Executive Order Tracker: Higher Education Actions
Below are brief analyses of relevant Administrative Actions—including Executive Orders (EOs), Proclamations, Memoranda, and Guidance—issued by President Trump, ordered with the most recent Actions first. Expand each item by clicking on it to learn more.
Every day we are doing in-depth analysis of these Administrative Actions. If you’d like to learn more about what these mean for you and your business, don’t hesitate to contact us regarding higher education Executive Orders, and information for additional subjects can be accessed using the links below.
Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) | Energy | Federal Government | Financial Services | Health Care
Higher Education | Immigration | Trade | Recission of Biden EOs | Additional Recissions | Other EOs
Reforming Accreditation to Strengthen Higher Education
April 23, 2025 — Details ⮟
- Overview: Directs the Secretary of Education to deny, monitor, suspend, or terminate recognition of accreditors that fail to meet established recognition criteria, impose accreditation standards that require or promote unlawful discrimination and diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) mandates, compel member institutions to adopt policies that conflict with state law, or engage in credential inflation that unnecessarily increases student costs.
The order also requires that the Secretary of Education and Attorney General shall:- Investigate and take appropriate action against DEI-based accreditation requirements imposed by the American Bar Association’s Council on Legal Education and Admissions to the Bar, including evaluating the suspension or termination of its recognition status.
- In consultation with the Secretary of Health and Human Services, investigate similar requirements imposed by medical education accreditors, including the Liaison Committee on Medical Education and the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education, and assess whether to suspend or revoke recognition of such agencies.
Additionally, the Secretary of Education shall take appropriate steps and realign accreditation with high-quality, valuable education for students. - Agencies Receiving Instructions: Secretary of Education; Attorney General
- Topics: Higher education; accreditation
- Learn More: Visit The White House website.
Transparency Regarding Foreign Influence at American Universities
April 23, 2025 — Details ⮟
- Overview: Requires the Secretary of Education to take all appropriate actions to enforce 20 U.S.C. 1011f (requires institutions of higher education to report significant sources of foreign funding), including by working with the Attorney General and the heads of other executive departments, agencies, and offices to require complete and timely disclosure by higher education institutions of foreign funding. Specifically requires the Secretary of Education to take appropriate steps to:
- Reverse or rescind any actions by the prior administration that permit higher education institutions to maintain improper secrecy regarding their foreign funding; and
- Require universities to more specifically disclose details about foreign funding (i.e., true source and purpose of the funds).
Also requires that:
- The Secretary of Education must provide Americans with “greater access to information about foreign funding to higher education institutions”;
- The Secretary of Education and the Attorney General must hold higher education institutions accountable that fail to comply with disclosure of foreign funding laws by working with the heads of other executive departments, agencies, and offices to conduct audits and investigations as appropriate and necessary to ensure compliance with disclosure of foreign funding laws and must seek enforcement through appropriate action by the Attorney General.
The Secretary of Education and the heads of other appropriate executive departments and agencies must act to prospectively ensure that certification of compliance by higher education institutions with 20 U.S.C. 1011f and any other applicable foreign funding disclosure requirements “is material for purposes of 31 U.S.C. 3729 and for receipt of appropriate Federal grant funds, which shall not be provided in cases of noncompliance with 20 U.S.C. 1011f and any other applicable foreign funding disclosure requirements.”
- Agencies Receiving Instructions: Secretary of Education; Attorney General
- Topics: Foreign funding
- Learn More: Visit The White House website.
White House Initiative to Promote Excellence and Innovation at Historically Black Colleges and Universities
April 23, 2025 — Details ⮟
- Overview: Establishes the White House Initiative on Historically Black Colleges and Universities (Initiative), housed in the Executive Office of the President and led by an Executive Director designated by the President.
The Initiative shall have two primary missions: - Increasing the private-sector role, including the role of private foundations; and
- Enhancing HBCUs' capabilities to serve young adults.
- Agencies Receiving Instructions: Department of Education; Executive Director of the White House Initiative on Historically Black Colleges and Universities; EPA Administrator
- Topics: HBCUs
- Learn More: Visit The White House website.
Provides that the Initiative must work with executive departments and agencies, the President’s Board of Advisors on Historically Black Colleges and Universities, private-sector employers, educational associations, philanthropic organizations, and other partners to “increase the capacity of [Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs)] to provide the highest-quality education to an increasing number of students.”
Establishes in the Department of Education the President’s Board of Advisors on Historically Black Colleges and Universities (Board). The Board must include representatives of a variety of sectors (e.g., philanthropy, education, business, finance, entrepreneurship, innovation, and private foundations, and current HBCU presidents). Requires the Department of Education to provide funding and administrative support for the Board.
Also requires the Executive Director of the Initiative to submit an annual progress report to the President summarizing the Federal Government’s impact on HBCUs and providing recommendations for improvement.
Revokes Executive Order 14041 of September 3, 2021 (White House Initiative on Advancing Educational Equity, Excellence, and Economic Opportunity
EO 14235: Restoring Public Service Loan Forgiveness
March 7, 2025 — Details ⮟
- Overview: Directs the Secretary of Education to propose revisions to the Public Service Loan Forgiveness Program to ensure the definition of "public service" excludes organizations that engage in "activities that have a substantial illegal purpose."
