President Trump signed an executive order on Wednesday aimed at changing the college accreditation process so that colleges are accredited based on “results,” with the president expressing interest in investigating the math abilities of students admitted to Harvard and Yale universities.
The president also signed an order to enforce existing laws requiring universities to disclose when they accept large foreign gifts, with one of Mr. Trump’s top aides specifically citing Harvard as a school that they believe has broken the law.
Federal law requires higher education institutions that receive federal funds to disclose any gifts or contracts from a foreign source worth $250,000 or more in a calendar year, and some members of Congress are attempting to lower that threshold to $50,000.
The new executive orders come after the president singled out Harvard University. His administration has frozen billions of dollars in federal funding for Harvard, demanded broad changes to school policies, and suggested that it lose its tax-exempt status.
Third-party entities, rather than the federal government, accredit colleges and universities to ensure they meet basic standards, with the Department of Education deciding which accrediting agencies to recognize. The accreditation process has far-reaching implications because it determines which schools are eligible for federal student aid programs, which distribute billions of dollars in student loans and grants.
The executive order orders the Department of Education to “hold accountable” any college accreditors that “fail to meet the applicable recognition criteria or otherwise violate Federal law” — including terminating or suspending the accreditors’ federal recognition.
It specifically targets accrediting agencies that force schools to “engage in unlawful discrimination… under the guise of ‘diversity, equity, and inclusion’ initiatives.” The order also directs the Department of Education to begin recognizing new college accreditors.
The Trump administration believes accreditation organizations have become overly focused on “woke ideology” rather than results, according to White House staff secretary Will Scharf. Mr. Trump’s executive order affects both law schools and graduate programs.
“The basic idea is to force accreditation to be focused on the merit and actual results that these universities are providing, as opposed to how woke these universities have gotten,” Scharf said before Mr. Trump signed the order. “So we’re setting up new accreditation pathways, we’re charging the Department of Education to really look holistically at this accreditation mess and hopefully make it much better.”
Mr. Trump wanted to know if the executive order he was signing would “look into” people who he claims attend prestigious schools such as Harvard or Princeton but are unable to do basic math.
“Will we look into the past people that they’ve taken?” Mr. Trump questioned Scharf. “For example, I’ve heard a lot about certain great schools. And then we read that they are going to teach people basic math, which we can all do easily but they cannot.”
“When universities are not performing appropriately, whether that’s in admission or whether that’s in their actual instructional activities, that’s certainly something that accreditors should be considering that right now we believe they’re not doing a good enough job of,” Scharf says.
The president also issued an executive order directing federal departments and agencies to ensure that universities comply with the law when disclosing the acceptance of large foreign gifts.
“We believe that certain universities, including, for example, Harvard, have routinely violated this law and this law has not been effectively enforced,” Scharf told lawmakers. “So this executive order charges your departments and agencies with enforcing the laws on the books with respect to foreign gifts to American universities.”
Scharf did not provide evidence or details about how Harvard allegedly violated the foreign gift disclosure law. Harvard told CBS News in a statement that it has been filing foreign gift reporting reports “for decades as part of its ongoing compliance with the law.”
Harvard University announced on Monday that it has filed a lawsuit against the Trump administration, alleging that billions of dollars in federal funding were unlawfully frozen. Tensions have risen between the administration and Harvard, which has rejected the administration’s requests to change many of the school’s policies and leadership. Several other schools, including Columbia University, have faced similar funding freezes, with the Trump administration claiming that the schools have not adequately responded to antisemitism.
On Wednesday, the president also signed executive actions to improve the effectiveness and efficiency of historically black colleges and universities (HBCUs), ensure that schoolchildren receive adequate artificial intelligence training, increase apprenticeships, and allow educators to enforce school discipline policies.