Trump Takes Bold Action to End Discriminatory DEI College Mandates

The higher education accreditation system is a mess, and American students are paying the price. For too long, accreditors have held unchecked power, deciding which colleges can tap into over $100 billion in federal student loans and Pell Grants each year. Their job? Ensure institutions deliver quality education. Their reality? Rubber-stamping low-performing schools while pushing divisive diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) mandates that have little to do with learning. President Trump’s April 23, 2025, executive order is a long-overdue strike against this dysfunctional gatekeeping, aiming to refocus accreditation on what matters: student success and taxpayer value.

Consider the numbers. A national six-year graduation rate of just 64% in 2020 means over a third of students leave college without a degree but often with crushing debt. Nearly 25% of bachelor’s degrees and over 40% of master’s degrees offer a negative return on investment, leaving graduates financially worse off. Yet accreditors, entrusted with upholding standards, have been distracted by enforcing ideological quotas, demanding colleges prioritize race, gender, and ethnicity over merit. This isn’t oversight; it’s overreach.

Trump’s order doesn’t just call out this failure; it demands action. By targeting accreditors who push unlawful DEI standards, the administration is signaling that the days of ideological conformity masquerading as quality assurance are over. The move resonates with a growing demand for accountability, with 82% of voters viewing student loan burdens as a serious issue and 61% calling for a major overhaul of higher education. It’s a bold step to restore trust in a system that’s been fleecing students and taxpayers for decades.

The obsession with DEI has turned accreditors into ideological enforcers, not quality watchdogs. Take the American Bar Association’s Council of Legal Education, which until recently required law schools to show 'concrete action' on diversity, including race and gender quotas for students and faculty. This wasn’t just a suggestion; it was a condition for accreditation, and thus access to federal funds. The Supreme Court’s 2023 ruling in Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard made it clear: such practices are discriminatory and illegal. Yet accreditors dragged their feet, only suspending enforcement after public outcry and legal warnings from the Attorney General.

Medical education isn’t spared either. The Liaison Committee on Medical Education and the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education have pushed for 'mission-appropriate diversity outcomes,' code for prioritizing race over qualifications in training doctors. This isn’t about fairness; it’s about forcing institutions to adopt policies that undermine the merit-based standards patients rely on for quality care. Trump’s order rightly calls for investigations into these practices, with the threat of stripping federal recognition from accreditors who persist in this unlawful discrimination.

Advocates for DEI argue these policies foster inclusion and address historical inequities. But their logic falters when you consider the cost: programs that leave students in debt for degrees with little market value, and a campus culture that stifles intellectual diversity. Since 2023, 19 states have banned DEI initiatives at colleges, closing offices and cutting hundreds of positions, like the 300-plus eliminated in the University of Texas System. These moves reflect a broader rejection of policies that prioritize identity over achievement, a sentiment Trump’s order amplifies on a federal level.

Trump’s executive order isn’t just about tearing down bad practices; it’s about building a better system. It directs the Secretary of Education to enforce new principles: accreditation must prioritize high-quality, high-value programs free from discrimination, support intellectual diversity, and stop inflating credentials that burden students with unnecessary costs. This means focusing on hard metrics like graduation rates, loan repayment, and post-graduation earnings, not vague social engineering goals.

The order also opens the door to competition by recognizing new accreditors, breaking the monopoly of entrenched agencies. It streamlines the process for colleges to switch accreditors, freeing them from agencies that clash with their values. An experimental site under the Higher Education Act will test innovative quality assurance models, encouraging colleges to prioritize student outcomes over bureaucratic checklists. These steps align with a conservative push to decentralize education governance, giving institutions and states more freedom to innovate without federal overreach.

Skeptics might claim this risks lowering standards or creating chaos in oversight. But the current system, with its abysmal graduation rates and skyrocketing costs, is hardly a model of stability. The average cost of a bachelor’s degree now exceeds $255,000, and tuition at private colleges jumped 5.5% for 2024–2025. Meanwhile, only 18% of adults without a degree think college tuition is fair. Trump’s reforms tackle these realities head-on, demanding accreditors deliver results or lose their gatekeeping privileges.

The fight to fix higher education accreditation is just beginning, but Trump’s executive order sets a clear course. By targeting DEI-driven discrimination and refocusing on student outcomes, it challenges a system that’s been coasting on taxpayer dollars while failing American students. The order’s call for intellectual diversity among faculty is a nod to restoring campuses as places of open inquiry, not ideological echo chambers. With 71% of 'good jobs' by 2031 requiring some postsecondary education, getting this right is critical for the nation’s future.

This isn’t about dismantling education but about making it work for the people it’s meant to serve. Students deserve degrees that lead to real opportunities, not debt traps. Taxpayers deserve a system that respects their investment. And colleges deserve the freedom to innovate without being shackled by accreditors pushing a one-size-fits-all agenda. Trump’s bold move is a wake-up call: the era of unchecked accreditation and ideological mandates is over. It’s time to put students first.