Universities and other institutions of higher learning are on a concerning trajectory. Public trust in these institutions has dropped precipitously, with only 36 percent of respondents in 2024 Gallup polling expressing “a great deal” or “quite a lot” of confidence in them—down from 57 percent in 2015. Employers of fresh college graduates are also finding themselves unimpressed with the level of preparedness for professional life found in these new hires.

General public sentiment seems to indicate a decline in quality of the product offered by these institutions. Yet, at the same time, college tuition has been inflating at an average rate of eight percent per year, and administrative bloat at these same universities has been markedly outpacing both the hiring of new faculty and the enrollment of new students. The focus on administrative hiring in the face of declining public trust suggests either that leadership in these institutions believes more administrators will fix the problem, that they haven’t identified a problem in the first place, or that their focus is something other than providing a product that will be useful to their customers.

On the consumer side, one would think that—given the decrease in appeal of attending these universities—market forces would move the cash flow away from them and towards other actors in the education sector that were doing the job better. But there exists a tool which can prevent this voluntary transfer of patronage from ever happening—accreditation.

Accreditation is—at least nominally—a means of ensuring the quality of a particular institution, and was introduced as such as part of the Higher Education Act of 1965. It is not afforded by any federal agency directly. Rather, the Department of Education has the role of selecting and authorizing private accrediting agencies which, in turn, are enabled to give or not give accreditation, bound only by 34 C.F.R. § 602 Subpart B.

Intent is difficult to prove in this case, largely due to the obfuscation of precise criteria for accreditation. This would be needed in order to determine how accrediting agencies shape the higher education market with their standards and policies. Further, this information would be necessary to determine if and how the members of agency boards benefit from the results of applying their policies. Publicly-available policies are vague enough for a wide variety of interpretations. Public records of how those policies are interpreted and applied to new applicants are scarce, at best. The laws and regulations which create the niche for these accrediting agencies in the first place and bestow upon them the power to decide which institutions can benefit from taxpayer money fail to provide adequate safeguards against the misuse of the very power they have bestowed.

Accrediting agencies have the means to cause damage to the higher education system thanks to the power they have over money flow in the space, and they have a motive to do so if it would make life easier or more lucrative for the majority of their decision making boards who work at the universities. The fact that higher education as a whole has suffered damage is well-documented and widely observed, and the alibi of the accreditation cartel is raising serious questions.