The U.S. Department of Education awarded $14.5 million in Fund for the Improvement of Postsecondary Education grants to projects aimed at reshaping college quality oversight, seeding up to 10 new accrediting agencies. The awards respond to an April 2025 executive order that called for accreditation reform and fund groups proposing alternatives to the regional-accreditor model that has governed U.S. higher education for decades. Grant recipients include teams designing accreditor models that emphasize workforce alignment, competency-based assessment, and different accountability metrics. Department officials framed the round as pilot funding to spur innovation; critics warn the move could fragment quality assurance and shift federal leverage over institutions. The action will accelerate regulatory and legal debates about what counts as acceptable accreditation and could change eligibility for Title IV funding if new accreditor designs gain traction. Why it matters: Accreditor structure determines institutional access to federal aid and research dollars; a federal push to sponsor new accreditors signals potential structural change to how colleges prove and are audited for quality.