trump Administration Takes Aim at Harvard’s Accreditation Status (WBUR.org, July 9, 2025) Federal agencies ratcheted up the pressure on Harvard University Wednesday, telling the region's accrediting body that the Cambridge school is in violation of anti-discrimination laws and “may fail to meet the standards for accreditation” set by the body. Losing accreditation matters for universities and their students, said Jan Friis, senior vice president of government affairs at the Council for Higher Education Accreditation. Students would no longer be able to use Pell Grants and federal student loans to fund their education. “That really impacts the students a great deal,” Friis said. “And over time, it impacts the institution because many institutions receive a great deal of federal student aid money.”