While 2025 may be in the rearview mirror, the policy upheaval that defined the year is not. Higher education experts warn that more disruption lies ahead as the Trump administration continues efforts to reshape the sector, wielding tools ranging from civil rights investigations to regulatory changes.
College leaders should brace for more federal government pressure, including through novel avenues, such as accreditation. And they should also expect continued attacks on diversity, equity and inclusion efforts.
Below, we’re rounding up four big policy shifts we’ll be watching — and some expert predictions on how they’ll unfold — for the year ahead.
Accreditation steps into a limelight it’s not used to
On the campaign trail, President Donald Trump called college accreditors a “secret weapon” in a war against a higher education system he painted as being rife with “Marxists maniacs,” an unfamiliar level of scrutiny for the field.
“It’s not just unusual for Trump, but unusual for any presidential campaign to have a whole speech dedicated to accreditation,” said Jon Fansmith, senior vice president for government relations at the American Council on Education. “It’s generally kind of a quiet corner of policy.”
As president, Trump signed an executive order in April to reopen reviews of new accreditors at the U.S. Department of Education while blasting existing accreditors’ DEI standards. The order mandated that accreditors require institutions to use program data on student outcomes “without reference to race, ethnicity, or sex.”
At the same time, the order called for requiring “intellectual diversity” in faculty — a term left undefined in the order but often used as code on the right for hiring more conservatives.
The Education Department followed up with guidance aimed at easing the path for colleges seeking to switch accreditors and plans to reshape accreditation regulations this spring.
Beyond policymaking, the Trump administration has occasionally sought to pressure institutions through their accreditors.
In July, two federal agencies notified Harvard University’s accreditor that the Ivy League institution may no longer meet its accreditation standards.
That was based on the administration’s claims that Harvard was “deliberately indifferent” to the harassment of Jewish and Israeli students on its campus — claims that a federal judge has found failed to justify funding freezes the government deployed to pressure policy changes at Harvard.
The administration used a similar tactic with Columbia University’s accreditor, prior to inking a deal with the university to settle its Title VI investigations.
Some accreditors have made changes favored by the Trump administration. The WASC Senior College and University Commission, New England Commission of Higher Education and American Psychological Association have permanently or temporarily dropped DEI standards for institutions.
The stakes for institutional and academic independence are high. “They’ve been trying to force institutions to adopt policies and make choices that align with their viewpoints, and that’s a big problem,” Fansmith said. He added that the country has never used accreditors “as a tool for implementing the political views of the party in power.”
More practical questions hang in the air about the Trump administration’s plans, including its push to recognize new accreditors.
“Would they have the same standards applied to them as they would for other accreditors?” asked Nasser Paydar, president of the Council for Higher Education Accreditation, which lobbies for the sector. “That’s a big unknown.”
He noted that accreditors would welcome additional competition given the size of the higher ed field. “There’s room for it
Paydar also pointed to the administration’s emphasis on student and graduate outcomes.
“The department is indicating they want to make sure accreditors focus on student outcomes. It’s wonderful,” he said. But he also pointed to different student outcomes among different types of colleges and programs. The country needs teachers and social workers, for example, but they tend to earn less.
Specifics about how the administration plans to incorporate outcome standards into accreditation remains unknown. “We want to find out as to how they’re planning to do this because whatever that is is going to influence how universities behave and going forward,” Paydar said.
Expect more Title VI attacks
Title VI investigations have become a favorite tool of the second Trump administration to extract money and policy changes from universities. The law bars federally funded institutions from discriminating based on race, color or national origin.
The administration has used Title VI to pursue claims of antisemitism, many of them centered on allegations that the institutions did not respond forcefully enough to pro-Palestinian protests and complaints from Jewish students.
The government under Trump has also used Title VI in an aggressive campaign against diversity, equity and inclusion efforts.
Over the course of 2025, six colleges struck deals with the Trump administration — most of them involving payment to the government and a suite of policy changes to resolve Title VI investigations by one or, frequently, multiple federal agencies.
Facing a similar set of accusations, Harvard fought back and sued the administration. In September, a federal court ruled that the government’s freezing of $2.2 billion in research funding was unlawful and didn’t follow proper procedures.
U.S. District Judge Allison Burroughs ruled that the evidence in the case did not “reflect that fighting antisemitism was Defendants’ true aim in acting against Harvard,” adding, “Even if it were, combatting antisemitism cannot be accomplished on the back of the First Amendment.”
Across the country, another federal judge penned an even more scathing rebuke to the administration in a case brought by a coalition of faculty groups and unions over the administration’s Title VI investigations into University of California institutions.
In issuing a preliminary injunction, U.S. District Judge Rita Lin concluded that the administration couldn’t withhold research funding over the investigation. She described the administration’s “playbook of initiating civil rights investigations of preeminent universities to justify cutting off federal funding,” with the aim of “forcing them to change their ideological tune.”
But the administration has continued inking deals with colleges even after court setbacks and hasn’t shown any sign of letting up on its aggressive tactics.
“They clearly seem to think that targeted investigations that freeze research funding is an effective tool, so it seems likely we’ll see more,” Fansmith said.
