Hegseth announced the policy in a video posted to social media on Friday, three weeks after he said the military was cutting ties with Harvard University. Without citing evidence, Hegseth said the universities have become “breeding grounds of toxic indoctrination” that undermine military values.

“For decades, the Ivy League and similar institutions have gorged themselves on a trust fund of American taxpayer dollars, only to become factories of anti-American resentment and military disdain,” he said. “They’ve replaced the study of victory and pragmatic realism with the promotion of wokeness and weakness.”

Hegseth said the ban applies to Columbia, Princeton, Brown, Yale, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and “many others” without elaborating. He called for “complete and immediate cancellation of all Department of War attendance,” though it was not clear how broadly it would be applied.

A message seeking further details was not immediately answered by the Pentagon.

As of Friday, Columbia, Brown, MIT and Harvard were still listed as eligible institutions in a Pentagon database for its Tuition Assistance program, which covers the full cost of tuition for active-duty personnel. Harvard had 39 participants in 2023, according to the most recent data, while Columbia had nine and MIT had two.

The earlier action against Harvard aims to block members of the military from attending graduate-level professional military education, fellowships and certificate programs, according to a statement released at the time. There are still questions about whether it applies to programs such as Harvard’s Reserve Officers’ Training Corps program.

Harvard has offered a series of professional development programs and a small number of degree programs tailored to the Pentagon. Last year, it created a new master’s degree in public administration for active-duty military members and veterans. Hegseth earned a master’s degree from Harvard but symbolically returned his diploma in a 2022 Fox News segment.

The military offers its officers a variety of opportunities to get graduate-level education, both at war colleges run by the military as well as civilian institutions like Harvard.

Campuses across the Ivy League have been a favorite target of President Donald Trump, who accuses them of becoming overrun by “woke” ideology. His administration has cut billions of dollars in research funding and attempted a number of other sanctions against the universities, often as part of investigations into allegations that officials tolerated antisemitism on campus.

Hegseth’s announcement is a rebuke to universities that had appeared to have reached a truce with the administration in recent months. Columbia and Brown were among the earliest universities to sign deals with the White House, agreeing to a range of demands in order to have their federal funding restored.

Harvard is fighting back against such demands, alleging in lawsuits that the government is illegally retaliating against the university for rebuffing its ideological views. Last summer, Trump said he was days away from reaching a deal with Harvard, but negotiations appear to have fallen apart. Earlier this month, Trump said Harvard must pay $1 billion to the government as part of any deal, twice what he had previously demanded.

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The report, released Friday by House Republicans on the Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party, argues the projects have allowed China to exploit U.S. research partnerships for military gains while the two countries are locked in a tech and arms rivalry.

“American taxpayer dollars should be used to defend the nation — not strengthen its foremost strategic competitor,” Republicans wrote in the report.

“Failing to safeguard American research from hostile foreign exploitation will continue to erode U.S. technological dominance and place our national defense capabilities at risk,” it said.

The Pentagon and didn’t immediately respond to an Associated Press request for comment.

The congressional report said some officials at the Defense Department argued research should remain open as long as it is “neither controlled nor classified.”

The report makes several recommendations to scale back U.S. research collaboration with China. It also backs new legislation proposed by the committee’s chairman, Rep. John Moolenaar, R-Michigan. The bill would prohibit any Defense Department funding from going to projects done in collaboration with researchers affiliated with Chinese entities that the U.S. government identifies as safety risks.

Beijing has in the past said science and technological cooperation between the two countries is mutually beneficial and helps them cope with global challenges. The Chinese Embassy did not immediately respond to a request for comment Friday.

Republicans say the joint research could have military applications

The 80-page report builds on the committee’s findings last year that partnerships between U.S. and Chinese universities over the past decade allowed hundreds of millions of dollars in federal funding to help Beijing develop critical technology. Amid pressure from Republicans, several U.S. universities have ended their joint programs with Chinese schools in recent years.

The new report focuses more narrowly on the Defense Department and its billions of dollars in annual research funding.

