Increased ed’s hopes and fears as Trump retakes the reins
As Donald Trump returns to the White Home on this Martin Luther King Jr. Day—with a GOP Congress behind him, a vp who’s known as universities “the enemy” and a WWE powerhouse tapped as his schooling secretary—it’s honest to say that the one certainty for U.S. greater schooling is uncertainty.
Trump’s consideration to the sector throughout his first time period was fleeting. He didn’t make greater ed a central problem in his protracted marketing campaign for re-election, both, though he did name for axing the Schooling Division, firing accreditors, deporting campus protesters, eliminating DEI applications and launching a nationwide on-line college.
His conservative allies have loads of plans on the prepared. Undertaking 2025 has known as for radical reform to scale back the federal position in greater ed and hand energy to the states. GOP members of Congress might be keen to move pent-up payments they couldn’t get via up to now 4 years—some welcome by many in greater ed, others stirring broad alarm.
And whereas Republicans are raring to reform greater ed, the sector limps into Trump Half II in a weakened state, scarred from plummeting belief within the worth of a faculty schooling in addition to scalding political rhetoric, congressional probes into campus antisemitism, state legal guidelines banning DEI applications and dictating curriculum adjustments, and the politicization of boards and presidencies—to not point out the upcoming arrival of the long-dreaded demographic cliff.
It’d sound like a grim state of affairs. However the priorities of the brand new administration and Congress—and the way they could have an effect on faculties and universities for each good and unwell—are anyone’s guess at this level. So is their potential, or political will, to move and implement sweeping reforms.
Not everyone seems to be guessing, although. That is academia, in any case—specialists know issues, or no less than have extremely educated guesses. So we requested a variety of outstanding leaders and students to establish their highest hope and best concern for the sector within the second Trump administration. No consensus emerges—once more, in any case, that is academia. However their collective insights shed some sudden mild on each the challenges and alternatives Trump’s second 4 years could current.
A few of their fears won’t shock you. However a few of their hopes most likely will. The responses have been edited for readability and concision.
Paulette Granberry Russell
President of the Nationwide Affiliation of Range Officers in Increased Schooling
My highest hope is that the administration respects and upholds the autonomy of upper schooling establishments and doesn’t try and undermine them additional.
Now we have witnessed continuous assaults by the states on institutional autonomy, educational freedom and free speech. I hope that federal coverage is not going to prolong these assaults via the elimination of essential departments, drastic adjustments by way of government orders or important reductions in funding to the Departments of Schooling, Justice and Well being and Human Companies—companies whose assets and insurance policies underpin fairness, inclusion and entry. For institutional leaders, braveness and consistency in prioritizing fairness, entry and alternative might be essential to preserving the transformative mission of upper schooling.
My best fear is that inclusive methods and interventions, many catalyzed by landmark laws just like the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and Title IX in 1972, will stall—or worse, regress. Federal coverage modeled after restrictive state-level laws would disproportionately hurt people and communities which have traditionally confronted discrimination. Efforts to dismantle applications geared toward attaining extra equitable outcomes—applications which have yielded measurable advantages for generations—would erode the progress made in increasing entry and success for underrepresented college students. The implications of such rollbacks would prolong past greater schooling establishments, threatening the broader financial system and society. Various, equitable campuses don’t simply profit particular person college students; they create a pipeline of leaders and innovators important for a aggressive international workforce.
Miriam Feldblum
Govt director of the Presidents’ Alliance on Increased Schooling and Immigration
Within the coming years, there’ll undoubtedly be harsh immigration and border insurance policies, elevated deportations and a few restricted alternatives to remain and work within the U.S. for these with short-term or fragile immigration statuses. But my best hope is that we acknowledge, solidify and even broaden actual alternatives to seek out frequent floor, together with methods for greater ed establishments and campuses to help these college students and different campus members. President Trump not too long ago mentioned that he needs to work to discover a approach for Dreamers to remain and hold contributing. He has additionally prompt giving inexperienced playing cards to worldwide scholar graduates and mentioned he helps H-1B visas. Increased ed leaders and establishments ought to seize these alternatives for frequent floor.
My best concern, in the meantime, is that America squanders the potential of Dreamers, immigrant-origin and worldwide college students via restrictive insurance policies. The U.S. is dealing with an immense expertise crucial to maintain our international financial competitiveness, drive innovation, fill workforce shortages and produce a skilled and devoted workforce. Increased schooling establishments are important to assembly these challenges. And immigrant-origin college students—together with Dreamers and refugees, and different first- and second-generation immigrant college students—together with worldwide college students make up over a 3rd of all college students in greater schooling. The lack of this expertise as a result of misguided immigration insurance policies, concern and focused enforcement actions can be self-defeating for our nation’s future.
