In President Trump’s war with higher education, Columbia University just became the first to face the nuclear option.
While other schools have also faced devastating funding cuts and new investigations from multiple federal agencies under Trump, the Education Department is now calling for Columbia to lose its accreditation, endangering its access to the entire federal student loan system.
Republicans are cheering Trump on, but for Columbia, which his administration accuses of violating Title VI antidiscrimination laws, the threat is existential.
“It’s often called, colloquially, in higher education, a death sentence, because very few institutions could continue to enroll students, especially lower- and middle-income students, without having those students have the ability to borrow or get grants to go to those schools,” said Jon Fansmith, senior vice president of government relations and national engagement at the American Council on Education.
The college accreditation process is typically one of the most mundane aspects of higher education, involving a federally approved nonpartisan accreditor evaluating every aspect of an institution, from class selections to admission processes. But the accreditor determines if a school is allowed to have access to student aid, including federal loans and Pell Grants.
Columbia costs $71,000 a year for tuition and fees without financial aid, and that doesn’t include room and board. The school notes that 24 percent of its first-year students have Pell Grants.
Without access to aid, Columbia would be inaccessible to most students in the country.
Experts doubt that the accreditor in question, the Middle States Commission on Higher Education, will summarily nix Columbia’s status.
“It is extraordinary for the Department of Education to do something like that, but I also recognize that Middle States is a very serious and professional entity,” said Raymond Brescia, associate dean for research and intellectual life at Albany Law School.
“I am confident that Middle States will take that concern seriously […] if Middle States determines that there is a concern here, then they will work with Columbia to rectify any issues,” he added.
Typically, the Education Department will work with schools to try to correct specific issues before escalating the situation, but the Trump administration and other conservatives contend Columbia has had plenty of time to fix its alleged inaction on antisemitism.
“The question of ‘Gosh, is this too soon?’ I mean, how much longer do we need to wait? What other example of damage or harassment do we need to see before we can tell a university that it needs to comply with the law?” asked Jonathan Butcher, the Will Skillman senior research fellow in education policy at the Heritage Foundation.
The very fight will cost Columbia time and money, even if it is ultimately victorious.
The school said it is “aware of the concerns” the Education Department brought to its accreditor “and we have addressed those concerns directly with Middle States.”
“Columbia is deeply committed to combating antisemitism on our campus. We take this issue seriously and are continuing to work with the federal government to address it,” a spokesperson for the university added.
Columbia and the Trump administration have been engaged in negotiations for months after the federal government pulled $400 million from the university, saying it had failed to adequately confront campus antisemitism.
Instead of fighting like fellow Ivy League member Harvard University, Columbia agreed to many of the demands from the Trump administration, such as changing its disciplinary policies, but the capitulation only led to more funding being pulled.
In recent weeks, friendlier tones were struck after the Trump administration praised Columbia for swiftly shutting down a pro-Palestinian protest at the school’s library.
Nevertheless, Education Secretary Linda McMahon said this week that Columbia has failed to meet its Title VI obligations.
“After Hamas’ October 7, 2023, terror attack on Israel, Columbia University’s leadership acted with deliberate indifference towards the harassment of Jewish students on its campus. This is not only immoral, but also unlawful. Accreditors have an enormous public responsibility as gatekeepers of federal student aid,” McMahon said.
“Just as the Department of Education has an obligation to uphold federal antidiscrimination law, university accreditors have an obligation to ensure member institutions abide by their standards,” she added. “We look forward to the Commission keeping the Department fully informed of actions taken to ensure Columbia’s compliance with accreditation standards including compliance with federal civil rights laws.”
Education experts suspect Columbia will not be the last to see its accreditation threatened.
The president has taken away billions of dollars from universities, threatened to revoke schools’ tax-exempt status and tried to rescind Harvard’s ability to admit and enroll foreign students, along with launching numerous civil rights and Title IX investigations against colleges across the country.
And considering Trump was willing to take this particular step against a university that has been cooperating with his administration, it seems like it could be only a matter of time before Harvard, which has launched two lawsuits against the federal government, will be next.
“The writings on the wall, right? Why would he stop at Columbia? The goal here is to control higher education, because they think that higher education is a threat to their authoritarian rule,” said Todd Wolfson, national president of American Association of University Professors.
“I think the most important point is the people who are getting hurt here are our students and our families across this country. They are the collateral damage here,” he added.
But some highlight another target in this action: accreditors themselves.
On the campaign trail, Trump called accreditors his “secret weapon” against higher education.
In April, he signed an executive order to create more competition among accreditors and make it easier for schools to switch accreditation organizations, saying some accreditors have engaged in “ideological overreach.”
“A big part of this is to intimidate the accreditors, to try to force the administration’s viewpoints, which, again, aren’t really supported by the law,” Fansmith said.
One part is to “scare the institution, come after the institution, but another part of this is to try to force the accreditors to get in line with the administration’s policies. And that is in many ways, just as, if not more, troubling than what they’re trying to do with these institutions,” he added.