The committee’s investigation identified 1,400 research papers published between June 2023 and June 2025 that acknowledged support from the Pentagon and were done in collaboration with Chinese partners. The publications were funded by some 700 defense grants worth more than $2.5 billion. Of the 1,400 publications, more than half involved organizations affiliated with China’s defense research and industrial base.

Dozens of those organizations were flagged for potential security concerns on U.S. government lists, though federal law does not prohibit research collaborations with them. The Defense Department money supported research in fields including hypersonic technology, semiconductors, artificial intelligence, advanced materials and next-generation propulsion.

Many of the projects have clear military applications, according to the report.

In one case, a nuclear scientist at Carnegie Science, a research institution in Washington, worked extensively on Pentagon-backed research while holding appointments at the Chinese Academy of Sciences and the Hefei Institute of Physical Sciences.

The scientist, who has done research on high-energy materials, nitrogen and high-pressure physics — all of which are relevant to nuclear weapons development — has been honored in China for his work to advance the country’s national development goals, the report said. It called the case “a deeply troubling example” of how Beijing can leverage U.S. taxpayer-funded research to further its weapons development.

In another Pentagon-backed project, Arizona State University and the University of Texas partnered with researchers from Shanghai Jiao Tong University and Beihang University to study high-stakes decision-making in uncertain environments, which has direct applications for electronic warfare and cyber defense, the report said. The money came from the Office of Naval Research, the Army Research Office and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration.

The Shanghai university is under the supervision of a central Chinese agency tasked with developing defense technology, and Beihang University, in the capital city of Beijing, is linked to the People’s Liberation Army and known for its aerospace programs.

Calls for scaling back research collaborations

The report takes issue with Defense Department policies that do not explicitly forbid research partnerships with foreign institutions that appear on U.S. government blacklists.

It makes more than a dozen recommendations, including a prohibition on any Pentagon research collaboration with entities that are on U.S. blacklists or “known to be part of China’s defense research and industrial base.”

Moolenaar’s legislation includes a similar provision and proposes a ban on Defense Department funding for U.S. universities that operate joint institutes with Chinese universities.

A senior Education Department official said the report “highlights the vulnerability of federally funded research to foreign infiltration on America’s campuses.” Under Secretary of Education Nicholas Kent said the findings reinforce the need for more transparency around U.S. universities’ international ties, along with a “whole-of-government approach to safeguard against the malign influence of hostile foreign actors.”

House investigators said they are not seeking to end all academic and research collaborations with China but those with connections to the Chinese military and its research and industrial base.

McRaven, who delivered his address online to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, said he grew up idolizing comic book heroes like Batman and Superman but came to see that “the heroes we need are not the heroes I had been searching for.”

“As I grew up and traveled the world, and as I saw more than my share of war and destruction, I came to the hard truth that Captain America isn’t coming to the rescue,” McRaven said. “You — the brilliant minds of MIT — you are going to have to save the world.”

In his advice on how to take up that mantle, McRaven told graduates that intellect and talent alone will not be enough. They need qualities he has observed in other heroes, he said, such as moral courage, perseverance and the willingness to sacrifice.

Real heroes are also humble, McRaven added, a lesson that coalesced during his years in the military.

“The crucible of war teaches you every day that you are not invincible,” he said, “that the enemy in bare feet and carrying only Kalashnikovs can sometimes defeat the best soldiers and the best technology in the world.”

McRaven was head of Joint Special Operations Command in 2011 when a team of Navy SEALs killed bin Laden, the al-Qaida leader, in Pakistan.

A former Navy SEAL himself, McRaven retired in 2014 as commander of U.S. Special Operations Command and led the University of Texas system until 2018.

His speech drew on “real heroes” McRaven said he has seen “on the battlefields in Iraq and Afghanistan, in the hospitals fighting COVID-19, on the streets keeping America safe and open.”

He said that, like SEALs, graduates will need to weather difficulty to reach triumph. And he said they should expect opposition.

“If you hope to save the world, you will have to stand by your convictions,” he said. “You will have to confront the ignorant with facts. You will have to challenge the zealots with reason. You will have to defy the naysayers and the weak kneed who have not the constitution to stand tall.”

McRaven, 64, had originally been scheduled to deliver his address during a ceremony at the school’s campus in Cambridge. But like dozens of other U.S. colleges, MIT canceled its campus graduation amid the coronavirus pandemic and moved it online.

