New CPHE Accrediting Body Is Illegitimate

The following is a statement from AAUP President and AFT Vice-President Todd Wolfson:

The public comment period has now closed for the proposed quality assurance standards of the Commission for Public Higher Education (CPHE), a new accrediting body that seeks to govern public university systems in Florida, Georgia, North Carolina, Tennessee, and Texas, as well as the University of South Carolina system. Rather than protecting educational quality, the CPHE appears designed to give partisan political actors a powerful new tool to pressure universities to conform to a narrow ideological agenda-backed by the threat of cutting off access to federal student financial aid. Accrediting agencies are supposed to be independent, nongovernmental bodies that ensure the quality and integrity of colleges and universities. Only accredited institutions are eligible to receive students' federal financial aid.

The CPHE's proposed standards are so vague and politicized that they would invite abuse of the accreditation system. They fail to protect the core freedoms to learn, teach, and conduct research-freedoms that are essential to educational quality and scientific innovation. Instead, the standards elevate a vague "intellectual diversity" requirement that appears designed to pressure institutions into teaching unsupported or discredited ideas. Under such a regime, students' ability to develop critical thinking and problem-solving skills would be undermined, not strengthened.

AAUP members submitted more than one hundred individual comments raising these concerns. The AAUP itself did not submit an official comment because doing so risked legitimizing what is, at bottom, an illegitimate enterprise.

Accreditation must remain independent of political control. The CPHE is not. It is an accrediting body conceived by conservative think tanks and advanced by MAGA politicians as part of a broader campaign to remake higher education along ideological lines. During his campaign, President Trump called accreditation his "secret weapon." One of the CPHE's most vocal proponents is Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, who has already led a sweeping assault on academic freedom at New College of Florida and across Florida's public higher education system.

This strategy was laid out plainly in the policy blueprint known as Project 2025, which calls for reshaping federal oversight of higher education and using accreditation as a lever to transform universities. The CPHE represents the next step in that playbook: Weaken independent accreditors, create politically aligned ones, and use them to discipline institutions that refuse to conform to a narrow ideological agenda.

The goal is clear. Because accreditation determines whether institutions can access federal financial aid, a politically captured accreditor can threaten universities with the loss of billions of dollars in student aid if they refuse to toe the political line.

The CPHE therefore represents an attempt to impose the Trump administration's now-defeated Compact for Excellence in Higher Education by other means. That compact sought to tie higher education funding to political loyalty. The danger now is that partisan actors and the donors who back them will attempt to weaponize accreditation itself-punishing institutions that defend academic freedom and rewarding those that comply.

The AAUP will not legitimize such a project. Our students, their families, our profession, and the American public deserve an accreditation system that protects academic freedom, educational quality, and the independence of higher education-not one that subordinates them to political power.