A year ago, the Trump administration's higher education strategy looked like a series of individual sieges — Harvard, Columbia, Penn, UCLA, each targeted one at a time. That phase appears to be over. According to a major Associated Press investigation published this week, the administration has pivoted to something broader: rewriting the federal rules that bind every institution receiving federal money, from the most prestigious research university to the smallest community college.

Three simultaneous rule changes define the new strategy. The Education Department is advancing a sweeping accreditation overhaul (detailed in Story 5) that would require institutions to demonstrate "intellectual diversity." The Office of Management and Budget is proposing that all federal grants must advance the President's stated policy priorities — meaning grant reviewers would verify that funded projects don't promote DEI, "anti-American values," or anything rejecting what the administration calls "the sex binary." The General Services Administration is simultaneously pushing a rule that would require all federal grant recipients, including universities and their contractors, to certify they don't maintain DEI policies the administration deems unlawful.

The practical effect, if these rules are finalized, would be to embed the administration's ideological priorities into the funding infrastructure of American research. Education Department Under Secretary Nicholas Kent confirmed the intent plainly: "We're coming over the higher education system and course correcting." Even as university coalitions and the AAUP continue to win individual court battles, the regulatory pipeline is moving forward on a timetable largely independent of ongoing litigation.

In the final days of May, the Department of Justice filed its second lawsuit of 2026 against the University of California system over antisemitism at UCLA. The first suit, filed earlier this year, alleged a hostile work environment for Jewish faculty under Title VII. The new complaint escalates to the student population, alleging that UCLA created a hostile educational environment for Jewish and Israeli students during the pro-Palestinian encampment protests that followed the Hamas attack of October 7, 2023.

The lawsuit's allegations are graphic: it claims protesters used "human phalanxes" to block Jewish students from accessing buildings, that individuals were attacked with sticks and pepper spray, and that at least one Jewish student was allegedly knocked unconscious. An internal UCLA survey cited in the complaint found that nearly 60 percent of Jewish students reported spending less time on campus due to pervasive antisemitism, and more than 40 percent considered leaving the school entirely.

The legal and financial pressure is compounding fast. The Trump administration has now suspended $584 million in federal grants to UCLA over the antisemitism claims. UCLA, notably, is one of the few schools that successfully challenged an earlier round of funding freezes in court — the AAUP won an injunction that restored some research money. But with the second lawsuit filed, the administration has signaled that winning one legal battle does not end the campaign. Harvard faces similar ongoing pressure: the DOJ sued Harvard in March for antisemitism, compounding the $2.6 billion research funding dispute that has dragged through federal courts since early 2025.

The National Student Clearinghouse Research Center released its final Spring 2026 enrollment data this week, and the summary number looks reassuring: total postsecondary enrollment rose 1.0 percent to 18.6 million students. Undergraduate enrollment was up 1.3 percent, reaching 15.5 million. Community colleges continue to grow strongly, now enrolling 5.8 million students — 5.2 percent above their spring 2021 levels. Certificate programs, reflecting a clear labor-market orientation, surged 10.2 percent.

But graduate enrollment tells a different story. The total held essentially flat at 3.1 million — a 0.1 percent decline — but the composition of that number matters. Students pursuing master's degrees specifically fell 1.3 percent, representing 26,000 fewer candidates than last spring, a trend that has been building since master's enrollment peaked in fall 2024. The most alarming subcomponent: international graduate enrollment dropped 4.3 percent to approximately 148,000 students nationwide. At public four-year institutions, international graduate enrollment fell 9.2 percent.

Clearinghouse Senior Director Matthew Holsapple noted that enrollment growth "has been concentrated in a somewhat narrow set of places" — public institutions and certificate programs, primarily. Private nonprofit four-year enrollments showed little change, and Computer and Information Sciences, one of the fastest-growing undergraduate fields of the past decade, saw a notable decline. The pattern reinforces what higher education researchers have been predicting: a bifurcated system where the top of the market thrives and the middle continues to compress.

What began as a pandemic-era accommodation has now officially reversed at the most selective tier of American higher education. Princeton confirmed it will return to mandatory SAT/ACT testing starting with the 2027–2028 admissions cycle, joining Harvard, Dartmouth, Brown, Cornell, Penn, Yale (test-flexible), MIT, Caltech, Stanford, and Georgetown as schools that have formally ended their test-optional experiments. Columbia remains the sole Ivy holdout, maintaining a test-optional policy for now. But the trend is unmistakable: across more than 60 colleges and university systems, standardized testing is required again.

