President Joe Biden’s Education Department published its regulatory agenda for 2023 last week. A close reading of the new rules shows that Biden is preparing for war against Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’s higher education reforms.
DeSantis’s higher education reforms include two new laws. One made it harder for faculty at state universities to retain tenure. Another restricted how critical race theory can be taught in classrooms.
BIDEN’S POTEMKIN TRIP TO THE SOUTHERN BORDER
More important than either of these two changes, however, was a change to how Florida universities are accredited. Under federal law, students may only use government loans and grants at universities that are accredited by one of seven accreditation agencies chosen by the Department of Education. No accreditation, no federal student loans or grants.
In theory, these accreditation agencies are supposed to make sure universities are delivering high-quality education to students. In reality, they are becoming the gatekeepers for the higher education cartel.
As the Texas Public Policy Foundation has noted, accreditors rarely take action against existing colleges for failures in academic programming or student outcomes. What the accreditation agencies are very good at is not approving accreditation for new higher education institutions and shutting down experiments in higher education that can bring down costs for students.
Former President Donald Trump began to loosen the power of the accreditation agencies by issuing new regulations that ended each of the seven agencies’ monopolies over each region. Under the new Trump rule, universities can now apply to be accredited by any of the seven accreditation agencies, not just the agency assigned to their region.
After the president of the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools Commission on Colleges sent a letter to Florida State University, threatening to pull its accreditation if it named a Republican reformer to be its next president, DeSantis passed a new law requiring that all Florida universities change their accreditation agency whenever their accreditation is up for renewal. This law essentially freed Florida universities from the ideological whims of one malicious accreditor.
Biden’s Education Department now seems poised to strike back against DeSantis’s effort to end the accreditation agency cartel. The regulations the Education Department is working on for this year include rules on accreditation, distance education, and state authorization of colleges and universities.
The higher education establishment has been watching DeSantis very closely and does not like the progress he is making in freeing higher education from liberal control.
Whatever regulations Biden issues on higher education, we are sure DeSantis will fight them in federal court. And ultimately, this battle will most likely be decided at the ballot box in 2024.
