National Association of Schools of Art and Design
Transcendence and Contextual Change:
Reflections on the Executive Order Released April 23, 2025
Art and Design Study and NASAD
For centuries, the fields of art and design have transcended countless contextual changes at every level of societal organization. The fields build on their own substance generation after generation. They build with their own content era after era. This substance and content, rich and varied as it is, are the basis for current work in art and design. Nothing else is a viable substitute even though many issues, situations, and ideas impact the contexts for and influences on that work.
It helps to remember this set of facts when considering and negotiating conditions in current times.
In the United States, art and design in higher education must continue to stay centered in the substance and content of art and design themselves even as they must attend to contextual issues, even as the art and design fields build with their own content to expand and encompass evolutions, innovations, and creative advancements.
It helps to remember that (a) the content focus of this mission is critical to success and transcendence, and (b) a context of ordered liberty is essential for optimum accomplishment.
NASAD was founded 81 years ago to support pursuit of these art and design realities in the United States. Over that time it has helped the fields and member institutions (a) articulate and explain the essences of substance and content for art and design study, and (b) pursue both substance and content in changing contexts at local, state, and national levels. It has sustained this art/design-centered effort through recessions, political changes and challenges, academic fads, and philosophical debates. Its members have established NASAD content-based standards that recognize and encourage institution-specific missions and approaches and support institutional autonomy in academic and artistic decision making.
It helps to remember that these concepts are consistent with the natures of art and design themselves, their substance and their content, their variety, their bedrock foundation in creativity and their constant nurturing of competence and achievement on which continuous advancement and transcendence depend.
NASAD and USDE
NASAD and its member institutions work in contexts informed and influenced, in part, by governments. Our Federal Constitution, in the Tenth Amendment by inferential exclusion, indicates that governmental control of education matters rests with the states and individual citizens, not the federal government. At the federal level, the United States has not had and does not have a federal ministry of education. For example, beyond the 10th Amendment, federal laws and regulations prohibit the federal government from legislating or mandating, or specifying in many specific academic matters such as curriculum, textbook choices, specific faculty and governance personnel, hiring requirements, and so forth. In other words, the federal government cannot control substance and content decisions about art and design or any other fields. It cannot control specific accreditation decisions, or academic decisions of states and institutions. Oversight in these academic matters are the responsibilities of non-governmental accrediting agencies and state or institution-wide review bodies.
If the present United States Department of Education (USDE) is not a national ministry of education, as so much rhetoric falsely implies, what is it? Structurally, USDE is responsible for administering programs authorized by Congress intended to support specific and aggregate educational efforts in the nation as a whole, and nothing more. In other words, USDE’s project boundaries are set by federal legislation. For example, in K-12 education, if Congress approves and appropriates, USDE may facilitate a national conversation about curricular standards and publish results and recommendations, but USDE has no power to mandate a curriculum for any local school. USDE has congressionally-approved responsibilities for the federal student loan program and many other grant programs that provide support for students and institutions. To a large extent, USDE has the power and responsibility to set detailed criteria for eligibility and participation. This reality produces many complexities and policy arguments over USDE criteria and the extent to which any or all sets are within the parameters established by the Constitution and the Congress. Obviously, the ability to disperse funds creates a powerful “advisory” force; and, politics itself is concerned with distributions of powers.
In order to ensure that taxpayer dollars are being granted to academically sound postsecondary institutions, by mandate of Congress, USDE and other federal executive branch agencies rely on academically-based evaluations by non-governmental accreditation organizations. This arrangement preserves fealty to the 10th Amendment, and to federal laws authorizing, governing, and steering federal education efforts.
Given these separations of powers, what is the federal role in postsecondary accreditation? Accreditation organizations are neither authorized nor owned by the federal government. However, the federal government through USDE “recognizes” accreditation agencies whose academic and associated judgements are deemed reliable with regard to educational quality, capability, and capacity as one criterion for institutional participation in federal student loan and other Congressionally-approved programs. For the most part, federal recognition signifies that a USDE-administered process has determined the accrediting agency is independent, it accredits institutions as a whole, and it meets operational capability criteria outlined by Congress in the Higher Education Act, and subsequently detailed by USDE.
Since 1966, NASAD has been recognized by USDE and its predecessors as an institutional accreditor for institutions that are postsecondary independent schools of art and/or design, if such an institution so designates NASAD. Most NASAD members are units of larger postsecondary institutions accredited by a USDE-recognized institutional accreditor, one of the “regionals,” for example. NASAD may not serve as an institutional accreditor for such multi-purpose institutions. Also, a specialized accrediting body that serves only programs in larger institutions cannot be eligible for USDE recognition.
It helps to remember that USDE recognition of NASAD makes no federal connection for the vast majority of member institutions.