The settlement was applauded by some education advocacy groups, including Veterans Education Success, which works to help military veterans. Carrie Wofford, the group’s president, thanked the FTC for its work.

“The FTC’s findings should shock every patriotic American,” she said. “Enough is enough. It’s time to stop the fleecing of America’s veterans and service members by predatory colleges.”

The deal, announced Tuesday, settles a dispute over an ad campaign the for-profit college unrolled in 2012 touting partnerships with companies including Microsoft, Twitter and Adobe. It suggested the school worked with those companies to create job opportunities for students, even though there was no such agreement, investigators found.

The Federal Trade Commission said the settlement is the largest the agency has ever obtained against a for-profit college.

“Students making important decisions about their education need the facts, not fantasy job opportunities that do not exist,” said Andrew Smith, director of the Federal Trade Commission’s Bureau of Consumer Protection.

The University of Phoenix said in a statement that much of the dispute focused on a single ad campaign that ran from 2012 to 2014. It said it agreed to the deal “to avoid any further distraction from serving students.”

“The campaign occurred under prior ownership and concluded before the FTC’s inquiry began. We continue to believe the University acted appropriately,” the company said.

Apollo Education Group owns the University of Phoenix. The Arizona-based for-profit college chain has 55 campuses across the nation and teaches thousands of students through its online programs. It’s the nation’s largest recipient of GI Bill tuition benefits for military veterans.

Under the settlement, the University of Phoenix and Apollo will cancel all remaining debt for students who first enrolled between Oct. 1, 2012, and the end of 2016. Letters will be sent to borrowers saying they no longer owe payments to the school. The school is also barred from making false claims about its relationships with companies or employers.

The FTC says the $50 million payment will be used to help consumers who were misled by the ads.

According to the FTC’s complaint, the University of Phoenix created the 2012 ad campaign to distinguish itself from competitors as the chain’s enrollment was falling. After conducting market research, investigators found, the chain adopted an ad strategy tying the school to successful career outcomes. The campaign was called “Let’s Get To Work!”

In one TV ad that aired in 2012, a frustrated driver weaves through a crowded parking lot looking for a space. As a narrator notes that the University of Phoenix works with companies “to create options for you,” cars are suddenly lifted out of parking spaces and replaced with logos for companies including Microsoft and the American Red Cross.

Other TV, radio and internet ads boasted of similar ties with corporate partners including AT&T, Hitachi and Avis. In one 2013 radio ad, the University of Phoenix said companies including AT&T and Adobe were “helping us shape our curriculum to make sure today’s classes help prepare you to pursue tomorrow’s jobs.” Investigators said that wasn’t true.

Instead, many of the companies touted as corporate partners were actually part of the University of Phoenix’s “Workforce Solutions” program that provided discounted tuition to their employees in exchange for the companies’ help promoting the school.

Some companies that were asked to participate in the ads raised objections about the way they were being portrayed, investigators found. When approached to be part of the parking lot ad, for example, Staples officials said it falsely made it sound like they were helping guide the school’s curriculum. The company ultimately did not participate.

Even some senior officials at the University of Phoenix took issue with the ads. In 2012, a senior vice president complained to the chief marketing officer that using Adobe in the parking lot ad was “smoke & mirrors,” investigators found. “They are not a partner,” the vice president wrote. “We may do business with them, but nothing academically.”

The FBI seized the painting after a retired couple in Ridgefield transported it to Washington, D.C., to be auctioned last year. The couple, David and Gabby Tracy, had long cherished the painting but figured it was a copy, not the signed original.

Standing nearly 8 feet tall (2.4 meters), the painting depicts the 16th century Russian czar Ivan the Terrible looking crestfallen as he flees the Kremlin on horseback.

It had been left behind in a Ridgefield home that David Tracy bought in 1987. The previous couple in the home said the painting was already there when they purchased the house from a Swiss man in 1962.

When Tracy and his wife moved to a different house in the area, they paid $37,000 to add a sunroom big enough to display the painting.

