Education Secretary Linda McMahon appointed on Tuesday five new members to the National Advisory Committee on Institutional Quality and Integrity, a body that advises on accreditation, including which organizations should be recognized by the federal government.
A sixth member is expected to be appointed later, according to the Department of Education. The five members announced on Tuesday are below:
—Robert Eitel is president of the Defense of Freedom Institute, a conservative think tank. Eitel previously served as senior counselor to the Secretary of Education from 2017 through 2020, during the first Trump administration, and as Deputy General Counsel of the U.S. Department of Education from 2005 until 2009. Eitel has a background in for-profit education, serving past stints at for-profit college operators Bridgepoint Education Inc. and Career Education Corp.
—Joshua Figueira is currently the deputy general counsel and managing director of the Office of Compliance, Risk, and Legal Affairs at Brigham Young University–Idaho. Prior to joining BYU-Idaho in 2017, he worked on First Amendment and religion issues at Utah law firm, Kirton McConkie.
—Jay Greene is a senior research fellow for the Center for Education Policy at the Heritage Foundation. Greene previously taught at the University of Arkansas, University of Texas at Austin, and the University of Houston and also worked for The Manhattan Institute for a decade. He is a school choice advocate and frequent critic of diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives.
—Steven Taylor is the policy director and senior fellow in economic mobility at Stand Together Trust. Taylor also serves on the State Council for Higher Education for Virginia. His past posts include almost six years at the American Council on Education. Taylor has argued that the current accreditation model needs an overhaul and “rewards compliance over performance, fails to track outcomes, and leaves students burdened with debt and weak returns” among other concerns.
—Emilee Reynolds is a student at Western Carolina University.
The Higher Education Act dictates that ED appoints six of 18 total NACIQI members while Congress names the other 12. The department cast its most recent picks as reformers needed to help fix a broken accreditation system in a Tuesday news release.
“Americans recognize that the accreditation process needs reform to better serve students and families, and the Trump Administration is addressing this, in part, through these reform-minded appointees,” Under Secretary Nicholas Kent said in the news release announcing the new members.
Kent said he was confident the appointees will help the administration “realign the accreditations system and get it back on track.”
“We can no longer accept a protectionist system in which a few powerful non-governmental entities gatekeep billions in federal student aid and licensure opportunities, overlook poor student outcomes, contribute to rising college costs and degree inflation, and prioritize divisive DEI standards over the skills students need to compete in the next-generation workforce,” he said.
NACIQI’s next meeting is scheduled for December 16. The meeting was originally scheduled for July but pushed to October, and was then delayed again because of the government shutdown.
