PHYSICAL THERAPY EDITION | Week of November 2, 2026 | 5-min skim

Trends, Research, Accreditation, Curriculum and Key updates

The department released its final accreditation rule on Oct 29 and published it in the Federal Register on Oct 30, saying it made no substantive changes to the August proposal after about 7,000 public comments. Accreditors must now weigh institutions' academic freedom and intellectual diversity policies, may not enforce what the administration calls illegal DEI requirements, and new accreditors no longer need two years of operation before seeking federal recognition. The rule takes effect July 1, 2027; the department rejected requests for a phase-in. CHEA said its central concerns remain largely unresolved, while Under Secretary Nicholas Kent said accreditors had acted as a "cartel."

Sources: Higher Ed Dive, Inside Higher Ed

Preliminary National Student Clearinghouse data show undergraduate enrollment up 0.6% this fall, a sharp slowdown from 2.4% growth a year earlier. Graduate enrollment fell 1.6%, led by a 3.7% drop in master's students and a 0.5% dip in doctoral enrollment, in the first year of the new federal graduate borrowing limits. The Clearinghouse cautioned that the data cannot show whether the caps caused the decline. Enrollment in health professional programs rose more than 6%; the data cover 46% of reporting institutions, with final figures due in January 2027.

Sources: Higher Ed Dive, Inside Higher Ed

Speaking at Arizona State on Oct 26, Education Secretary Linda McMahon said the graduate and parent borrowing caps in the One Big Beautiful Bill Act are pushing colleges to stop raising prices, and that "dozens" have cut prices since July. Inside Higher Ed noted that her examples were all graduate programs. She also promoted the coming program-level earnings test, under which programs that fall short could lose federal loan access, with the first results expected next year. ACE and IHEP will host a webinar on Nov 19 on how institutions can prepare for the new earnings-based accountability rules.

Sources: Inside Higher Ed, ACE

The board of the Catholic university in Great Falls, Montana, voted Oct 27 to close, with the last day of classes on Aug 20, 2027. The university had shifted toward health-care programs in 2017 but faced an $8 million annual budget gap and the loss of a similar yearly subsidy from the Providence health system. Its accreditor, NWCCU, placed it on probation in August and required a teach-out plan. The university plans to use its endowment to cut graduate tuition, and Carroll College is offering transfer support.

Sources: Higher Ed Dive, Inside Higher Ed

A Republican staff report from the House Education and Workforce Committee accuses the American Psychological Association of fostering antisemitism through its resolutions, listservs, publications and conferences. About a month earlier, an Education Department accreditation advisory committee recommended suspending federal recognition of APA's accrediting arm. The report also criticizes APA's support for "decolonial therapy," an issue the committee raised. APA did not comment.

Source: Inside Higher Ed

ACE and more than 40 associations filed comments asking the Treasury Department and IRS to withdraw or narrow a Sept 3 proposal that would let the IRS revoke a private school's tax exemption for racial discrimination in any program, regardless of intent. The groups say the rule exceeds the IRS's authority, leaves key terms undefined and invites political enforcement. They note that the proposal could affect up to 18,000 institutions from K-12 through higher education, along with academic medical centers.

Source: ACE

The Justice Department announced the first charges under its multistate "Operation Ghostbusters," targeting fraudsters who used stolen identities to enroll fake students and collect federal aid. Officials say the fraud may exceed $200 million, and investigators flagged more than 830,000 possibly fraudulent ID numbers. The Education Department says its new FAFSA fraud tools have blocked more than $2 billion, and Congress is weighing a bill to make them permanent.

Source: Inside Higher Ed

Provost Santiago Schnell resigned less than two weeks before a planned faculty no-confidence vote. An independent faculty and alumni committee found he "used AI to meaningfully alter his writing" and fell short of integrity standards, including a peer-reviewed manuscript and figures prepared without the AI disclosure the publisher required. The committee did not rely on AI detectors; it reviewed his university AI account logs.

Source: Inside Higher Ed

An Ivy Tech professor audited 14 of 39 published meta-analyses on AI in education, all reporting positive results, and found impossible statistics, hallucinated references and weak comparison groups. One study compared nursing students using AI tutoring with peers who had no study sessions at all. In his own preliminary analysis of 44 well-designed experiments, the average effect was roughly zero. The audit is a preprint and has not been peer reviewed.

Source: Hechinger Report

The final rule exempts purely programmatic accreditors such as CAPTE from the separate-and-independent requirement, but they must still meet the conflict-of-interest controls in Section 602.15. Agencies may keep ties to professional associations if they disclose them and maintain safeguards. The department rejected programmatic accreditors' requests for more time and pointed to a transition period running about 20 months, through July 1, 2028. It declined to require programmatic accreditors to report licensure pass rates, though pass rates remain among the outcome measures it expects agencies to consider.

Source: Federal Register (govinfo)

CAPTE's Fall Board Meeting ran Oct 29 to Nov 2, where a recommendation on revised standards was expected, but no decision had been posted as of Sunday evening. The Call for Comment page still lists tracked-changes drafts of the proposed PT and PTA Standards and Required Elements, dated May 7 and May 8, 2026, and the linked comment survey is closed. CAPTE says it will hold three listening sessions on specific standards, but no dates have been posted. The next scheduled CAPTE events are self-study workshops on Jan 8 and the Winter Board Meeting on Jan 29 to 30, 2027.

Sources: CAPTE Call for Comment, CAPTE calendar

The APTA Academy of Education is accepting nominations through Nov 15, 2026 for Treasurer, Director for Scholarly Engagement and Nominating Committee Member. Positions are also open across seven special interest groups, including Academic Faculty, Clinical Education, PTA Educators, and Residency and Fellowship. Candidates may self-nominate online or be nominated by email to the Nominating Committee chair; elections are in spring 2027 and terms begin July 1, 2027.

Source: APTA Academy of Education

The Education Department's interim list of professional degree programs, last updated Oct 23, still includes the Doctor of Physical Therapy (CIP 51.2308), so DPT students qualify for the higher professional-student loan limits. The list now covers 30 programs, including occupational therapy, physician assistant and audiology; the latest update added naturopathy after an Oregon federal court injunction. The designations are interim and apply only while related court orders remain in place, and the department notes institutions may consider limiting loans to graduate-level caps.

Source: FSA Partners

Headlines from subscription sources, for readers with access.

Professional Advancement & Community Engagement: Shifting to Justice-Centered Experiential Learning in PT Education, Journal of Physical Therapy Education (subscription)

Sources: Higher Ed Dive, Higher Ed Dive

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