Change is in the air in Washington—and on the campuses of America’s colleges and universities. As President Trump implements his campaign to reduce the cost of government, eliminate Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) initiatives, American higher education will change. Given that American higher education has been the envy of the world for more than a century, this is not a good thing.
The Trump administration and conservative Republicans believe that Washington is responsible for what it sees as a liberal bias at many schools. The administration sees higher education, with rare exceptions, as hostile to the GOP. It also believes it is the source of initiatives that are obstacles to America becoming “great” again—things like DEI, academic offerings it sees as “woke,” and efforts to curtail free speech by prohibiting right-wing speakers from campus.
The new administration, with help from Republicans in Congress, has already attacked elite institutions as anti-Semitic and accused all higher education of wastefulness.
As the FY 2026 Budget is determined, Republicans see an opportunity to kill more than one bird with the stones of their Project 2025-inspired agenda. Several initiatives already are underway via Executive Orders and institutions have taken notice. African American and gay and lesbian studies have been curtailed at some schools, DEI offices closed, gender or ethnic-specific clubs have been banned. The goal is not to be targeted by Trump for deeper penalties.
The efforts to “get in line” may work for some institutions, but the changes in spending and policy under consideration on Capitol Hill and within the Trump administration will change American higher education for the worse.
The writers of Project 2025 proposed:
The next Administration should work with Congress to eliminate or move OPE [Office of Postsecondary Education] programs to The ETA [Employment and Training Administration] at the Department of Labor.
This proposal includes major modifications to institutional accreditation to prevent accreditors from requiring things like DEI programs. The goal also is to reorient higher education to increase its focus on job-training. That change conflicts directly with the mission of hundreds of small liberal arts colleges and universities.
Project 2025 proposed:
Funding to institutions should be block-granted and narrowed to Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) and tribally controlled colleges.
This short-sighted proposal is based on a misunderstanding of federal support for HBCUs and tribally controlled colleges. More Black and other minority students are served at non-HBCUs than at them. If the goal is to increase college attainment for underrepresented populations, cutting funding to institutions that serve such students is a major mistake. For reasons that are not clear, Project 2025 ignores Hispanic-serving institutions altogether.
Research and other grants are important to hundreds of smaller but high-quality colleges and universities, including public institutions. The ability of these institutions to maintain their quality will be undermined if resources are eliminated.
The Administration also seeks to move programs deemed important to our national security interests to the Department of State. How is the Department of State supposed to oversee such programs if its staff is cut? And given that most funds involved in these programs involve colleges and universities, the State Department doesn’t have the expertise to administer them.
Project 2025 calls for a complete restructuring of federal student loan programs:
The next Administration should completely reverse the student loan federalization of 2010 and work with Congress to spin off FSA [The Office of Federal Student Aid] and its student loan obligations to a new government corporation with professional governance and management.
This proposal calls for returning student lending to banks and other private sector institutions, an action taken in 2010 to reduce the cost of providing student loans. Presumably, the authors of Project 2025 believe creating a “new government corporation” would save money. Maybe call it Sallie Mae 2.0? Hopefully, The Trump Organization is NOT planning to enter the student loan business.
More important than this change is the proposal to eliminate loan forgiveness and income contingent loan repayment plans including SAVE (Saving on a Valuable Education). Project 2025 provides:
The new Administration must end abuses in the loan forgiveness programs. Borrowers should be expected to repay their loans.
It is unclear what “abuses” Project 2025 was referencing. The language in Project 2025 also would have been more honest had it added, “or not borrow federal student loans at all.”
The proposed changes would dramatically increase the cost of borrowing for college. Hundreds of thousands of students would not be able to afford college, most of them from low to moderate-income families.
The increased cost of borrowing would also result in hundreds of smaller institutions, many affiliated with churches, closing because they will be unaffordable for most students and the schools have little or no endowment or other means of subsidizing tuition.
House Republicans have also called for an “excise tax” on the endowments of elite colleges and universities (those with large endowments). The rate is already 1.4 percent. Proposals are now under discussion to increase that rate to 14 or even 20 percent.
This tax increase is seen as a means of punishing elite schools for their “liberal bias, “but also would produce revenue savings that could be used to help pay for extension of the 2017 Trump tax cuts. One unforeseen result is likely to be a decrease in donations to elite colleges and universities, something that, in the long run, will undermine their excellence.
There are other changes to higher education beyond those referenced in this column. The administration would change Title IX (Ensuring Gender Equity in Education), for example, in a way that would result in fewer athletic opportunities for women attending college.