“This painting was a beautiful painting, and we treasured it,” Gabby Tracy, 84, told The Associated Press on Saturday. “You couldn’t help but admire the fine painting, what detail was in Ivan’s face.”

But as they made plans to move to a condominium in Maine last year, they realized the painting wouldn’t fit. They hired an auctioning company near Washington to sell the work, which was appraised at about $5,000.

After the auction house added the painting to its catalog, though, an employee received an urgent email from an art museum in Ukraine.

“Attention! Painting ‘Ivan the Terrible’ was in the collection of the Dnepropetrovsk Art Museum until 1941 and was stolen during the Second World War,” the email said, according to court documents. “Please stop selling this painting at auction!!!”

The museum identified the painting as a 1911 work by Mikhail Panin, titled “Secret Departure of Ivan the Terrible Before the Oprichina.” It was a permanent exhibit at the Ukrainian museum until 1941 but disappeared during Nazi occupation of the city.

FBI officials took custody of the painting and later traced it to the Swiss man who sold the Ridgefield home in 1962. Officials didn’t release his name but said he moved to the U.S. in 1946 after serving in the Swiss Army. He died in 1986. Gabby Tracy said it’s unknown how he obtained the painting.

After learning it had been stolen, the Tracy couple agreed the painting should be returned to Ukraine. The story particularly moved Gabby, who was born in Slovakia and survived the Holocaust. Her father, Samuel Weiss, died in a concentration camp.

“There was never a question that it was going back. It’s just sad that we had to go through this experience,” Gabby said. “It’s ironic that I should have been so worried about keeping this painting safe.”

Federal officials filed paperwork Thursday formally passing the painting from the FBI to the U.S. District Attorney’s Office in Washington, which is turning it over to Ukraine’s embassy.

“The looting of cultural heritage during World War II was tragic, and we are happy to be able to assist in the efforts to return such items to their rightful owners,” U.S. Attorney Jessie Liu said in a statement Friday.

Officials at Ukraine’s embassy thanked the Tracy couple and U.S. officials who helped recover the painting. A statement from spokeswoman Natalia Solyeva said it’s the first time the two nations have worked together to recover stolen cultural goods.

“The Embassy of Ukraine was excited to work with its American partners on the case of returning the painting to its rightful owners — the people of Ukraine,” the statement said.

Birmingham, Alabama-based Education Corp. of America said it was closing schools operating as Virginia College, Brightwood College, Brightwood Career Institute, Ecotech Institute and Golf Academy of America in more than 70 locations in 21 states. The company said in October that it had more than 20,000 students, although more recent documents indicate the number may be closer to 15,000.

ECA schools enrolled about 4,000 students using the Post-9/11 GI Bill in fiscal 2017, the latest year for which federal data is available. A Military Times analysis of Department of Veterans Affairs data shows more than $41 million went to pay for the education of veterans at these schools.

The company, backed by investors including private equity firm Willis Stein & Partners of Chicago, is the latest in a series of for-profit colleges to close after allegations that they were loading students up with debt while not providing them with marketable skills.

In some cases, students told local news outlets Wednesday that operations ceased immediately, while in other cases students said they were told to return for meetings later.

ECA spokeswoman Diane Worthington said that at most locations, Friday would be the last day of classes, and students would get academic credit for this term. One ECA institution, New England College of Business, is not closing. The company mostly offers professional certificates in subjects like cosmetology, culinary arts and medical and dental assisting.

In a letter to students, ECA CEO Stuart Reed said the company’s impending loss of accreditation, along with added requirements from the U.S. Department of Education, made the company unable to raise more money to operate the schools while it sought to reorganize.

“It is with extreme regret that this series of recent circumstances has forced us to discontinue the operation of our schools,” Reed wrote.

In October, the company sued the U.S. Education Department seeking to maintain its federal funding, which was in jeopardy over its dire financial situation. A judge later dismissed the suit.

Court documents filed by the company said its lagging revenue left it unable to make payments on its debt or rental fees, and that it faced eviction at several campuses. ECA estimated it owed $66 million at the time. Even before then, ECA was planning to shutter 26 campuses to cut costs. Another federal judge in Georgia later granted a bankruptcy-like receivership meant to protect the company from creditors.

