Trump signs orders on AI education, college accreditation

WASHINGTON – US President Donald Trump signed an executive action to boost artificial intelligence education and workforce training, highlighting a rapidly developing technology that is a top administration priority.

The move is among a flurry of executive actions the President approved on April 23 as Mr Trump seeks to use his presidential power to reshape higher education.

Mr Trump also signed orders directing the Education Secretary to review higher education accreditation services that certify the validity of schools and programmes to employers and loan providers, move to cut off funding for higher education institutions that do not disclose sources of foreign money, improve job training programmes for skilled trades and promote historically black colleges and universities. 

Other directives the President signed revokes Department of Justice guidance implemented under former president Joe Biden governing how school administrators could discipline students, as well as a ban on educational programmes relying on disparate impact theory, which is aimed at addressing inequalities but which conservatives have long criticised.

The artificial intelligence order cast its proposals as critical to ensuring US dominance in the field.

It establishes a White House Task Force on AI Education, which will be chaired by the director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, Mr Michael Kratsios, according to a White House fact sheet.

The task force will include other high-ranking officials such as the secretaries of education and labour, as well as the special adviser for artificial intelligence and cryptocurrency.

Silicon Valley venture capitalist David Sacks is serving as Mr Trump’s AI and crypto czar.

It also directs the task force to establish public-private partnerships to provide resources for K-12 education about AI and the use of artificial intelligence tools in academia.

“AI is the way to the future,” Mr Trump said, adding that the emerging technology was already attracting “trillions of dollars” in investments.

The order directs the Education Department to prioritise the use of AI in discretionary grant programmes for teacher training and calls on the National Science Foundation to emphasise research on the use of AI in education.

It also instructs the Labour Department to increase participation in AI-related apprenticeships and to promote AI certifications. 

The departments will also work together to create opportunities for high school students to take courses and certification programmes on AI, according to the fact sheet.

Mr Trump has moved to bolster US efforts in AI amid a global competition to dominate the space. 

The President has touted hundreds of billions of dollars in commitments from companies – including from prominent players such as SoftBank Group Corp, OpenAI, and Oracle Corp – to help build data centres, chip manufacturing plants and other infrastructure to support AI.

And he has moved to expand domestic energy production, including mining and the use of coal in the US, saying it is essential to fuel energy-hungry data centres. 

The President’s tariff agenda, which has sought to levy import duties on US trading partners in a bid to bring more manufacturing to the US and revenue for the federal government, threatens to ramp up costs for data centres, however.

Mr Trump is also pressing forward with plans to impose duties on semiconductors, including imports of both legacy and leading-edge chips that are coveted for AI implications.

The order on university accreditation directs the Education Secretary to review higher education accreditation services that certify the validity of schools and programs to employers and loan providers.

The administration warned that commissions that accreditate schools that fail to meet certain standards could result in the accreditors themselves being stripped of their authority. 

The accreditation order mandates that the Education Secretary resume recognising new accreditors to foster competition in the sector; direct institutions to use programme-level student outcome data to improve results, without reference to race, ethnicity or sex; require high-quality, high-value academic programmes; and prioritise intellectual diversity among faculty, according to a White House fact sheet.

The mandate also opens the door to making it easier to recognise new accreditors and for schools and programmes to switch between accreditation providers.

The order was first reported by the Wall Street Journal.

The April 23 moves are the latest step by the administration to target higher education, including demands that schools accept conditions that would change many of their policies in what Mr Trump officials have cast as a bid to address anti-Semitism on campuses.

Some schools have resisted that effort, claiming the demands made by the administration are unconstitutional and would undercut their academic missions.

Harvard University is suing the Trump administration

after officials froze billions of dollars in federal funding.

Mr Trump has also called for the school to lose its tax-exempt status after the school rejected the administration’s demands. BLOOMBERG