The stated rationale is consistent across institutions. Schools from MIT to Dartmouth have published internal research finding that standardized test scores — combined with transcript, course rigor, and context — are stronger predictors of academic success than grades alone, particularly in identifying high-potential students from lower-resourced high schools whose achievements might otherwise be masked. Dartmouth's reversal was especially influential: the university argued publicly that test-optional admissions had made it harder to find strong first-generation applicants, a counterintuitive finding that shifted the equity argument from opposing testing to supporting it.

For families, the strategic implications are immediate. A current 10th grader applying to selective schools in fall 2027 should already be building their testing plan. Even schools currently labeled "test-optional" — some large publics, Vanderbilt through 2027, Rice as "recommended" — are requiring strong scores for merit scholarships. The University of California system remains test-blind, and roughly 900 four-year schools continue to accept test-optional applications. But the ground has shifted decisively at the top.

Accreditation is the unglamorous but fundamental mechanism that determines whether a college can receive federal student aid — and thus whether it can function at all. After months of negotiated rulemaking, the Education Department's Accreditation, Innovation, and Modernization (AIM) committee reached consensus on a proposed regulatory framework in late May, clearing the way for public comment and, ultimately, final rules. If the department finalizes the rule by November 1, it takes effect July 1, 2027.

The proposed changes are sweeping. Among the most significant: requiring accreditors to ensure institutions maintain "intellectual diversity" — a phrase higher education observers uniformly interpret as a mandate for more conservative voices on campus. The rules would also eliminate accreditation standards or policies that the administration says "discriminate on the basis of immutable characteristics" — a reference to diversity requirements — and refocus quality assessment on quantifiable student outcomes like graduation rates, loan default rates, and employment. The proposal would also make it significantly easier for colleges to switch accreditors, opening a path for institutions to escape accreditors that currently enforce equity-oriented standards.

The practical stakes are enormous. Accreditation is required not just for Title IV federal aid — Pell Grants, student loans — but for professional licensure in medicine, law, nursing, and teaching. A college that lost accreditation or was forced to change accreditors would face immediate enrollment and reputational consequences. Critics have noted that "intellectual diversity" lacks any objective measure, creating a standard that could be applied selectively. Supporters argue that accreditation has evolved into a barrier protecting incumbent institutions from competition and innovation.

The test-optional era is over at the most selective schools. Any current 9th or 10th grader targeting selective institutions needs a structured SAT/ACT prep plan in place this fall — not next spring, not junior year. The testing cycle starts earlier than most families realize.

For each school your student is seriously considering, look up their federal grant revenue as a percentage of operating budget. Schools with 30–50% of revenue from federal research contracts face material risk from the OMB and accreditation rule changes — that's not a reason to eliminate them, but it's a reason to ask specific questions on your college visit.

For Jewish families, first-generation families, and international students, the campus climate data coming out of the UCLA lawsuit is a signal to research each school's specific climate data — student satisfaction surveys, retention rates, and published antisemitism response plans — rather than relying on prestige metrics alone.

This summer's college visits should include explicit questions about institutional health — not just academics. Ask admissions officers about research program stability, faculty retention, and how the university is navigating federal funding uncertainty. The answers will tell you more than any brochure.

Private non-profit enrollment is essentially flat, which means those institutions have more need for your student than they're showing in their first offer. If your student received a merit scholarship offer that you feel undervalues their profile, appeal it — and cite competing offers. This market strongly favors the student, not the school.

Community college enrollment is up 5.2% above 2021 levels, and certificate programs surged 10.2%. The stigma around two-year starts has never been lower, and the financial calculus — two years at a fraction of the cost — has never been more compelling. A strategic two-year plan followed by transfer to a flagship is a path more counselors should be putting on the table.

The noise level around higher education is high right now — and the temptation is to either panic or tune it out. Neither is the right response. This is a genuinely complex landscape, but it rewards families who engage with specifics: specific test policies, specific federal exposure, specific campus climate data. Generalized anxiety is not useful. Specific, targeted inquiry — informed by what's actually in the news — is extremely useful. That's what this newsletter is for. If you want to think through what any of this means for your specific student, I'm available for exactly that conversation.

Higher Ed Insider

Published by Hurwitz Consulting · Dr. Nathan Hurwitz, College Admissions Consultant

hurwitzadmissions.com  ·  nathan@hurwitzadmissions.com  ·  (203) 613-9262

© 2026 Hurwitz Consulting · Newtown, CT

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