President Trump has made it clear that he intends to make dramatic changes in higher education policy, as he understands that higher ed has been mostly captured by the forces of leftism that use it to advance their collectivistic ideas. Okay, but just what can and should he do?

In today’s Martin Center article, Samuel Negus looks at our accreditation system and identifies three avenues for change.

First, Trump could push through measures to keep accreditors for insisting on various “diversity” policies if colleges want to keep in their good graces. Last year, such a bill passed the House, and Trump could press to get it through to his desk this year.

Second, Trump could advance a number of ideas for outcome-based accreditation. For example: “Other outcomes-based accreditation reforms would hold institutions directly liable for unacceptable student-loan default rates with financial penalties. Glenn Harlan Reynolds proposed such a scheme in The Higher Education Bubble, analogizing the student-loan market to the mortgage industry now subjected to punitive fines under the Dodd-Frank Act.”

Third, how about severing the connection between accreditation and eligibility for federal student aid funds? That cuts the Gordian Knot. Accreditors have proven that they can’t keep colleges from dumbing things down so even the worst students can graduate, so why rely on them at all? Negus writes that AEI’s Michael Brickman “proposes that, in lieu of accrediting-agency audits, Congress should ‘require institutions to protect taxpayers and students by purchasing [private] insurance.’ In fact, accreditors already require colleges to file certified audits of their finances by independent third parties. Why not simply cut out the middleman and have institutions file such audits with the U.S. Treasury Department to qualify as Title IV recipients?” Good question.

Federal higher education policy has been disastrously bad for decades and just maybe that’s going to change.