How the Right Twists Accreditation

This analysis is part of Mythbusting Accreditation, a written and multimedia series from New America’s Education Policy program. It features insights from experts across multiple fields to cut through false narratives about a crucial higher education accountability system.

In March, The New York Post published a headline about how the U.S. Department of Education was threatening to punish college accreditors that didn’t dispense with their diversity, equity, and inclusion policies.

“$20B on the line” warned the piece—which at first blush seems like an odd inclusion in Robert Murdoch’s hyper-conservative tabloid, best known for trafficking in celebrity spectacle and gossip.

But for the last few years, conservative-aligned media like the Post have increasingly misrepresented the issue of accreditation, bolstering a GOP campaign to politicize nonpartisan regulators. Right-wing outlets have taken cues from some of the most prominent Republicans in the country as they began publicly thrashing accreditors—including Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida, and President Donald Trump, both of whom have pushed to conform American higher education to a conservative vision.

Republicans have branded accreditors as partially culpable for diversity policies. This has stirred their base’s anger and doubt against the accreditation system, which has little familiarity selling itself to a public that is only vaguely aware of its existence. 

Accreditors serve an integral purpose, though. They evaluate colleges to decide whether their operations are healthy enough to access the $120 billion in student financial aid the Education Department distributes every year. Most colleges need that money to keep their doors open. Essentially, accreditors help keep the lifeblood of higher education flowing.

Because by and large, accreditors are hidden in their role, Republicans can present them hand-in-glove with DEI efforts (and other aspects of higher education conservatives don’t like). It’s a knowledge gap the GOP, and by extension their friendly media, is exploiting. If conservatives are made to broadly detest the accreditation framework, then few of them will complain if the Trump administration were to take a policy wrecking ball to it. 

And one is coming, a “revolution,” as the Trump administration’s top higher education official characterized it in an interview last year. This revolution seemingly tees off next month, when the Education Department will begin rewriting regulations governing accreditors. The department will likely move to ban accreditors from enforcing DEI-related rules, and also may loosen requirements for new ones to become gatekeepers of federal aid. 

With these sweeping changes to accreditation coming down, it’s critical to understand how vast swaths of Americans are learning about it. 

Below, we break down a sampling of right-wing coverage of accreditation over the past five years. We found misrepresentations and falsehoods about accreditation surfaced regularly in coverage, and that mainstream conservative outlets began writing more about accreditation in the last couple of years, as political attacks around the topic intensified. This commentary draws on a review of articles identified through Boolean searches in Google News and Media Cloud. These pieces were published between January 2021 and December 2025 across right-aligned news outlets.

Academics Block DeSantis Nominee in Florida (Breitbart, 2021)

Around 2021, DeSantis began a conservative takeover of Florida higher education, loudly broadcasting his vision in part to lay groundwork for his eventual presidential run. He has since installed far-right voices and his loyalists onto several campus governing boards and in presidencies.

But as he set about reshaping state higher education, he ran up against the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools Commission on Colleges, or SACSCOC, the primary accreditor of Florida’s public campuses. DeSantis at the time attempted to hand one of his deputies the open Florida State University president job—but the would-be executive also sat on the board that would approve his hiring. 

This was a clear conflict, which led SACSOC to inquire about the presidential search. DeSantis’ ally ultimately didn’t land the position. This wasn’t an unusual step an accreditor might take, as part of their role is to protect colleges from political interference. 

That’s not how Breitbart, the far-right online news source, presented the facts. Its headline suggested SACSOC was squarely to blame for DeSantis’ pick not getting the job—SACSOC had “blocked” him from the role, the headline read. 

SACSOC’s policies don’t allow it to dictate hiring, though, and the accreditor never punished Florida State for the episode. When accreditors do sanction colleges, the process is not immediate, and often allows for institutions to appeal decisions. 

The piece goes on to quote the late conservative activist Charlie Kirk, who argued “leftists” had weaponized accreditation to lock in their preferred presidential candidates. 

Kirk did not explain how the left could hijack the accreditation process, because it never happened. By law, no elected official or government agency has the power to force accreditors to act in a certain way or adopt certain policies. Ironically, the Trump administration is actually doing now what Kirk accused the left of: pressuring accreditors. The U.S. Department of Education’s top higher education official recently ordered two accreditors to remove diversity, equity, and inclusion standards—a government actor dictating to accreditors. 

How Joe Biden Will Open The Floodgates To Transgendering Public Schools (The Federalist, 2021)

A 2021 essay published in The Federalist contains no real or meritorious policy discussion, only serving to stir panic that the Biden administration would try to “indoctrinate” children to supporting transgender people. 

