Policy & Advocacy
April 23, 2025

Updates on Recent Executive Orders

On April 23, President Donald Trump signed several executive orders (EOs) on education-related issues. You can find all the orders on the White House website. Below, we highlight the most relevant to AASCU members.

Executive Order on Accreditation

We have been expecting this new EO since the administration had been signaling its development. Its text is in line with our expectations of what it would contain. You can read the fact sheet.

  • Intends to hold higher education accreditors accountable, including through denial, monitoring, suspension, or termination for poor performance or violations of the federal Civil Rights Act.
  • Directs the attorney general and the education secretary to investigate and terminate unlawful discrimination by American higher education institutions, including law schools and medical schools.
  • The order mandates the education secretary to realign accreditation with student-focused principles by:
    • Resuming recognition of new accreditors to foster competition.
    • Requiring institutions use program-level student outcome data to improve results, without reference to race, ethnicity, or sex.
    • Requiring high-quality, high-value academic programs.
    • Prioritizing intellectual diversity among faculty in order to advance academic freedom, intellectual inquiry, and student learning.
    • Launching an experimental site to test innovative quality assurance pathways.
    • Increasing the consistency, efficiency, and effectiveness of the accreditor recognition review process.
    • Streamlining accreditor recognition and institutional transitions between accreditors.

Executive Order on HBCU Initiative

  • This reestablishes the previous White House Initiative on HBCUs.
  • It also reestablished in the Department of Education the President’s Board of Advisors on Historically Black Colleges and Universities.

Executive Order on Artificial Intelligence (AI)

  • It sets the policy of the United States to promote AI literacy and proficiency among Americans by promoting the appropriate integration of AI into education, providing comprehensive AI training for educators, and fostering early exposure to AI concepts and technology to develop an AI-ready workforce and the next generation of American AI innovators.

Executive Order on Workforce Development

  • It sets the policy of the United States to optimize and target federal investments in workforce development to align with our country’s reindustrialization needs and equip American workers to fill the growing demand for skilled trades and other occupations.

As a reminder, EOs do not carry the weight of law, but are intended to signal to relevant federal agencies what their policy priorities must be. They also indicate to Congress the need to amend existing law or create new ones to accomplish the EOs’ purpose. AASCU will continue to engage the administration and Congress as accreditation reform efforts are established.