ECA largely blamed falling enrollment on an upswing in the economy, which left fewer adults heading to school for job skills, and on increased federal regulation of the for-profit college industry.

The sudden closure drew criticism from the U.S. Education Department, which said it had been working with the company to arrange a shut-down that gave students time to transfer.

“Instead of taking the next few months to close in an orderly fashion, ECA took the easy way out and left 19,000 students scrambling to find a way to finish the education program they started,” Liz Hill, an Education Department spokeswoman, said in a statement.

Like the recently shuttered Corinthian Colleges and ITT Technical Institute chains, Education Corporation of America was overseen by the Accrediting Council for Independent Colleges and Schools, one of the watchdog groups the federal government appoints to ensure colleges offer a quality education.

The council, known as ACICS, wrote a Tuesday letter to Reed saying it was suspending accreditation immediately at all the institutions, citing “rapidly deteriorating financial conditions,” a failure to make required payments to the council and a wide variety of academic concerns.

ACICS was shut down by the Obama administration over allegations of lax oversight, but was later reinstated on Nov. 21 by Education Secretary Betsy DeVos, who found it was “substantially in compliance” with federal standards.

Virginia Rep. Bobby Scott, the top Democrat on the House Education and the Workforce Committee, urged DeVos to rethink her decision on ACICS after the Wednesday closure.

“We have repeatedly warned about the risks low-quality, for-profit education companies and irresponsible accreditors pose to students and taxpayers across the country,” Scott said in a statement. “Today’s announcement is another painful reminder of those risks.”

Corinthian and ITT Tech educated thousands of student veterans when they closed in 2015 and 2016, respectively, and became the impetus for a provision in the Forever GI Bill law passed last year that restores GI Bill benefits to victims of abrupt school closures.

In many cases, students and teachers were in class when they got the news about the ECA closures Wednesday. Melissa Zavala, who was studying to be a medical assistant at a San Antonio, Texas, campus of Brightwood, told KSAT-TV students were taken to an auditorium.

“The director was there and she was like, ‘I have bad news. The school is closing down,’” Zavala said. “Everyone was like, ‘What about our student loans? We’re almost done.’”

Zavala said campus officials couldn’t provide additional information and told them to look online for other colleges they could attend.

“They took our money, they shut the school down and that’s it for us,” Zavala said.

Toby Merrill, who directs the Project on Predatory Student Lending at Harvard Law School, said students can ask the U.S. Department of Education to cancel loans if a school closes. However, that opportunity doesn’t apply if a student transfers credits or if a school hires a successor to offer students classes to complete their programs.

(Military Times reporter Natalie Gross contributed to this story.)

Her decision released Wednesday says the Accrediting Council for Independent Colleges and Schools passed muster in 19 of 21 areas reviewed. DeVos says she is restoring the group’s recognition and giving it a year to fix lingering problems.

The group, known as ACICS, was responsible for ensuring the quality of 250 institutions before the Obama administration cut ties with it in 2016, alleging poor oversight.

It had previously certified now-defunct for-profit chains including Corinthian Colleges and ITT Technical Institute. These schools educated thousands of student veterans when they closed and became the impetus for a provision in the Forever GI Bill law passed last year that restores GI Bill benefits to victims of abrupt school closures.

A judge ordered DeVos to revisit the case in March after ACICS sued, saying the previous administration failed to consider thousands of pages of evidence.

Military Times reporter Natalie Gross contributed to this story.

The proposal, which aims to replace a set of Obama-era rules that were never implemented, drew applause from the for-profit industry but sharp criticism from advocacy groups that represent student borrowers, including veterans.

Education Secretary Betsy DeVos said the proposal lays out clear rules schools must follow to avoid trouble, while also protecting students harmed by deception.

“Our commitment and our focus has been and remains on protecting students from fraud,” DeVos said.

Under the proposal, students would be eligible for loan relief if they can prove their schools knowingly misled them with statements or actions that directly led them to take out loans or enroll at the school.

That would be a higher bar than the borrower defense rules finalized under Obama in 2016 after the collapse of two for-profit schools, Corinthian Colleges and ITT Technical Institute. Those rules allowed relief in a wider range of cases dealing with breach of contract.

