Higher Education Compliance And Government Enforcement: Looking Ahead To 2026

This is the second in our 2026 Year in Preview series examining important trends in white collar law and investigations in the coming year. Up next: anti-corruption/FCPA enforcement

Colleges and universities have been central to the current administration's enforcement agenda, and we expect this to continue in 2026. While the focus areas for the new administration—immigration, Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (“DEI”), and academic freedom in an era of increased protest activity—were largely expected, the tools the federal government used to enforce its policies were unconventional. The administration often pushed the boundaries of laws rarely invoked to enforce its priorities, a trend that will likely persist as we enter the next phase of the administration's plans and as responsibilities within the executive branch continue to shift. 

This alert summarizes the most notable enforcement mechanisms used this past year and provides a look forward at how these tools are likely to be used in 2026. We specifically focus on:

1. The Dismantling of the Department of Education
2. The False Claims Act and the Department of Justice's New Role in Higher Education Compliance
3. Financial Aid
4. Accreditation 
5. Federal Funding
6. Governmental Pressure on Public Institutions and Presidents
7. The Administration's Partnership with States

The Dismantling of the Department of Education

In 2025, as promised, the Trump administration took a systematic approach towards dismantling the Department of Education. In March, President Trump signed an Executive Order directing the closure of the Department (the “Closure Order”), the Department announced a reduction in force (“RIF”) to discharge approximately 50% of its workforce that included terminating many employees and closing the majority of the Department's offices across the nation, and President Trump announced certain programs would be transferred out of the Department. More recently, on November 18, 2025, the DOE announced six new interagency agreements with four agencies that will shift the administration of additional education programs to the Departments of Labor, Interior, Health and Human Services, and State.

Another agency taking over responsibilities shifted away from the Department is the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC). The EEOC has played a key role in investigating university and school district policies that may violate Title VII, particularly focusing on antisemitism and anti-DEI initiatives. This includes filing a subpoena enforcement action against the University of Pennsylvania demanding that it create and disclose a list of all Jewish and Jewish-affiliated campus organizations, alongside a roster of their members, as well as lists and contact information of employees that reveal their Jewish faith or ancestry or affiliation with Jewish studies. On January 20, 2026, the university opposed the EEOC's subpoena in a forceful 163-page court filing that described the request as “an extraordinary and unconstitutional demand” that disregards “the frightening and well-documented history of governmental entities that undertook efforts to identify and assemble information regarding persons of Jewish ancestry.”

The False Claims Act and the Department of Justice's New Role 

As the Trump administration continues to dismantle the Department of Education, no agency has taken on a more significant share of increased responsibility in higher education compliance than the Department of Justice (“DOJ”). Since inauguration, the False Claims Act (“FCA”) has been a central component in the administration's enforcement of its platform, especially related to issues involving civil rights.

This shift began with Executive Order 14173, “Ending Illegal Discrimination and Restoring Merit-Based Opportunity” (the “DEI Executive Order”), which forecasted that DOJ and the FCA would be heavily involved in the administration's scrutiny of higher education institutions. The Order named colleges and universities as one of the five categories for enforcement and mandated that every signatory to a funding contract certify that “it does not operate any programs promoting DEI that violate any applicable federal anti-discrimination laws.” (See our previous client alert for a more in depth analysis of how this term and other aspects of the DEI Executive Order implicate the FCA.). Federal agencies have since rolled out these written certification requirements, many of which have been added to grant applications, student aid Program Participation Agreements, and other federal funding programs.

In April 2025, DOJ and the Department of Education announced a joint Title IX Special Investigations Team (the “Title IX SIT”) to enforce President Trumps Executive Orders, “Defending Women from Gender Ideology Extremism and Restoring Biological Truth to the Federal Government” and “Keeping Men Out of Women's Sports.” This team is likely to be active in 2026—just last week, the Title IX SIT announced an investigation into the California Community College Athletic Association based on the association's policy allowing a transgender female or non-binary student-athlete to compete on a women's team. 

