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Six state university systems are going to form a new accrediting body, Florida governor Ron DeSantis announced in a Thursday morning press conference at Florida Atlantic University.
At the event, DeSantis bemoaned liberal and unproductive faculty members and what he views as spineless administrators unwilling to crack down on disruptive student behavior before ultimately turning to what he saw as an “accreditation cartel” that he cast as undercutting efforts at reform, calling out past clashes with accreditors in response to actions by state universities.
“Who are these accreditors? Did you elect these accreditors to anything?” DeSantis asked.
After a roughly 30-minute broadside against what he saw as the failings of higher education broadly and the accreditation system in particular, the Republican governor announced that Florida was moving forward with a new accreditor, to be named the Commission for Public Higher Education.
Public systems joining the State University System of Florida as partners are the University System of Georgia, University of North Carolina System, University of South Carolina, University of Tennessee System, and the Texas A&M University System. All those systems are in states that voted for Donald Trump in 2024.
DeSantis emphasized the importance of moving quickly; he said he wanted to see the new accreditor approved during the Trump administration because of concerns about how the next president could potentially slow or undermine efforts to launch the new accrediting body.
The launch of a new accreditor comes after at least a year of talks between Florida and UNC system officials, as public records reported on by Inside Higher Ed earlier this month showed, and the announcement comes after Florida and North Carolina both clashed with the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools Commission on Colleges in recent years, prompting them to look for new accreditors.
In 2022, Florida’s Legislature passed a law requiring state institutions to switch accreditors regularly, which came a year after SACS raised concerns about an attempt by the University of Florida to bar faculty from testifying against the state in a legal case challenging voting-rights restrictions. SACS also probed a potential conflict of interest at Florida State University where then–state education commissioner and Florida Board of Governors member Richard Corcoran emerged as a candidate for FSU’s presidency. (Corcoran now leads the public New College of Florida.)
Then, in early 2023, SACS raised questions about shared governance concerns at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Later that year, North Carolina lawmakers slipped a provision into a budget bill, with no debate, that required state institutions to change accreditors.
Florida also filed a federal lawsuit in 2023 challenging the constitutionality of accreditation, alleging organizations such as SACS wield “near limitless power over state institutions.” However, those claims were rejected by a judge, who dismissed the lawsuit in fall 2024.
Following that clash, Florida and North Carolina are set to go their own way on accreditation, pending a lengthy federal recognition process.
(This is a developing story and will be updated.)