When Corinthian and ITT abruptly shut down in 2015 and 2016, respectively, thousands of student veterans were among those left in limbo — in many cases, with student debt and credits that didn’t transfer to other institutions.

Education Department documents supporting DeVos’ proposal argue that, while students should be protected from fraud, they also have an obligation to do their research before picking schools.

“Postsecondary students are adults who can be reasonably expected to make informed decisions if they have access to relevant and reliable data about program outcomes,” the department said.

The new proposal is estimated to save nearly $13 billion over the next decade compared with spending estimates under the Obama rules, primarily by reducing the amount of loan relief awarded to students.

Department officials say they have received more than 100,000 fraud claims since 2015, and most are still under review. But the new rules would apply only to loans taken out after July 1, 2019, officials said.

Schools would gain an opportunity to respond to claims of fraud under the new proposal, which says schools deserve to defend themselves against accusations that could damage their reputations and revenue.

It also would allow schools to force students into arbitration agreements barring them from suing the school, a practice used by some for-profit colleges that would have been banned under Obama’s rules.

Opponents blasted the proposal, saying it places schools ahead of students and discourages victims from pursuing financial relief.

Bob Shireman, a senior fellow at the Century Foundation and a former education official under Obama, said the proposal “is perhaps the most damaging action Betsy DeVos has taken since assuming office.”

“These changes would effectively strip students of their right to recourse if they believe that a college or university has misled them, making it next to impossible for defrauded students to get the relief they are entitled to,” he said.

Veterans Education Success, a nonprofit that provides free legal and counseling services to veterans and family members defrauded by schools, released a statement opposing DeVos’ proposal. It says that while the proposed rule claims to better balance the interest of students, taxpayers and schools, it seems that the Education Department now sees borrowers and not predatory schools “as the most likely threat to taxpayers’ investment in the federal student loan program.”

VES was one of 36 mostly-military oriented organizations that wrote a letter to the department last fall in support of the Obama-era borrower defense rule, asking officials to strengthen rules that guard against school fraud — not roll them back.

“On issue after issue, the DeVos proposed rule takes the side of predatory schools, eviscerating the protections that the previous administration accorded to defrauded students,” said the organization’s research director, Walter Ochinko. “It would be unconscionable for the Department to incentivize default by limiting eligibility to file a claim to those students who have stopped paying off their federal student loans and are in collections.”

But the changes were hailed as an improvement by the for-profit college industry and some Republicans.

Steve Gunderson, president and CEO of the trade group Career Education Colleges and Universities, said previous versions of the rules allowed for “carte blanche approval” of fraud claims, to the detriment of schools and their students.

“The department has undertaken a thoughtful and deliberate approach to this rule, and we applaud their hard work on this important matter,” Gunderson said.

Sen. Lamar Alexander, a Republican from Tennessee and chairman of the Senate education committee, said DeVos’ proposal will prevent taxpayers from footing the bill for “unreasonable or unsubstantiated claims of fraud.”

“The Obama administration went too far in rewriting this provision by setting overly broad and vague standards and as a result, put taxpayers on the hook for too many loans,” he said.

Obama’s education officials created new rules to clarify the debt relief process after thousands of students said they were defrauded by for-profit colleges. Before that, the process was rarely used and relied on a patchwork of state laws to determine if students deserved loan forgiveness.

The updated rules were scheduled to take effect in July 2017, but DeVos delayed them after a California group representing for-profit schools sued to block the regulations. DeVos began the process to replace them soon after.

Meanwhile, the department has only recently begun to process a backlog of fraud claims, announcing in December that it will provide only partial relief to borrowers based on their incomes. Under the Obama administration, students were granted full relief for their loans.

On Wednesday, the department said it will be gathering public input on the proposed for the next 30 days. Along with opinions on the rules, officials are also asking if borrowers still making payments on their loans should be able to apply for forgiveness at all, or if it should be reserved for those who default.

Military Times reporter Natalie Gross contributed to this story.

The recommendation is only the first step in a broader process to decide the council’s fate. Next, a bipartisan advisory committee will issue its own proposal before top education officials make the final decision.

