For those impacted, I hope you made it through last week’s weather intact and have found somewhere warm to hunker down if your area is currently in the grips of the latest arctic blast. This week’s issue is a bit shorter, but both pieces are worth lingering on. First, we look at a coordinated effort across higher education institutions and professional organizations to push back against prevailing narratives about the sector’s relevance and value. From there, we dive into a discussion about the upcoming negotiated rule-making process at the Department of Education and what it could mean for higher education accreditation. 

After reading today’s issue, share your thoughts on challenging the narrative about higher education value in the comments! 

Challenging the Value Narrative 

From Their value attacked and funding cut, universities and colleges start fighting back | The Hechinger Report 

The Hechinger Report explores how the higher education sector is challenging narratives questioning its relevance and worth.  

Our Thoughts  

It is about time! For years, higher education has acted like its value is self-evident, as if the public will automatically connect the dots between “college” and “the stuff that makes modern life better.” This reporting shows that the sector is finally trying to speak with a more unified voice to remind people of the benefits higher education provides. In some ways, it reminds me of the signs I see at major constructions projects here in Pennsylvania: “Your tax dollars at work.” These signs help to remind people that improvements to highways are made possible because of the taxes you pay. While people should not need the reminder, they do. When you are asking families and taxpayers to keep investing, you cannot assume they will intuit the return. 

Sometimes, I find myself reminding people of some of the modern conveniences that we take for granted that started at a college or university. The internet is one such example. The early ARPANET nodes included UCLA and other research institutions, and the National Science Foundation’s NSFNET helped move networking from a research backbone to what ultimately became the modern internet. That is not a small thing. Most of us carry that legacy around in our pockets all day, every day, and we rarely connect it back to higher education. 

The part I hope leaders take seriously is that this cannot be only a marketing campaign. Even the folks quoted in the piece acknowledge the tension. You can “tell the story” all you want, but if the price, the experience, and the outcomes feel misaligned, the skepticism will keep regenerating. Public confidence has shown some recent signs of improvement, but it is still nowhere near where it was a decade ago. So yes, tell the story, but do it while also fixing the parts of the product that people are reacting to. 

If you’re reading this and work on a campus, you might be wondering how you can help. As we head into 2026, I encourage institutions to inventory their “public good” stories and make them specific. Not “we do research” or “we help students” but show the human side of your stories. Feature the great outcomes of your work and how they impact your communities, states, or the nation. Also, be ready to join the conversation. All of these campaigns will be imperfect, and that is exactly why practitioners should engage. If you have a strong example, contribute it. If you see a gap, say so. Silence has not been working. It’s time to give voice to our experiences both on campus and in our communities. People should be able to look at the world around them, from medical advances to workforce pipelines to civic life, and see the connective tissue to colleges and universities without needing a decoder ring. If this moment finally pushes the sector to do that work, I am all for it. 

Revisiting Accreditation 

From ED Eyes Rewrite of Accreditation Rules | Inside Higher Ed 

The Department of Education has started the process to rewrite the rules which govern higher education accreditors.  

Our Thoughts  

Accreditation is one of those topics that most people only notice when something has already gone wrong. However, it is the quiet gatekeeper behind federal student aid, and by extension, behind who gets to call themselves a “real” college in the eyes of students and families. So, when the Department of Education signals it wants to rewrite the rules that govern accreditors, this is not nerdy, insider knowledge that only higher ed scholars should pay attention to.  

On the merits, I do think accreditation needs an overhaul. We have decades of evidence that the system has accredited institutions with objectively terrible outcomes, sometimes while serious investigations were already underway. The ACICS saga is a painful example, where an accreditor continued to approve large for-profit chains even as they faced mounting scrutiny, and where accreditation helped keep federal aid flowing until collapse. If accreditation is supposed to be quality assurance, it cannot keep functioning like a rubber stamp with better branding. 

Where I get nervous is the gap between “reform” as a student success project and “reform” as a political project. The department’s current framing is not subtle. In the announced agenda, priorities include easing pathways for new accreditors, increasing emphasis on student outcome benchmarks, and removing DEI-related standards from accreditation. I am not opposed to outcomes. I am opposed to pretending that the hardest parts of student success can be reduced to a handful of federally favored metrics without turning into a compliance game that institutions learn to optimize. 

The push to create new accreditors is the part that sounds market-friendly but may backfire. On paper, more competition can look like a cure for stagnation. In practice, it also enables “accreditor shopping,” where institutions look for the easiest path rather than the most rigorous one. People have been warning about a race to the bottom in accreditation for years, including in the context of loosening geographic limits and easing entry conditions for accreditors. The analogy I immediately think about is food safety. If manufacturers could shop around for inspections, you would not trust the label, because you would not trust the incentives. Accreditation only works if the baseline is credible and consistently enforced. 

If we truly want higher education held to a meaningful standard, the more durable answer is a clearer national framework for accountability, with room for mission differences but not room for nonsense. The problem is that federal law and federal politics make this messy. Even advocates for stronger outcome expectations run into the same constraint: the secretary cannot simply dictate minimum student outcome standards, and any attempt to force benchmarks gets entangled fast. Given the political temperature right now, a national framework risks becoming a pendulum. Institutions cannot build long-term improvement strategies if the definition of “quality” flips every election cycle. 

Accreditation reform is coming whether institutions like it or not. Some of it is overdue. Some of it could be performative. Either way, the sector is going to live with the consequences. The best move we have is to participate where we can, push for reforms that actually protect students, and avoid “solutions” that look innovative but ultimately weaken the only quality backstop most families assume is already doing its job.