- Agencies Receiving Instructions: Secretary of Education; Secretary of the Treasury
- Topics: Loan forgiveness; public service
- Learn More: Visit The White House website.
EO 14214: Keeping Education Accessible and Ending COVID-19 Vaccine Mandates in Schools
February 15, 2025 — Details ⮟
- Overview: The Secretary of Education must issue guidelines to elementary schools, local educational agencies, State educational agencies, secondary schools, and institutions of higher education regarding those entities’ legal obligations with respect to “parental authority, religious freedom, disability accommodations, and equal protection under law,” as relevant to “coercive COVID-19 school mandates.”
Within 90 days, the Secretary of Education must provide a plan to the President to end “coercive COVID-19 school mandates.” This plan must include: any proposed legislation; a list of discretionary Federal grants and contracts provided to elementary schools, local educational agencies, State educational agencies, secondary schools, and institutions of higher education that are non-compliant with the guidelines issued pursuant to this EO; and each executive department or agency’s process for preventing Federal funds from being provided to, and rescinding Federal funds from, elementary schools, local educational agencies, State educational agencies, secondary schools, and institutions of higher education that are non-compliant with the guidelines issued pursuant to this EO.
Further provides direction to certain agencies to encourage athletic organizations/governing bodies to promulgate policies consistent with this EO. Directs the Secretary of State to rescind support/participation for certain sports exchanges/programs where the female category is “based on identity and not sex”. Directs the Secretary of State and Secretary of Homeland Security to review and adjust policies regarding the admission of “males seeking to participate in women’s sports” to the US (to the extent permitted by law). - Agencies Receiving Instructions: Secretary of Education; Secretary of HHS; and Assistant to the President for Domestic Policy
- Topics: Health care; COVID-19; vaccines; schools; higher education
- Learn More: Visit The White House website.
EO 14201: Keeping Men Our of Women's Sports
February 5, 2025 — Details ⮟
- Overview: Generally directs the Secretary of Education to prevent transgender women from participating in women’s sports and to “protect . . . all-female locker rooms” thereby “provid[ing] the equal opportunity guaranteed by the Title IX . . . ” Directs the prioritization of Title IX enforcement action against educational institutions that “deny female students an equal opportunity to participate in sports and athletic events by requiring them, in the women’s category, to compete with or against or to appear unclothed before males.”
Directs all executive department and agencies to review grants to educational programs, and if appropriate, rescind funding that do not comply with this EO. Directs the Department of Justice “to ensure expeditious enforcement of the policy established in this order.”
Further provides direction to certain agencies to encourage athletic organizations/governing bodies to promulgate policies consistent with this EO. Directs the Secretary of State to rescind support/participation for certain sports exchanges/programs where the female category is “based on identity and not sex”. Directs the Secretary of State and Secretary of Homeland Security to review and adjust policies regarding the admission of “males seeking to participate in women’s sports” to the US (to the extent permitted by law). - Notes: This EO is subject to a lawsuit filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of New Hampshire (case number: 1:24-cv-251).
Further, section 3(b) of this EO which directs the review of grants to educational programs, and when appropriate rescind funding to programs that fail to comply with the policies in this order, is subject to ongoing litigation in the U.S. District Court for the District of Minnesota (case number 0:25-cv-1608). - Agencies Receiving Instructions: All executive departments and agencies; Secretary of Education, the Department of Justice; Assistant to the President for Domestic Policy; Secretary of State; and Secretary of Homeland Security
- Topics: Gender; sex; sports
- Learn More: Visit The White House website.
EO 14188: Additional Measures to Combat Anti-Semitism
January 29, 2025 — Details ⮟
- Overview: Sets forth that it is the policy of the administration to combat anti-Semitism. Directs various federal agencies to act to promote this policy, including by filing reports on how each agency, identifying all civil and criminal authorities within their jurisdiction, could be used to curb and combat anti-Semitism. The reports must contain an inventory and analysis of all pending administrative complaints against or involving institutions of higher education alleging civil rights violation relating to post-October 7, 2023 campus anti-Semitism.
The Secretary of Education’s report must additionally “include an inventory and an analysis of all Title VI complaints and administrative actions, including in K-12 education, related to anti-Semitism — pending or resolved after October 7, 2023 — within the Department’s Office for Civil Rights.” Additionally, “the Secretary of State, the Secretary of Education, and the Secretary of Homeland Security, in consultation with each other, shall include in their reports recommendations for familiarizing institutions of higher education with the grounds for inadmissibility under 8 U.S.C. 1182(a)(3) so that such institutions may monitor for and report activities by alien students and staff relevant to those grounds and for ensuring that such reports about aliens lead, as appropriate and consistent with applicable law, to investigations and, if warranted, actions to remove such aliens.” - Notes: Sections of this EO are subject a lawsuit filed in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of New York (case number: 3:25-cv-335). The sections of the EO that the suit seeks to enjoin involve allegations that the EO bars non-citizens from engaging in certain types of speech under threat of deportation. Further, a similar suit was filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia (case number: 1:25-cv-1121).
- Agencies Receiving Instructions: All heads of executive departments or agencies, with more specific direction given to the Attorney General, the Secretary of Education, the Secretary of State, and the Secretary of Homeland Security.
- Topics: Education; anti-Semitism
- Learn More: Visit The White House website.
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