By attempting to revoke the council’s authority, the Education Department is taking the strongest action it can against an accreditor. Education officials could recall only one other time when they had recommended a shutdown.

If the council is forced to close, its schools would have 18 months to find new accreditors or lose access to federal funding, the top source of revenue for most for-profit colleges. The council’s schools received $4.7 billion in federal aid last year.

Some of the council’s critics celebrated the recommendation, saying it’s a sign that the Education Department is taking a firmer stance against accreditors.

“This decision sends a strong and unambiguous signal that accreditation must do a better job acting as a gatekeeper to federal funds,” said Ben Miller, senior director for postsecondary education at the Center for American Progress, a liberal public policy organization in Washington, D.C.

Massachusetts Attorney General Maura Healey, who led a push against the council, urged the department to follow through on its recommendation.

“We have no time to waste when it comes to ensuring a quality, affordable education for students, and providing the regulatory oversight these schools so desperately need,” she said in a statement.

But some warn that closing the accreditation group could bring unintended consequences.

Terry Hartle, senior vice president of the American Council on Education, a group representing the heads of colleges and universities, said it could take more than 18 months for some colleges to gain accreditation elsewhere. If they miss that deadline, schools and their students would be ineligible for federal financial aid, but students would still be responsible for existing federal loans.

“It’s going to set off a mad scramble for the schools to find a new accreditor,” Hartle said. “There could be a significant number of students who find themselves caught up in this as well.”

The Education Department’s advisory committee will meet next week to take up the next step of the process. Any decision could be challenged in federal court.

In a pilot project announced Wednesday, students will be able to take a semester of free online courses in one of MIT’s graduate programs and then, if they pay a “modest fee” of about $1,500 and pass an exam, they will earn a “MicroMaster’s” degree, the school said.

The new degree represents half of the university’s one-year master’s degree program in supply chain management. As part of the pilot project, students who perform well in the online half can take an exam to apply for the second semester on campus. Those who get in would pay $33,000, about half the cost of the yearlong program.

“Anyone who wants to be here now has a shot to be here,” MIT President L. Rafael Reif said. “They have a chance to prove in advance that they can do the work.”

The cost of the MicroMaster’s degree includes $150 for each of the five online classes, plus up to $800 to take the exam. The first courses will launch this winter, with plans to route about 40 students each semester from the online courses to the campus program.

Students in the supply chain management program are typically midcareer workers who take a year off work for intense training. But MIT said there’s heavy demand from companies to train more students in the field, which examines the flow of goods from manufacturer to consumer.

“We produce 40 students a year, and they say that’s a drop in the bucket; we need thousands,” said Yossi Sheffi, director of the MIT Center for Transportation and Logistics.

As free online courses have spread across the country in recent years, some academics predicted that it would spell the end of traditional courses, and perhaps the need for university degrees. But MIT follows other colleges that are merging free Web classes with a school-stamped degree.

This year, Arizona State University started offering freshman courses online for free, with the option to pay for course credit later at a cost of up to $200 per credit hour. The Georgia Institute of Technology offers an online master’s degree in computer science for $6,600, but the classes can be taken for free without credit. The University of Illinois has an online master’s degree in business using a similar model.

MIT and Harvard were seen as pioneers in 2011 when they created edX, a provider of free online classes. The idea was to spread education far and wide, snipping the tie between knowledge and academic credit. Although the pilot program will reintroduce course credit, MIT says it’s the next step along the same path.

“The new MicroMaster’s is an important modular credential for the digital age, and promises to serve as academic currency in a continuous, lifelong learning world,” Anant Agarwal, an MIT professor and CEO of edX, said in a statement. “It also affords an evolutionary path for universities in the face of mounting prices.”

For students, it’s also a new route into the university, bucking the traditional admissions system that relies on past academic records.

“That admission system works well for people who went to schools we know very well,” Reif said. “But for people from outside that familiar circle, it can be hard to break in.”

The president added that if the new model is successful, it could expand to other MIT programs. But the school also must weigh its costs.

“Right now the main focus is quality, and hopefully the finances will work out later,” Reif said. “But this is not something in which we expect to make money. We want to break even.”