Education Department's Accreditation Reform Rightly Breaks Left-Wing Ideological Control of Higher Education
Source: Breccan F. Thies. "Ed Department Breaks Left-Wing University Accreditation Cabal." August 19, 2026. thefederalist.com
The Gist
The article argues that the Trump administration's new rule making it easier to create alternative college accreditors is a good thing because current accreditors have been pushing 'woke' DEI policies that hurt educational quality and standards. The author claims this reform will restore academic freedom and fix problems like doctors being selected based on race rather than merit.
Conclusion
The Trump administration's new Education Department rule allowing more accreditors and diminishing current accreditors' power is a positive reform that will restore quality, academic freedom, and accountability to higher education by breaking left-wing ideological control.
Premises
- Existing accreditors have used their gatekeeping power over federal student aid to impose DEI-based ideological requirements as conditions of accreditation.
- These ideological mandates have contributed to inflated tuition, administrative bloat, and declining educational quality.
- Academic freedom, intellectual diversity, and research integrity are at low points, evidenced by plagiarism scandals and exclusion of conservative academics from prestigious positions.
- Medical and law school accreditors have specifically damaged their professions by imposing diversity quotas and racialized training requirements.
- The push for 'racial concordance' in medicine represents lowering merit-based standards to artificially increase minority representation, undermining trust in physicians.
- Allowing more accreditors to compete will reduce the concentrated power any single ideological group can wield over universities.
Assumptions
- DEI initiatives in accreditation standards necessarily represent ideological overreach rather than legitimate educational goals.
- Increasing diversity among doctors/lawyers necessarily requires lowering merit standards rather than expanding pipelines or addressing systemic barriers.
- The decline in trust in higher education and medicine is primarily caused by DEI policies rather than other factors (cost, politics, misinformation, etc.).
- More accreditors and competition will lead to better outcomes rather than a race to the bottom in standards.
- Current accreditation problems (plagiarism, research fraud) are causally linked to DEI ideology rather than separate issues.
- Conservative academics are excluded from positions due to ideological discrimination rather than other factors.