If you agree that one of the reasons America is great today is because of our colleges and universities and widespread educational opportunity, be afraid of the Republican proposals. They would kill the higher education system that the rest of the world has sought to replicate and put an end to American leadership in technology, science, and engineering.
J.E. Dean writes on politics, government, and, too infrequently, other subjects. A former counsel on Capitol Hill and public affairs consultant, Dean also writes for Dean’s List on Medium and Dean’s Issues & Insights on Substack.
Willard Tod Engelskirchen says
Our higher education and research center funding is the envy of the world. I just do not understand why Trump and his people are so bent on ruining it when it gives us such great benefits. Sure it costs a lot to send a child thru school and grad school. However, think of the result.
One person I know worked at NIH after a higher ed career at a University. He also worked at an institution which funded research. I asked him recently how many Nobels his grantees received. He answered “ten”. Just so you know, that is pretty spectacular. Do we really want to pass up these chances to make real progress to make a political point?
Government grants are one of the reasons for our research success. They are also key to the industry / government cooperation we have in the United States.
Now then please explain to me why we want to limit them and limit our interaction with foreign students and laboratories. After I retired from an industrial research organization many years ago I saw an organization chart which showed that 60% of senior research management was foreign born. Do we want to stop these people from joining our workforce?
BTW, how many of the voices we hear are those of people from elite universities? Land grant schools are cost effective as are historically Black schools who produce graduates who are trained to succeed.
John Dean says
Thank you for your informative comment. I particularly agree that Land Grant institutions are cost-effective as well as the graduates of HBCUs. Educational opportunities and support for students to help them succeed will suffer if President Trump’s cuts to the Department of Education and research grants generally happen.
HR Worthington says
A (very) long time ago, I graduated from university with a degree in Mathematics. I then went on to earn a master’s in economics and a Ph.D. in quantum physics. Eventually, I did my thesis on the Application of Techniques in Statistical Physics to Complex Systems as a Method to Improve Predictive Analysis in the Social Sciences. Here is what I learned after all that time in academia:
If you subsidize something, you don’t make it cheaper, you make it more expensive. That is what “low interest” student loans do. They don’t make school more affordable; they make it less affordable.
I know, it isn’t intuitive to you. Here is how it works: When then interest rates are artificially lowered, do you know what happens? Miraculously, you can borrow more for the same payment amount. Then, in response, providers of the product or service can raise their prices to meet increased demand and “affordability.” These providers don’t improve their product as there is no incentive to. Universities in particular, since they are non-profits and don’t have shareholders, figure out some other way to spend the windfall. Viola! Enter the Assistant Dean to the Department of How Do We Keep This Gravy Train Going Forever. Education is amazing, isn’t it?
To my point: I paid less than $25,000 (total) for my education back then. That same education, at the same formerly elite institutions, would cost approximately $950,000 today. (That’s why I throw the alumni giving letters in the trash.)
All this artificially “cheap” money in the form of student loans has done nothing but driven inflation in the sector higher and bankrolled the employment of untold amounts of redundant administrators. I rarely saw an administrator back in those days, now these places are full of them. The overwhelming majority of these con artists are completely useless. They wouldn’t know the difference between Herodicus and the Higgs Boson if their lives depended on it.
I will dispense with the obvious critiques of the rest of your piece, as your logic makes me suspect you obtained your credentials from the ill-fated Trump University. -HR
John Dean says
Thank you for reading my piece. I was going to reply to it until I read your last sentence. I don’t respond to comments that include ad hominem attacks.
Reed Fawell 3 says
Mr. Worthington does known what he is talking about. His truth is plainly obvious by the facts on the ground.
HR Worthington says
I will take it back if you can name one thing the government has subsidized that has become more affordable (never mind better and more affordable). -HR
P.S. I know you didn’t go to Trump University, but you can’t realistically expect to write an entire piece on higher education and not have me poke fun at that old boy.
Ellen Exelbert says
“American education has been the envy of the world” for a century – that was long before DEI and antisemitism on campus took hold and destroyed our universities. DEI and the woke left have ruined not only our schools, but the fabric of our democracy by breaking us into little selfish parts. “Change is in the air” – finally we can breathe again knowing many have gathered their courage and have decided to stop the destruction DEI, with all its theoretically good intent, has caused. Perhaps you have not walked a college campus recently, or have had children on college campuses calling out begging for safe passage because they are Jewish. American higher education has been changed for the worse under Obama and Biden- we have sold our childrens souls to foreign governments. Finally, some honest recognition about what is going on in the university universe. . Perhaps the American higher education system can be saved and its integrity and honesty restored, now that the real issues are being identified. Thank goodness DEI is being addressed for the farce it is and antisemetism is being recognized for the evil threat it is.
