The U.S. Department of Education announced Wednesday that it will bar the National Accrediting Commission of Career Arts and Sciences (NACCAS) from onboarding new member institutions, placing the prominent accrediting body on notice that it could face even harsher penalties if it fails to resolve a wide-ranging array of compliance issues.
The restriction represents a significant regulatory intervention into the oversight of vocational and career education programs. Altogether, NACCAS currently accredits more than 1,000 programs and institutions nationwide, a substantial portion of which are cosmetology and beauty schools. Under federal rules, institutional accreditation from a federally recognized agency is a critical gateway, unlocking access to vital federal student financial aid for students enrolled in those programs.
The department’s decision comes in the wake of a contentious showdown in July before the National Advisory Committee on Institutional Quality and Integrity (NACIQI). During that meeting, panel members closely questioned NACCAS officials regarding transparency deficiencies, subpar student outcomes, and other systemic operational issues within the cosmetology accreditor. Following the grilling, NACIQI members voted 9 to 3 to recommend stripping NACCAS of its federal recognition entirely.
However, the final authority on federal recognition rests with the Department of Education, and the ultimate decision stopped short of full derecognition. Instead, Under Secretary Nicholas Kent chose a measured disciplinary route, restricting the accreditor from taking on any new member institutions. This freeze immediately halts roughly 300 pending applications while the organization works to address multiple findings of noncompliance.
A central point of contention for both department staff and the advisory committee was NACCAS’s failure to independently monitor whether its member institutions had faced disciplinary actions or sanctions from outside regulatory or governmental agencies.
"If NACCAS is unable to adequately monitor its institutions—or prospective institutions—to a sufficient level to understand what actions are taken by outside actors, perhaps NACCAS has reached an unsustainable number of institutions it accredits," Kent wrote in his official decision letter.
Kent’s ruling marks the second time this year that the under secretary has chosen to overrule a NACIQI recommendation to strip a specialized accreditor of its federal recognition. In March, NACIQI members voted 12 to 0 to recommend that the department deny the renewal of federal recognition for the Council on Naturopathic Medical Education (CNME). However, in June, Kent extended recognition to CNME for another year on a conditional basis.
Simultaneously with the NACCAS action on Wednesday, the Education Department imposed comparable growth restrictions on the Council on Occupational Education, barring it from accepting new members and freezing its pending applications. In that case, Kent’s action went further than the advisory committee had recommended, as NACIQI members had not sought penalties beyond requesting additional compliance reports.
During the July proceedings, NACCAS officials strongly defended their operations, arguing that given the sheer volume of programs it oversees, stripping federal recognition would cause catastrophic fallout for students and institutions alike. Nonetheless, the Department of Education explicitly rejected the notion that any accreditor is too big to fail.
Kent argued in his decision that, given the current scale of NACCAS, there exists a "greater risk to students and taxpayers of allowing it to continue to operate in this fashion." He added that a "severe lack of oversight and ensuring institutions are providing a quality education may lead to significant increases in nonpayment or default rates, if the agency were to continue evaluating its institutions in such an inadequate manner."
Rather than terminating recognition, Kent granted the accreditor a 12-month window to correct its compliance shortcomings. He indicated that he maintains confidence in the organization’s capacity to enact meaningful reforms, which ultimately spared the association from total decertification.
"I do, at this time, believe that NACCAS is capable of taking corrective action to address these serious concerns; however, I do not believe that NACCAS should continue to add institutions," Kent wrote.
Officials at NACCAS did not respond to requests for comment from reporters regarding the department’s ruling.
The decision drew praise from higher education policy experts and researchers who have long advocated for stricter federal oversight of accrediting agencies. Preston Cooper, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute who has previously urged federal officials to adopt a tougher stance on accreditors like NACCAS, welcomed the department’s intervention.
"NACCAS doesn’t have the greatest track record when it comes to upholding high standards of student achievement, and I do think that it is time that the Education Department took appropriate action against this accreditor," Cooper said. "Obviously, full derecognition of NACCAS was something that could have been on the table, and I would have been glad to see."
Despite falling short of full decertification, Cooper noted that the department still managed to send a powerful regulatory message.
"Stopping them from accrediting new institutions is still a major step forward in holding them accountable," he said. "And I hope that this is a toolbox that the department will consider with other accreditors that might not be upholding the highest standards of student achievement."
Jeremy Bauer-Wolf, investigations manager for the higher education program at New America—a think tank that has previously published critical reports examining NACCAS—similarly voiced support for the decision to restrict membership, emphasizing that the organization has historically struggled to maintain educational quality across its roster.
"Last year, when we investigated and secret shopped at beauty schools that NACCAS accredited, they would regularly tell us wrong or incomplete information. Even if schools were not being malicious, their mistakes can still mislead students and skew life-changing decisions," Bauer-Wolf said by email, describing Wednesday’s enforcement action as "gratifying."
Although they approach higher education policy from different points on the political spectrum, both Cooper and Bauer-Wolf agreed that a significant share of the institutions accredited by NACCAS are failing to serve their students adequately. Both pointed to persistent concerns regarding student outcomes and a structural failure by NACCAS to hold its member schools accountable for performance.
Had the Education Department chosen to strip NACCAS of its federal recognition entirely, it likely would have triggered a chaotic scramble among member institutions to secure alternative accreditation, potentially culminating in widespread school closures. Even with the reprieve granted by the department, Cooper predicts that a number of member institutions will likely shutter in the near future as they fail to clear a newly implemented federal earnings test designed to restrict student loan eligibility for underperforming vocational programs. Federal projections indicate that more than 90 percent of cosmetology undergraduate certificate programs are expected to fail this metric.
Bauer-Wolf argued that the broader ecosystem of vocational institutions accredited by NACCAS is in urgent need of structural overhaul.
"As we have documented, beauty schools, especially for-profit chains, often do not lead students to quality jobs—in fact, they often struggle to pay off debts from these types of programs," Bauer-Wolf wrote.
