Legal pressure on higher education is mounting on multiple fronts. A new roundup identifies five major lawsuits to watch in 2026—many centering on the Trump administration’s actions on admissions, research funding and campus speech—and courts have already issued several high‑profile rulings blocking agency moves. At the same time, the Education Department announced a rollback of a key accountability measure that required owners of some private, for‑profit colleges to assume personal liability to retain federal funding. The department will now apply the measure case‑by‑case rather than broadly, a shift industry groups welcomed but consumer advocates criticized. The combined force of litigation and regulatory change is producing an unstable compliance environment for institutions that rely on federal research and student aid dollars; lawyers and association leaders say colleges should prioritize legal review and contingency planning.