Deirdre LaMotte says
Diversity on college campuses is not achieved through quotas. Nor does diversity justify or warrant admission of unqualified applicants. However, the diversity that is needed and the future of the nation do require that colleges and universities continue to be able to reach out and make a conscious effort to build healthy and diverse learning environments that are appropriate for their missions. The success of higher education and the strength of our democracy depend on it. Every college should reflect the
society we live in. Soon, whites people will be the minority. Are you suggesting we should then not
admit white people?
Every college admits those who will enhance the educational aspirations of their place of higher learning. All of these colleges welcome diversity. Thank god Wesleyan College is fighting this overt
decree from this absurd group of fascist.
You say “sold our souls to foreign governments”?? What are you talking about? Are you talking about how we have sold this nation to a communist tyrant, Putin?
You are correct.
John Dean says
I agree with you on antisemitism, but not the rest of your response. I have a very different understanding of diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives, and I suspect nothing I might write here would convince you that DEI is not a “farce.”
Ellen Exelbert says
Your different understanding does not mean you are correct. There is no country on earth more diverse, more equitable and more inclusive than the United States. We take in people from all over the world – we always have. And we have ALWAYS worked toward integrating those people to become AMERICANS.
It is even on our money – E. Pluribus Unum. STOP dividing us up into our little parts. All our blood is red.
Also, Do you have any idea the amount of money our universities have taken from the likes of Qatar, Saudi, China, etc. Do you think the hundreds of millions of dollars they feed our schools is meaningless.
Ellen
Ellen Exelbert says
Yes, thank you for understanding that there is nothing that would convince me DEI is not a farce. Just as I cannot be convinced that “leading from behind” is a leadership model.
Reed Fawell 3 says
You have not the slightest idea what you are talking about.
John Dean says
Thanks for reading my piece, but I disagree.
Wilson Dean says
Trump’s hatred of higher education stems from its requirement that students base their analysis on facts—the exact opposite of what he requires from his cult followers. Colleges teach students to separate facts from lies and to base their opinions on well-reasoned arguments. Trump demands his followers give him uncontested devotion to each of his lies—that climate change is a hoax, that he won the 2020 election, that Ukraine started the war with Russia—his “requirements” are an endless dribble of manufactured falsehoods. So he attacks higher education because can’t stand some uppity college student challenging him with actual facts. What a sad commentary on the President of our wonderful country.
John Dean says
As usual, we are on the same page. Based on the other comments I have received on this piece, that page appears to be small. As you may have read, Mary Trump says Donald Trump cheated on his SATs to get into Penn. Maybe Trump is the wrong guy to “reform” higher education.
https://www.thedp.com/article/2020/07/donald-trump-penn-wharton-sat-cheating
Kenneth Wilkins says
That you think it is Trump’s plans or Project 2025 that will destroy higher education confirms that you don’t see that it is already well on its way to being destroyed. It appears you’ve drank the woke kool-aid and now are incapable of seeing how far gone higher education really is. My child left to pursue a liberal arts degree 4 1/2 year ago a balanced, thoughtful young adult. Through the current system of higher education that you want to protect, my 23 yr old now thinks the world will come to an end in our lifetime (climate change); that a “person” with a penis can be a woman (trans-gender ideology); that Trump is a dictator (TDS); that Isreal is the fourth reich; that Islamic-based violence is exaggerated by the right; and that white people/Christians/European ancestry are the primary cause of the world’s ills. By the way…my child still cannot find a job 9 months after graduation. So, I am not afraid of Republican proposals; I am actually grateful that in some respects they see what you are unable to see, and that they have the courage to confront some of those elements of our system of higher education that actually are destroying it.
Reed Fawell 3 says
Yes, Ken, and your experience as a parent has been replicated over and over again, a college graduate with a poisoned indoctrination, no job, and huge debt.
John Dean says
I’m not sure how to respond to your comment except to say that there may be alternative explanations for your child’s beliefs that trouble you. Although you have concluded that I am “unable to see” things, I would respectfully suggest that college students are influenced by more than just what their professors and instructors tell them. I would also suggest that when some college graduates are unable to find employment, it is not always the college’s fault.
Deirdre LaMotte says
As long as people prefer to be distracted by the mythical transgender squirrel at their bird feeder rather than focus on the reality of the chaos we will continue on this path.
Reed Fawell 3 says
Linked in below is a fine article that tells us how our American Universities destroyed their own English Departments and English major programs:
https://quillette.com/2023/04/05/why-the-english-department-died/
This article below asks if our American Universities are worth saving;
https://quillette.com/2025/02/18/universities-are-worth-saving/?ref=quillette-daily-newsletter