But the piece is worth calling out on accreditation, because Joy Pullman, the author and one of the conservative website’s top editors, uses the concept to fear monger. Pullman writes, without evidence, that accreditors control college curricula and campus environments. 

Accreditors require “institutionalized racism and sexism such as through quotas,” Pullman says. “It can also be used to force schools to transgender students.”

Linking accreditors and transgender students makes no sense. But it’s not supposed to—the words are just supposed to scare. Conservatives have broadly demonized trans people, and lumping a little-understood topic like accreditation in with them is meant to sour public sentiment on the system. 

This is a common tactic on the right, Melissa Ryan, a disinformation expert and writer of the newsletter Ctrl Alt-Right Delete, told me, to inflame and spark an outrage cycle over unknown concepts like accreditation. 

Biden vs. DeSantis: The Unknown Clash (National Review, Aug. 2022)

An opinion piece in the National Review, a well-respected magazine in conservative circles, acknowledges the obscurity of accreditation. But that’s where the truth ends— the author, Stanley Kurtz of the Ethics and Public Policy Center, only goes on to reinforce the common mischaracterizations of the topic. 

In walking through the saga between DeSantis and SACSOC, he derides the accreditor as a bunch of “faceless bureaucrats” who have “the power to kill off any serious campaign of university reform.”

Kurtz goes on to depict them as wielding extraordinary influence over university operations. He referenced another dust-up with SACSOC, in which it raised concerns of political interference that former Trump agriculture secretary Sonny Purdue was being named chancellor of the University System of Georgia.

This “undermined” his candidacy, Kurtz writes. 

“Accreditors — who are supposed to be apolitical — can abuse their daunting powers by deploying them to protect the illiberal regime that currently governs America’s college campuses,” Kurtz writes in another section of the piece.

But there’s a major problem with Kurtz’s argument of an all-powerful accreditor. It never derailed Florida’s or Georgia’s plans. Richard Corcoran, who was up for the Florida State presidency, eventually ended up leading New College of Florida, where he has three times received an annual bonus of $200,000. Purdue, a former Georgia governor, became the chancellor. 

If accreditors were such effective policy shills for the left, or wielded the sweeping power Kurtz suggests they possess, these episodes would have played out differently. Accreditors set broad standards—on governance, finances, and academic quality—but they can’t push through or remove college leaders. At most, accreditors can flag concerns (like political interference) and ask institutions to demonstrate compliance with their standards.

Southern states join forces to break free from ‘woke accreditation cartels’ (Fox News, 2025)

Burgess Owens introduces bill codifying protections for schools against DEI mandates (Washington Examiner, 2025)

In the present day, the Trump administration has begun rewiring the accreditation system. And so of course, news outlets would follow as Republicans make actual policy moves around the subject.

Still, it’s striking that outlets like Fox News and Washington Examiner, mainstream, legacy publications, in the last year have continually written about the minutiae of accreditation. It suggests these types of stories play with their conservative audiences. 

Neither of these pieces contain ludicrous claims about accreditation, but nor do they challenge the falsehoods that policymakers circulate on the topic. 

Fox News’ story, which outlines how DeSantis is helping spearhead a new accreditor, uses his descriptor of the system—“woke cartels—in the headline. Most of the piece is just devoted to his remarks.

And The Washington Examiner seemingly just rewrote a press release from one congressman’s office after he introduced legislation that forbade accreditors from imposing political viewpoints on colleges they oversee.

Even if news outlets aren’t explicitly trying to circulate lies about accreditation, they are amplifying the Republican framing of the system, which helps sustain a broader ecosystem of misinformation and confusion about accreditation.

Closing Thoughts

Conservatives, aided by sympathetic media, have successfully elevated accreditation as a policy flashpoint. 

As the Trump administration moves to rewrite accreditation rules, a process that invites public input, that very public likely understands accreditors through flawed and partisan portrayals.

A system designed to operate outside of political control should not be debated and reshaped through a lens of misinformation.

It’s insidious: a campaign built on false accusations that accreditors were politicized, which paved the way for actual government interference. The Trump administration should keep the separation between accreditors and the federal government intact. 

Accreditation was conceived to make sure taxpayer money, often supporting society’s most vulnerable students, only reaches colleges that meet basic standards.

It’s also possible that if the Trump administration recognizes low-quality or potentially predatory accreditors, it will invite a race to the bottom. Colleges will gravitate toward new accreditors with fewer rules, while the existing ones will weaken their own standards to remain competitive. 

In this environment, accreditation no longer functions as a consumer protection, it is a tool bent for political ends.