1/n Since we are talking about project 2025, here are some things a Trump administration plans to do with higher education policy, in no particular order
2/n Amend FIRPA to make it much easier for parents to access college students educational records and personal information, and require that education institutions get the consent of parents (even for those over 18?) to conduct surveys that ask students about mental health, sex, and political views.
3/n Block grant funding to HBCUs and Tribal Colleges (at what level, is not clear), implicitly eliminating other MSI federal funding such as for HSIs and ANAPASI designated institutions.
4/ Send NCES to Census in the Commerce Department and and possibly eliminate IES (so no more federal funding for education research). Unclear if IPEDS or other surveys would be retained.
5/ Treat students loans explicitly as an opportunity to make money for the "taxpayer," privatize the loan system, and roll back nearly all loan forgiveness programs. Basically treat student loans not as financial aid but as an income stream for the banks and government.
6/ Gut civil rights enforcement in education. Special attention is given to eliminating the rights of trans* and nonbinary students. Wearing guidance on handling sexual assault on campus. Making lawsuits initiated by individuals or the DOJ the only the primary vehicle for enforcing civil rights.
7/ Eliminate negotiated rule making for provisions of the Higher Education Act. This takes higher education institutions, student advocates, and academic labor voices out of the conversation when setting HEA based regulations.
8/ Eliminate desperate impact as standing for enforcement and remedy under title VI of the Civil Rights Act. Meaning that a "colorblind" educational policy that disproprtionaly and adversely effected (or benefited) on more racal groups would be permitted. This is a license to discriminate.
9/ Suspend data collection on student outcomes or at least suspend the use of data on student outcomes for accountability and evaluation purposes. Mostly this is a bad faith move to protect for-profit and other predatory campuses.
10/ I want to add something about student loans - impede here is not just that the loans would be privatized, like under the Bush admin, but also that lending decisions, that is who is eligible for a student loan, would be up to banks. This is a big deal.
11/ Language that would forbid public institution teachers from using students' names an pronouns if they differ from their birth certificates but it is not 100% clear if that would apply only to schools or also higher ed. I would normally say just schools but the FIRPA stuff makes it a ?
12/ Here is a BIG one ... basically get rid of accreditation or any academic standard for access to IV funds (federal student aid), and have financial and administrative capacity as the primary qualifier for access to aid! This opens the door to rip-off schools. This is the TRUMP UNIVERSITY plan.
13/ To clarify, accreditation would not go away, but wold be fully defanged (and you, DC Tank People, thought accreditors already had no fangs at all!).
14/ Wind down funding for area studies and foreign languages - programs that have received federal support since the Cold War - on the grounds that these programs are no long sufficiently jingoistic.
16/ An executive order to "protect the first amendment" that would direct (and prohibit) federal funds going to institutions that don't meet whatever Trump's free speech standards are. This would all the admin to target specific institutions and zero out research funding and access to financial aid!
18/End
My summary:
- Make college less affordable
- Make it easier to discriminate
- Make it easier fraudulent universities to rip off students
- Allow the President to put ideological tests that target individual institutions or whole states for funding cuts.
Fun!