On May 19, 2025, DOJ also announced the launch of its Civil Rights Fraud Initiative, directing DOJ lawyers to use the FCA against federal fund recipients that violate civil rights laws. The memorandum made express reference to colleges and universities and “strongly encourage[d]” whistleblowers to file qui tam lawsuits under the FCA. Then, on July 29, 2025, Attorney General Bondi published a “guidance” memorandum, which outlined the administration's interpretation of federal antidiscrimination laws and provided examples (including many in the higher education space) that it viewed as “unlawful.”

Such enforcement has now begun, although the administration's FCA theory and use of certifications has not yet been tested in courts. On the government-initiated side, FCA investigations by the DOJ's Civil Rights Fraud Initiative have not been made public in the higher education space, but various large public corporations—including Google and Verizon—have reportedly received subpoenas from DOJ concerning their workplace programs. Whistleblowers have also begun taking cues from the federal guidance. Recently, the District Court for the District of Columbia dismissed a plaintiff's claim against his former employer alleging that he was retaliated against for complaining of race discrimination in violation of the FCA.¹   The court found no merit to the “theory … that engaging in discriminatory conduct while conducting a federally funded study necessarily constitutes the misuse of federal funds in violation of the False Claims Act.” Notably, however, the case did not involve a certification as contemplated by the DEI Executive Order. We expect the volume of FCA investigations and lawsuits to increase this year as the framework the administration laid in 2025 begins to play out and cases are made public.

Separate from its FCA activity, DOJ has used Title VII to enforce the administration's anti-DEI stance. DOJ has authority to bring suit under Title VII against state and local governments under a 2018 memorandum of understanding between DOJ and the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. On December 9, 2025, DOJ's Civil Rights Division brought suit against the Minneapolis Public School district alleging that a collective bargaining agreement with a teachers' union violates Title VII because it provides preferences to teachers who are members of an “underrepresented population” in employment decisions. Earlier this month, on January 14, 2026, DOJ's Civil Rights Division similarly brought suit against Minnesota alleging Minnesota violates Title VII through its statewide affirmative action program for state civil service. The Civil Rights Division is likely to continue using its authorization under Title VII to bring these types of discrimination cases. Due to the scope of the memorandum of understanding with the EEOC, these types of lawsuits will likely implicate only public universities.

As DOJ's focus on higher education has grown, the Department of Education's Office for Civil Rights (OCR)—usually a key figure in civil rights enforcement actions against higher educational institutions—has taken a back seat, as the office itself remains in limbo (for an explanation of the dismantling of the Department of Education and OCR and the corresponding legal challenges, see here). Still, while OCR's overall enforcement activity has diminished—Dissolution of the Employee Engagement Diversity Equity Inclusion Accessibility Council (EEDIAC) within OCR pursuant to President Trump's Executive Order “Ending Radical and Wasteful Government DEI Programs and Preferencing,” as one example—it has not disappeared. Instead of its traditional, broader enforcement mandate, OCR's activities now closely follow the administration's priorities, including an increase in OCR-directed investigations: (1) enforcing Title VI as it applies to allegations of antisemitism arising out of Israel-Palestine protests and discrimination claims made by white individuals; and (2) enforcing Title IX in line with President Trump's Executive Order. We expect OCR to continue with this approach in 2026.

Financial Aid

Financial aid is another pressure point for higher education institutions. The Department of Education has demonstrated its willingness to specifically target colleges and universities with threats to aid availability, and to deploy restrictive cash management mechanisms to induce institutional change beyond traditional means. In September, for example, Federal Student Aid placed Harvard on Heightened Cash Monitoring status and demanded a $36-million irrevocable letter of credit, citing certain “discretionary triggers,” including an adverse Title VI determination. The strategy forces targeted institutions to front federal aid payments and seek reimbursement later, creating immediate cash-flow stress and operational friction even for well-capitalized institutions.

