U.S. Department of Education publishes initial draft regulations and starts AIM Committee meetings

Background

On April 23, 2025, President Trump issued Executive Order 14279 to advance reforms to the federal accreditation framework, emphasizing educational quality, cost containment, and accountability. The negotiated rulemaking process is intended to advance those objectives through revisions to existing regulations related to ED recognition of accreditors (34 C.F.R. § 600.11 and 34 C.F.R. Part 602).

The first session occurred April 13-17, 2026, and the second session is set for May 18-22, 2026, both in Washington, DC.

Proposed changes

The initial draft regulations seem designed to force change to accreditation in a number of significant ways. ED has organized its proposals into five broad categories: reducing regulatory burdens; accreditor integrity; legality and constitutionality; student outcomes; and affordability. Within each category, ED proposes the following changes:

Reducing regulatory burdens

• Remove the rule that an accreditor must conduct accreditation activities for at least two years before it is eligible to seek ED recognition.
• Ease restrictions on institutions seeking to change accreditors or maintain multiple accreditations.
• Require accrediting agencies to administer standards in a manner that minimizes compliance costs and administrative burden.
• Provide two years for new, initially-recognized accreditors to demonstrate that institutions or programs rely on their accreditation to participate in federal funding programs.
• Eliminate regulatory requirements that are not expressly statutorily mandated, including requirements related to:

• Representation of certain categories of individuals on evaluation, policy, and decision-making bodies (602.15(a)(2), (3), and (4);
• The obligation to conform to commonly accepted academic standards (602.17(a)(3));
• Institutional verification of student identity and notification of projected charges associated with student verification (602.17(h))
• Prescribed procedures for periodic review of accreditor standards (602.21(b), (c), and (d));
• Limitations on substantive changes for institutions on probation (602.22(b));
• Approval of additional locations, and related site visits (602.22(c)(1)-(5), (f), and (g));
• Preaccreditation status (602.16(a)(2)(i) and 602.23(f)); and
• Appeals panel roles, and hearing procedures (602.25(f)(1)(iii) and (f)(1)(iv)).

Accreditor integrity

• Codify ED’s proposed interpretive rule that discourages accreditors from identifying themselves as having regional scope.
• Eliminate the ability of the Secretary to waive the “separate and independent” requirements for accreditors with related, associated, or affiliated organizations (e.g., professional associations). In addition, ED proposes new rules aimed at implementing the “separate and independent requirement.” Such proposals include:
• Excluding members of an accreditor’s governing body or policy-making body from participating in the setting of policy or standards if they would directly or indirectly affect the member’s institution;

• Requiring the accreditor’s dues to be set without review by an affiliated organization;
• Prohibiting resource-sharing with a related, associated, or affiliated trade association, professional organization, standard setting organization, State certification organization, or membership organization;
• Preventing accreditors from soliciting formal or informal feedback from a related, associated, or affiliated trade association, professional organization, standard setting organization, State certification organization, or membership organization;
• Mandating annual staff training on independence requirements;
• Creating a complaint process for violations of independent requirements;
• Requiring the accreditor to certify annually that it has met the independence requirements;
• Prohibiting the accreditor from acting to restrict access to employment in a profession, occupation, or vocation in a manner that may benefit a related, associated, or affiliated trade association, professional organization, standard setting organization, State certification organization, or membership organization, unless the restriction is necessary to protect the public and the public benefit outweighs the costs of reduced access to the profession; and
• Prohibiting officers, directors, or employees of the accreditor from serving as a paid or unpaid officer, director, employee, or volunteer of both the accreditor and any related, associated, or affiliated trade association, professional organization, standard setting organization, State certification organization, membership organization, State licensing board, or similar body.

• Address concerns related to “credential inflation,” including through prohibition of coordinated standards-setting activities between accreditors and affiliated membership organizations.
• Clarify that conflict of interest policies must cover board members, commissioners, officers, directors, and employees in the institution’s conflict of interest policy.
• Require institutions to presume the transferability of undergraduate credits earned at another institution.
• Establish that accreditors are subject to federal and state antitrust laws and clarify that recognition by ED does not authorize collective action among accreditors, institutions, or programs.
• Clarify that ED may view alleged anticompetitive conduct, such as potential collusion between accreditors and related organizations to inflate the qualifications a student needs to be eligible to obtain licensure in or otherwise enter a profession, as a negative factor when considering an accreditor’s application for recognition, re-recognition, or expansion of scope.
• Add requirements regarding misrepresentation and fraud.
• Enhance transparency by:
• Requiring accreditors to have a policy for restoring accreditation (including retroactive restoration) in circumstances that the agency determines are appropriate; and
• Mandating public disclosure of certain enforcement actions.

Legality and constitutionality

• Require accrediting agencies to confirm standards and procedures comply with applicable federal and state law, including those that prohibit discrimination.
• Require public institutions to maintain policies consistent with constitutional requirements, including protections related to free expression and religion.
• Expand faculty standards to require institutions to consider, as part of their policies on academic freedom and inquiry, the conditions under which a range of academic perspectives may be expressed.
• Direct accreditors to limit involvement in institutional governance matters reserved to state or institutional governing bodies.

Student outcomes

• In general, require accreditor standards to use objective student outcomes data to evaluate institutions, including measures such as completion rates, placement rates, licensure results, and return on investment indicators.
• Require accreditors to take adverse action when an institution or program fails to meet student achievement standards.

Affordability

• Allow greater institutional flexibility to manage costs and improve efficiency by requiring:

• The accreditor to provide its staff with training on low-cost educational models;
• Standards relating to institutional facilities, equipment, supplies, and student support services to include a requirement for the institution to perform a cost/benefit analysis; and
• Standards of fiscal and administrative capacity to evaluate the long-term financial obligations of an institution.

• Require accreditors to administer their standards in a manner that minimizes costs to institutions.

Authored by Stephanie Gold, Joel Buckman, Aaron Brosnan, and Megan Mason.