While he noted that the Education Department has gutted its Office for Civil Rights, reducing its capacity to conduct Title VI investigations, Fansmith said “they don’t seem to care all that much about doing thorough investigations that follow the law.”
“Their interest seems to be far more on generating headlines and scaring schools,” he added.
What’s next for federal research funding?
It would be an understatement to say that federal research funding was turbulent last year.
Together, the National Institutes of Health and the National Science Foundation canceled or suspended over 7,800 grants throughout 2025, according to a January analysis from Nature. Many of the affected grants focused on topics the Trump administration opposes, such as research related to DEI or vaccine hesitancy.
While federal judges ordered the Trump administration to restore canceled grants in some cases — and a handful of colleges have struck deals to regain access to their frozen federal research in others — roughly 2,600 grants have not been reinstated, according to Nature’s findings. Those grants represent $1.6 billion in unspent federal research funding.
Moreover, both NIH and NSF awarded about a quarter fewer grants in 2025 compared to their 10-year average, the publication found. And the Trump administration has also attempted — so far, unsuccessfully — to cap reimbursement for research overhead to 15%, a move that would threaten tens of millions of funding for many research universities.
Many well-heeled colleges have made dramatic moves to adjust to the new landscape. The University of Chicago, Georgetown University, the University of Michigan, Boston University, Harvard and others have said they will accept fewer Ph.D. students — or suspend entry into some programs altogether — amid the uncertain funding environment.
“When we look back on 2025, it was a year filled with a lot of uncertainty, whether that was in the form of spending freezes, canceling funds, canceling grants that were already approved,” said Travis York, director of the Center for STEMM Education & Workforce at the American Association for the Advancement of Science.
Yet there have been some positive signs for research funding early this year.
Congressional lawmakers have moved to reject the Trump administration’s proposal to make vast cuts to scientific research funding in fiscal 2026. They have advanced bipartisan bills that would instead provide $188.3 billion in total scientific research funding — 21.3% more than the administration requested.
Additionally, York said the Trump administration has begun clarifying its funding priorities. “We’re seeing greater clarity even within science research and education funding, where the current administration is really looking to invest,” York said.
That includes interest in semiconductors, artificial intelligence, biotechnology and quantum research, York said, adding that he encourages researchers to look for those opportunities.
“It’s really, really important that researchers are putting forth proposals during these times of transition,” York said. “It’s really important that we’re still trying to utilize funds, think innovatively and think about how we bolster the scientific community with the resources that are available.
DOJ’s campaign against in-state tuition for undocumented students
Trump has prioritized ending in-state tuition rates for undocumented students in his second administration, signing an April executive order directing the head of the U.S. Department of Justice to target state laws that provide in-state tuition to noncitizens but not to out-of-state American citizens.
Just over a month later, the DOJ sued Texas, the first state in the country to offer in-state tuition to undocumented students.
The agency has since sued six other states over their policies granting certain undocumented students eligibility for in-state tuition: California, Illinois, Kentucky, Minnesota, Oklahoma, and Virginia. With at least a dozen other states offering undocumented students similar benefits, more lawsuits could be looming.
While each policy has different eligibility requirements for undocumented students to receive in-state tuition, DOJ leaders have argued in every lawsuit that the states are illegally offering them benefits that are not available to all U.S. citizens.
Reactions from states have varied widely but predictably — officials in Republican strongholds have sided with the Trump administration, while those from blue or purple states have promised to fight the Trump administration in court.
In Texas, Republican Attorney General Ken Paxton filed a joint motion with the Trump administration to end the policy, and a federal judge struck down the law only hours after the lawsuit was filed.
But the lawsuits in other states have been less clear cut.
Democratic officials in California, Illinois and Minnesota have defended their states’ laws and mounted legal counterattacks.
In Oklahoma and Kentucky, state officials filed joint motions with the DOJ to strike down their states’ policies. The federal judge in Oklahoma’s case signed off later the same month.
In Kentucky, however, the judge hasn’t approved the tentative agreement reached between the head of the state’s higher ed council and the DOJ.
Even so, law firm Steptoe & Johnson in October advised Kentucky colleges to prepare for the in-state tuition policy to be struck down. That would include advising impacted students and updating communications regarding financial aid.
The following month, U.S. District Judge Gregory Van Tatenhove allowed a Kentucky student group, represented by Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund, a Latino civil rights nonprofit, to defend the state’s tuition policy.
MALDEF had sought to intervene in Texas’ case after the judge had already struck down the law. But the judge denied the group’s motion.
One of the most unusual cases thus far has been in Virginia, thanks to a change in state leadership.
The day after the DOJ sued Virginia, the state’s Attorney General Jason Miyares filed a joint motion siding with the agency, following a similar path as Paxton.
Miyares, a Republican, lost his reelection campaign in November and left office the week after filing the motion. State Democrats, including his incoming replacement Jay Jones, and student advocates rebuked Miyares’ attempt to revoke the six-year-old law.
Three days after Jones was sworn in as state attorney general, his office withdrew Miyares’ joint motion. It also withdrew the former attorney general’s opposition to third-party intervention in the case, easing the path for Virginia students to defend the state law.