Moreover, the DEI Executive Order referenced not only colleges and universities that receive federal funding grants but also any higher education institution that participates in the federal student loan assistance program under Title IV. Of note, institutions must sign a current program participation agreement to remain eligible under Title IV and, by doing so, the institution agrees to comply with Title VI and Title IX. This is yet another tool, and yet another threat of FCA-related enforcement, that the DOJ's Civil Rights Fraud Initiative and other federal enforcement agencies could employ to target universities in 2026. 

Last year also saw renewed emphasis by the Trump administration on timely repayment of student loans, with threats to institutions that do not help facilitate such payments. On May 5, Federal Student Aid published a Dear Colleague Letter noting that under Section 435 of the Higher Education Act, “institutions are required to keep their cohort default rates (CDR) low and will lose eligibility for federal student assistance, including Pell Grants and federal student loans” should their default rates become too high. As student aid and loans become increasingly important aspects of university operations, this threatens to increase both financial and administrative strains on institutions heading into 2026. 

The 2026 outlook is an expansion of these and similar approaches. 

Accreditation

During his campaign, President Trump revealed that he would use accreditation as his “secret weapon” to enforce his educational policies. In April, President Trump issued Executive Order, “Reforming Accreditation to Strengthen Higher Education,” which outlined the administration's two-pronged approach to accreditation:

• First, the Order directed the Secretary of Education to “promptly provide to accreditors any noncompliance findings related to member institutions” by OCR under Title VI or Title IX. The Department of Education has followed through on this directive, sending notices to Columbia's accreditor and Harvard's accreditor following OCR investigations. 
• Second, the Order addressed a broader effort to revamp the entire accreditation system to ensure accreditors embrace the administration's priorities. The Executive Order, for example, discourages current accreditors from including “‘DEI'-based standards” and directs current accreditors to require institutions to “prioritize intellectual diversity amongst faculty.” The Order simultaneously encourages the creation of new accreditors. The Department of Education has pushed forward these policies. In May, the Department issued new guidance that relaxed the process for switching accreditors. Then, in November, the Department repurposed FIPSE grants to address areas aligned with the administration's policies, including “supporting institutions in changing accrediting agencies” and “supporting the creation of new accrediting agencies.”

Florida and university systems in six other southern states are launching their own accrediting agency, the Commission for Public Higher Education (“CPHE”). The CPHE's business plan notes that the accreditor will be accountable to the states, which would allow state politicians to further reach into curriculum, faculty appointments, and every aspect of the public institution's operations. 

Accreditation is a powerful tool: If a school loses accreditation, students at those schools lose eligibility for federal financial aid. Even informal signals that accreditation could be jeopardized could affect students' willingness to risk enrolling at an institution. With enrollment pressures already reaching new highs, accreditation threats seem poised to exert substantial pressure on institutions.

Federal Funding as a Carrot and a Stick

Grant terminations have been a hallmark of the Trump administration's enforcement strategy. Last year saw a flurry of efforts by the government to freeze or cancel funding to colleges and universities. Some universities challenged the federal grant freezes, and have been successful (see here for a discussion of these cases), but many negotiated resolutions that restored funding in exchange for payments and policy commitments.² 

With the reliability of existing federal funding now on shakier ground, the administration has also began wielding grant funding as an incentive to accept its proposals. On October 1, 2025, the White House sent letters to nine universities promising preferential federal funding to those who signed a “Compact for Academic Excellence in Higher Education.” This Compact includes a variety of requirements aligned with the administration's priorities—from “revising governance structures …, including but not limited to transforming or abolishing institutional units that purposefully punish, belittle, and even spark violence against conservative ideas” to “defining and otherwise interpreting ‘male,' ‘female,' ‘woman,' and ‘man' according to reproductive function and biological processes.” After a lukewarm response from the original nine universities, President Trump later announced that any college would be eligible to receive preferential federal funding if they signed the Compact. To date, the New College of Florida has been the only school that publicly stated its intent to sign the Compact. 