Barbara Snyder
President of the Affiliation of American Universities
President Trump has repeatedly mentioned he needs to make America nice and hold us forward of China and different competitor nations. I’m optimistic that he’ll help insurance policies and investments that guarantee the USA continues to be the world’s chief in scientific analysis. The president and Congress can safe that place by each growing our public investments in cutting-edge analysis and by selling insurance policies that make it simple for the world’s greatest and brightest technological and scientific minds to review, work and keep right here and advance U.S. innovation and financial progress.
My single best concern can be that some may attempt to persuade the president to tug again these investments in America’s greatness and shut ourselves off from the worldwide expertise and data that has helped make our nation nice. I hope that he and Congress will resist that shortsightedness and can select to recommit our nation to the government-university analysis partnership that has made us the world’s strongest and most affluent nation.
Jeremy Younger
Director of state and better schooling coverage at PEN America
Over the previous 4 years, a bunch of lawmakers and conservative assume tanks have waged cruel struggle on free expression within the greater schooling sector. Fifteen states have handed legal guidelines that censor concepts on faculty and college campuses, and the brand new federal administration appears poised to broaden this ideological struggle on greater schooling into new arenas: weaponizing federal analysis funding, Title VI enforcement and accreditation to limit concepts on campus whereas participating in infinite bullying and jawboning of college leaders to drive “voluntary” closures of variety places of work and educational applications.
My concern is that the brand new administration will carry ahead this damaging playbook, actively suppressing politically disfavored viewpoints on campus and destroying the ideological autonomy of upper schooling establishments. However my hope is that it’s going to step again from the abyss. Scientific discovery, cultural creation, the fostering of essential considering expertise employers search in new graduates and the promotion of democratic pluralism among the many rising era—these outcomes are solely doable if faculties and universities stay locations the place all concepts are open for debate, not simply these the federal government agrees with.
Ivory Toldson
Howard College professor, editor in chief of The Journal of Negro Schooling and former government director of the White Home Initiative on Traditionally Black Schools and Universities
Beneath a second Trump administration, my highest hope is for the continued progress and growth of HBCUs. These establishments have traditionally loved bipartisan help, and even Undertaking 2025 acknowledges the significance of offering federal help to traditionally Black and tribal faculties. In comparison with lots of the highest-ranked predominantly white establishments (PWIs), HBCUs enroll a better share of U.S. residents, which can defend them from challenges related to extra restrictive immigration insurance policies. Furthermore, as race-conscious admissions insurance policies are rolled again, HBCUs may play a essential position in supporting Black college students who could also be denied alternatives at PWIs, additional solidifying their significance in U.S. greater schooling.
My best fear lies within the challenges to variety, fairness and inclusion applications, which may go away Black college students at PWIs with fewer assets to handle persistent problems with fairness, entry and institutional racism. With out these applications, Black college students could face elevated racial hostilities with fewer protections and help programs. Moreover, efforts to weaken or eradicate the Schooling Division may severely threaten funding for lower-income college students, significantly via federal scholar support applications. Mixed with rising anti–greater schooling attitudes, these threats may place faculties and universities beneath heightened scrutiny, harm enrollment and jeopardize the way forward for greater schooling as an entire.
Jeremi Suri
Mack Brown Distinguished Chair for Management in International Affairs and professor of public affairs and historical past, College of Texas at Austin
Republican politicians like to assault the elitism of upper schooling, whilst they leverage their very own elite pedigrees for cash and energy. Republicans do not likely wish to destroy greater schooling; they wish to personal it for themselves. I anticipate that the following 4 years will make this clear and open a wider dialogue about who ought to have entry to greater schooling and the way we are able to broaden it for individuals who really feel ignored. To date, Republicans have relied on attacking DEI and “woke” tradition, however what do they wish to exchange it with on faculty campuses? They can not return to the white male–solely establishments of the early twentieth century. As Republicans are pressured to articulate a coherent imaginative and prescient for entry in greater schooling, I anticipate a extra open and helpful dialog that can carry us again to discussing variety and affordability—not largely when it comes to race and gender, however when it comes to class and geography and household historical past. This can nonetheless be a troublesome dialogue, however one which is perhaps extra substantive, complicated and even helpful.
