(Washington, D.C.) – The Trump administration is waging war on colleges and universities by defunding schools, asserting authoritarian control, delegitimizing higher education, and sending ICE to terrorize campuses, hitting low-income, undocumented, and DACA students the hardest. This will have a devastating impact on students, faculty, and all the workers who make every campus work, as well as the surrounding community.
Now, Trump is weaponizing Title IV student aid and attempting to change the way colleges are accredited, which would negatively affect a university’s ability to receive Pell Grants, work-study, and federal loans. Losing these crucial federal dollars, even for a semester, could push millions of students out of school and make college unaffordable for families.
In response to draft rules for accreditation, Ethan Rome, National Director of the Emergency Campaign to Support Higher Education, released the following statement:
“The Department of Education’s accreditation committee has been hijacked by the President to weaponize financial aid to force institutions to comply with his political demands about what colleges can teach and what students and faculty can say.
This is a direct attack on the $275.1 billion in federal financial aid that more than half of our nation’s students depend on to attend college, and it’s a frontal assault on the best system of higher education in the world.
The proposed accreditation rules would politicize the accreditation process and rob millions of students of a college education, and saddle millions more with crushing student loan debt.
At a time when our country is reeling from soaring gas, electricity, food, and health care costs, we should be lowering the costs of going to college for students and their families, not making it more expensive.”
How They Are Going To Change the Accreditation Process
- Accreditation changes: New rules may tie curriculum, governance, and campus services to ideological litmus tests similar to the 2025 “Compact for Academic Excellence.”
- Funding leverage: The federal government may withhold Title IV aid from select institutions to force the adoption of these politically motivated policies.
- System for Award Management (SAM) certification updates: SAM is a process whereby institutions certify their eligibility for federal funding. Proposed changes could require institutions to comply with anti-DEI–aligned language to remain eligible for federal funding.
About the Emergency Campaign to Support Higher Education
The Emergency Campaign to Support Higher Education is a national coalition founded to oppose the Trump Administration’s assault on higher education and fight for free public college and increased support for higher education of every kind, including universities, community colleges, and vocational and technical schools.
We are reimagining a higher education system that is equitable and accessible to all, whether at a university, community college, vocational school, or technical school. So when people talk about affordability and the struggle for a better life in America, that conversation must include higher education.
- Responding with a United Pushback Against Illegal Threats and Terrorizing Our Communities. We call on colleges and universities to resist bullying from federal and state authorities that undermines diversity, equity, inclusion, academic freedom, shared governance, and institutional autonomy.
- Fighting to Make Affordable, Accessible, and High Quality College (and other post-secondary education & training) a Key Political Issue in the National Debate. We seek to make post-secondary education a major issue in the 2026 and 2028 elections when the public is paying attention to big policy issues.” College communities should be a powerful voting bloc, and candidates must campaign on bold education agendas that address affordability and opportunity.
- Building Organized Power Winning against attacks on higher education requires strong campus structures — chapters, committees, coordinating teams — that engage more people in shaping the future of colleges and universities and foster coalition-building across constituencies.