Heading into 2026, the Department of Education is poised to continue vigorously pursuing and enforcing resolution agreements that tie grant eligibility to institutional policy changes. While the administration may continue the across-the-board freezes it began in 2025, it may also refine its approach in light of the court rulings in California and Massachusetts, building fuller administrative records, targeting more specific funding programs on more specific bases, and employing other moderating tactics to withstand potential judicial review. The likely result is more durable funding freezes or terminations designed to encourage favorable settlements and overcome litigation challenges as the administration continues to watch for institutional policies and practices contrary to its goals.

Public Institutions and Presidents

In another unconventional approach, the Trump administration engaged in several public initiatives to force university leadership change. Public institutions were especially vulnerable to this type of attack, and two such institutions—the University of Virginia (“UVA”) and George Mason University (“GMU”)—illustrate the strategy.

UVA President Jim Ryan resigned in June 2025 following sustained political pressure to do so. On March 7, 2025, the Board of Visitors—responsible for the long-term planning of the university—passed a resolution to dissolve the university's Office of Diversity, Equity, Inclusion and Community Partnerships, relying on the Trump administration's interpretation of the Equal Protection Clause, Title VI, and other federal civil rights laws. Then, DOJ began putting pressure on UVA, often specifically focusing on Ryan. In April, after UVA received two letters from DOJ inquiring into the university's use of race in its admissions policies, DOJ sent a third letter directly addressed to Ryan referencing complaints that he was failing to implement the Board's resolution. In May and June, DOJ sent four additional letters about opening a Title VI investigation into the school related to allegations of antisemitism. The last letter specifically threatened the “suspension, termination, or refusal to grant or continue UVA's federal financial assistance.” Behind the scenes, Gregory Brown, the deputy assistant attorney general for civil rights, reportedly demanded Ryan's resignation. Ryan ultimately announced his resignation on June 27, 2025. With new leadership in place, UVA announced an agreement with DOJ that it would “be bound by the Department of Justice's ‘Guidance for Recipients of Federal Funding Regarding Unlawful Discrimination.'” 

GMU President Gregory Washington was the next university leader in the administration's crosshairs. In the span of just a few weeks in July, OCR and DOJ opened four civil rights investigations examining whether GMU's hiring and admissions practices violate federal nondiscrimination laws. On August 22, 2025, the Department of Education announced that it determined GMU violated Title VI and issued a proposed Resolution Agreement. The announcement specifically targeted Washington, noting that “under his leadership and direction, the University violated Title VI by illegally using race and other immutable characteristics in university practices and policies, including hiring and promotion,” and demanded the president issue a “personal apology.” Washington refused. Since then, members of the House Judiciary Committee have publicly accused President Washington of making misleading or false statements to Congress regarding the scope and operation of GMU's DEI programs and compliance practices. This fight for control of the university continues into 2026. 

The government can assert meaningful influence by targeting leadership at institutions viewed as resistant or misaligned, without resorting to legislation or litigation. If 2025 served as a testing ground, 2026 is likely to see more individualized interventions, as governments increasingly seek to shape public institutions through the people who lead them.

Government's Partnership with States to Influence Curriculum and Institutional Operations

In 2025, the federal government increasingly worked in concert with states to influence—and often succeeded in influencing—how schools operate, what they teach, and how they hire. These efforts have reached public and private universities alike.

