Nicholas Kent, the Education Department official who oversees US universities, is largely staying out of the Trump administration’s showdown with Harvard and other elite schools. His approach to remaking higher education is less splashy but potentially more sweeping: Overhauling the accreditation system.

Colleges count on accreditors, the independent agencies that oversee their financial and academic standards, to approve their eligibility for federal funding. The Education Department has the power to rescind those agencies’ government recognition, a move that would effectively put them out of business.

President Donald Trump has called the accreditation system a “secret weapon” for forcing changes in academia. And Kent, having spent much of his career focused on this critical piece of h

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