Trump executive orders focus on education, targeting colleges, job training, AI

President Trump signs executive orders in Oval Office

President Donald Trump signed new executive orders centered on Education. POTUS also met with wounded veterans. Trump said, "'There's no group of people more important than the people in this room... and they're going to be taken really well cared of — It's really important to me.'"

WASHINGTON - President Donald Trump signed a slew of executive orders on Wednesday targeting education.

FILE - U.S. President Donald Trump holds up a proclamation he just signed in the Oval Office at the White House on April 17, 2025 in Washington, DC. (Photo by Win McNamee/Getty Images)

Improved training for skilled trades

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The Labor, Education and Commerce departments will aim to focus more on job needs in emerging industries. This move comes as the Trump administration works toward reviving U.S. manufacturing.

The goal will be to support more than 1 million apprenticeships per year in skilled trades.

Reshaping college accreditation system

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Trump signed an order that aims to change the college accreditation system.

The order will challenge what Trump views as discriminatory practices on college campuses.

The order claims the changes will encourage intellectual diversity among faculty, improve metrics for student success, and streamline the process for colleges to change accreditors or for new accrediting bodies to gain federal recognition. 

What they're saying:

"University accreditation is currently a process controlled by a number of third-party organizations," Will Scharf, White House staff secretary, said on Wednesday. "By law, many of those third party creditors have relied on sort of woke ideology to accredit universities instead of accrediting based on merit and performance. This executive order affects a number of changes to the university accreditation process and also applies to, law schools and other graduate programs. But the basic idea is to force accreditation, to be focused on the merit and the actual results that these universities are providing."

AI education for grades K-12

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Also on Wednesday, Trump signed an order that aims to bring artificial intelligence to grades K-12.

The order instructs the U.S. Education and Labor departments to give students an opportunity to take AI courses and certification programs. 

The president plans to establish a White House task force on AI education which will help agencies implement a Presidential AI Challenge. 

The challenge "will encourage and highlight student and educator achievements in AI," the order states.