Florida, through Senate Bill 266, enacted legislation dictating how state colleges and universities may allocate funds, structure hiring processes, and frame academic offerings related to DEI—including by barring public universities from offering courses based on theories of systemic racism and sexism. Ohio Senate Bill 1, among other things, sets rules around classroom discussion surrounding diversity-related topics and prohibits any new institutional scholarships that “use diversity, equity, and inclusion in any manner.” And Texas A&M's Board of Regents—individuals appointed by the governor—approved a policy stating that “no system academic course will advocate race or gender ideology, or topics related to sexual orientation or gender identity,” with a narrow exception for certain non-core curriculum or graduate courses (that still must be reviewed and approved by the campus president). In Oklahoma, state education officials have sought to exert control over classroom content and staffing by adopting controversial social-studies standards and new credentialing requirements for teachers. In August 2025, Oklahoma announced that out-of-state teachers from jurisdictions such as California and New York would be required to pass an “assessment exam” as a condition of licensure, a measure state officials explicitly described as a way to safeguard against “radical leftist ideology.”

Florida's experience also illustrates how legislation can be paired with governance restructuring to produce more targeted outcomes. In 2023, Florida Governor Ronald Desantis effected what was called a “hostile takeover” of the New College of Florida, previously known as a progressive school, by replacing key trustees, shifting control of the board, and enabling rapid changes to leadership at the school. Governor Desantis was able to establish his academic priorities within the school—the new president of the school, Richard Corcoran, was Governor Desantis's first Commissioner of Education. Demonstrating the school's changed priorities, New College was the first to say it would sign the Trump administration's Compact for Academic Excellence in Higher Education, which links preferential access to federal funding to a willingness to adhere to a set of conditions aligned with the administration's educational goals. Now, Governor Desantis intends to expand New College's footprint and his control over state universities by proposing a transfer of the University of South Florida Sarasota-Manatee's campus to New College. Curriculum, appointment of university leadership, and faculty hiring decisions—all realms that used to be protected from government control—have now become vulnerable to governmental intrusion, and we expect federal and state actors to continue working together to insert themselves into higher educational institutions' operations in 2026. 

In sum, the Administration is highly motivated to enforce its policy priorities and is using all of the tools at its disposal to do so. Most recently, the Department of Education used the Jeanne Clery Campus Safety Act (“Clery Act”)—which generally requires any institution participating in federal student aid programs to collect, classify, and disclose campus crime statistics and safety information—to target certain universities. In November and December, the Department of Education publicly announced Clery program reviews at the University of California, Berkeley following a protest at an event organized by Turning Point USA, and at Brown following a campus shooting. The administration also used Section 117 of the Higher Education Act, a law requiring institutions receiving federal aid to submit disclosure reports on foreign gifts and contracts valued at $250,000 or higher to the Department of Education, to investigate universities. Investigations were announced as to the University of California, Berkeley, Harvard, and the University of Pennsylvania.

Whether these are isolated incidents or tools that the administration will seek to use more in 2026 broadly remains to be seen, but it is indicative that nothing is off the table. Any compliance requirement for colleges and universities may be exploited, and higher education institutions' operations will remain highly scrutinized in 2026.

Footnotes

1. Thornton v. NAS, No. 25-cv-2155, 2025 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 220605, at *5, 7 (D.D.C. Nov. 7, 2025).

2. For example, after funding freezes tied to antisemitism and other civil rights allegations, Columbia University settled with the Department of Education, DOJ, and Department of Health and Human Services (“HHS”) in late July for $221 million and acceptance of a variety of terms, in exchange for restoration of over $400 million in federal grants. Columbia agreed to, among other things, (i) provide the federal government access to data and information about its hiring, admissions, and university programming to assess its compliance with the administration's interpretation of federal civil rights laws; (ii) “a comprehensive review of [its] portfolio of programs in regional areas, starting with those relating to the Middle East”; and (iii) “foster[] new faculty appointments to promote intellectual diversity.” Columbia also agreed to have an independent Resolution Monitor and an Administrator oversee these operational changes. Brown University likewise reached an agreement restoring funding from the HHS in exchange for a commitment of $50 million to Rhode Island workforce development organizations and compliance with federal priorities concerning antisemitism, gender policy, and admissions. Agreements with Cornell University, Northwestern University, and the University of Pennsylvania followed the same general pattern.

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