People have been led to believe that our accreditation system ensures good quality in college education. It doesn’t. A great many students who are barely literate have graduated from accredited colleges and universities. Accreditation is not a quality control mechanism, but it has been captured by the leftist crowd that’s intent on pushing the “progressive” agenda.

In today’s Martin Center article, Professor Scott Yenor looks at the politics of accreditation reform. He writes: “Accreditors often claim to be neutral arbiters who merely measure whether accredited universities meet their own standards. Yet a not-so-deep dive into actual accreditation standards reveals a stacked deck, whereby accreditors ask certain questions and do not ask other questions. The Trump administration promises to challenge the current accreditation system’s transparent political bent with some politics of its own. Reverberations are already being felt across the accreditation system.”

Yenor points out that the federal government has leverage here because the Department of Education has authority to decide which accrediting bodies will be “recognized” to approve or disapprove schools. The fact that the department won’t be in friendly leftist hands has lots of education blob types up in arms — Dean Jackie Gardina, for example. Yenor writes,

In an interview with Inside Higher Ed, Gardina counseled resistance to what she saw as the tyrannical Trump administration: “The proposed revision runs counter to the ‘first rule for combating tyranny — do not obey in advance.’” Gardina thinks DEI initiatives are indispensable to combat “long-standing inequities in higher education and the systemic barriers that exist for students from underrepresented and marginalized communities.”

Our higher-ed system is loaded with such people, true believers in the DEI worldview. They won’t go down without a nasty fight.