A triad concept is often used to summarize the separations and connections of oversight powers in higher education: The federal role centered on financial and procedural management of congressionally-authorized loan and grant programs; the states, on licensure of all institutions and operations of state-supported institutions; and accreditors, the substance and support systems associated with content and operations in institutions and professional programs in higher education.
USDE and Presidential Executive Orders
The President of the United States has authority over the executive branch of government. USDE is part of the executive branch.
President Trump and his staff agree with many critics of USDE and believe most governmental education support efforts should be centered in the states, consistent with the 10th Amendment. Thus, there exists a current effort to disestablish USDE that begins with using executive powers to cancel grant and other programs to severely reduce the scope and portfolio of the current agency. Ultimately, only Congress has the authority to shape or reshape the overall federal education support structure, including the future of USDE and its functions, and future distributions of federal tax dollars. One hears of block federal education grants to the states, for example. In dissolution circumstances, certain elements of the present USDE would necessarily be shifted to other agencies. For example, it is often suggested that collegiate student loan programs be transferred to the Department of the Treasury .
President Trump and his staff also agree with certain criticisms about institutional accreditation in general and about certain accrediting agencies and their practices. As is the case with all administrations, members of the Trump administration have affinities for certain solutions, most of which have been discussed in the accreditation policy arena for decades in some form, and with decidedly mixed results. The recent Executive Order released April 23, 2025 addresses matters such as consistency between accreditation/higher education practices and current federal law, relationships between educational programs and workforce entry, the role of data in quality assessment, efficiency of the USDE accreditor recognition process, federal reporting responsibilities to accreditors, institutional accreditation choices, and innovation.
It is important to remember that despite its criticisms and proposals, the recent Executive Order suggests improving the relationship between accreditation and the federal government, not severing that relationship. Again, the 10th Amendment and current federal education laws are an underlying reality.
NASAD and Art and Design Study in the Present Context
As noted above, NASAD and its member institutions have transcended decades of contextual challenges by remaining centered on art and design while paying close attention to ever-changing circumstances, by focusing on the permanent and attending to the impermanent, especially with regard to maintaining conditions for delivering high-level education in the substance and content of the fields. No matter what happens, it is critical to center first on art and design and art and design study. Success there has always enabled individuals to apply high-level knowledge and skill in myriad places and forms. Success there enables transcendence.
It is important to remember that the political world has always been full of broad brush, broad sword techniques in dealing with policy issues. Oversimplification, pretending specific incidents are norms, and overstated blanket condemnations are common. The political world ubiquitously uses tactics to emphasize and minimize certain issues and realities to achieve consistency with preferred narratives. Partial truth is common, the whole truth is rare, and much is obscured or kept secret. In such an unsecure and untrustworthy environment, it is critical to focus first on policy and reality rather than personalities, or political parties, or other entities, or day-by-day advocacy or propaganda. Many thousands of proposals don’t go anywhere. Many demands are revised or rejected as realities set in, including lack of funding. NASAD continues to watch the higher education and policy worlds and engages as prudent and necessary.
NASAD serves the fields by collecting, formulating, and setting forth purposes, principles, and resources in art/design-based, not political terms. The Association understands that many other important decision making functions are served by other entities. NASAD and its members delve into their art/design-centered values and principles to address contextual issues as they arise. They recognize and encourage freedom and breadth in conception and interpretation. For example, “diversity” is a rich word that means among other things, (a) respecting the differences that exist naturally and are features of the world’s art/design and cultural heritage, including but not limited to, a vast range and scope of artistic achievement, the inevitability and desirability of specialization, a variety of artistic approaches within and among genres, types of institutions, historical periods, methodologies, etc., (b) placing standards in frameworks that encourage and respect specific institutional choices and decisions about purposes, curricula, individual students or faculty or staff, (c) advocating for standards centered in art/design content writ large consistent with specific purposes and specializations, and focused on student competency development as exemplified by student work. NASAD accreditation reviews include serious attention to actual student work.
It helps to remember that the principles and approaches suggested in this paper are critical elements in transcending this time and any time, in getting to whatever is next with our art forms with our priorities intact and functioning in American higher education, and in fulfilling our common and specific purposes on behalf of art and design and our students, and relationships between the two.
As always, NASAD continues its work focused on its service to institutions and the field, guided by its aims and objectives, and faithful to its stated protocols as they pertain to the discipline-specific peer review service it provides to institutions throughout the United States. NASAD remains vigilant in its efforts to monitor and be informed by policies and practices that may impact its work, providing to members salient information as it becomes available. As we look to the future with care and caution, we continue to work and watch together.
Please see the Publications section of the NASAD website for helpful and related resources associated with these topics.
We extend all best wishes for a restful summer.
Thank you.