Republican politicians have additionally promoted a brand new “civics” agenda in greater schooling, based mostly on an unproven declare that universities have deserted the subject material. The push for civics has meant extra traditionalism and patriotism, much less creativity and criticism. However that may be a troublesome agenda to take very far. If Republicans need universities to review extra Madison, Jefferson and Lincoln, how can they keep away from extra (not much less) research of pluralism, separation of church and state, and civil rights—the core points for these most conventional historic figures? Republican advocacy for civics schooling should grapple with the complicated questions that many Republicans want to keep away from. A critical dialogue of civics in greater schooling will make this clear in coming years, and it’ll drive these applications to widen their agenda or retreat into area of interest enclaves on campus. Most donors will favor the previous, which could construct bridges with ecumenical school and college students.
Nicole Smith
Chief economist at Georgetown College’s Heart on Schooling and the Workforce
My single highest hope is for a renewed concentrate on workforce improvement and profession readiness. Amid rising debates in regards to the worth of upper schooling, they’ve remained key priorities on the Trump platform. This focus presents alternatives for greater ed establishments to proceed to innovate and broaden applications that align intently with labor market calls for. Vocational coaching, apprenticeship applications and technical schooling have been central to Trump’s agenda, offering a basis for faculties and universities to construct stronger partnerships with industries. This will drive innovation in areas similar to competency-based studying, stackable credentials and enhanced internship alternatives. By equipping college students with sensible expertise and clear profession trajectories, greater schooling can proceed to bolster its position as a key driver of financial mobility—a subject certain to be on the minds of leaders on this new administration.
My best fear for the sector? Poorer outcomes for traditionally marginalized college students, with no option to document it. Federal help for variety, fairness and inclusion initiatives, in addition to educational analysis, is more likely to be withdrawn solely beneath the Trump administration. Efforts to defund or limit DEI applications—significantly in public establishments—could intensify. These restrictions may additionally result in the politicization of educational analysis, with areas like intergenerational mobility in schooling and revenue, gender fairness and any evaluations by race or ethnicity doubtlessly seeing funding reductions or shifts in precedence. Such adjustments danger creating substantial obstacles for establishments dedicated to fostering inclusive environments and conducting analysis that addresses essential societal points. For Black professionals in greater schooling, this presents a twin problem: preserving DEI efforts within the face of exterior resistance whereas defending educational freedom in a local weather more and more marked by skepticism and mistrust of analysis.
Sherene Seikaly
Affiliate professor at UC Santa Barbara and facilitator of the College for Justice in Palestine community
My highest hope is that the Trump administration doesn’t have interaction in repression, securitization, censorship and attenuation of upper schooling. My best fear is that the Trump administration will escalate the repression of social actions on campus, and specifically the motion standing with Palestinian liberation and political rights.
Miriam Elman
Govt director of the Educational Engagement Community
With alarming incidents of antisemitism occurring on campuses nationwide and beleaguered Jewish college students more and more reporting that they’re being harassed, bullied and marginalized, Donald Trump’s return to the White Home is more likely to lead to higher days forward. Trump has already warned universities to anticipate a harder stance from his administration, together with the doable lack of accreditation and federal help, in the event that they fail to handle the rising stage of antisemitism of their establishments. Beneath Trump, we may very well see a number of universities which might be deemed in violation of civil rights legislation get their federal funds absolutely or partially lower off for not taking antisemitic bigotry and harassment critically. This might be consequential not just for the affected faculties, however will ship a robust sign to different universities that antisemitism received’t be tolerated.
Harder OCR [Office for Civil Rights] settlements are very doubtless coming down the pike, which is what many Jewish college students, school and employees are hoping for. However we must be nervous that at many colleges there quickly could not be sufficient staffing to successfully tackle and fight antisemitism. With a second Trump administration, a Republican Congress and new Schooling Division management, we’ll see extra variety applications shuttered. For the Jewish neighborhood on campus, that’s going to imply a combined bag. In spite of everything, it’s laborious to see how antisemitism consciousness coaching and academic programming might be rolled out if the employees wanted to arrange and facilitate these applications not have their jobs. To make sure, some poor DEI trainings exacerbate divisions and have completed a horrible disservice to Jews on campus. Completed effectively, although, these applications can profit Jewish and all campus communities.
Kenneth Stern
Director of the Bard Heart for the Examine of Hate
I fear a few political assault on greater schooling and its impact on college students and the flexibility of college to show. Are college students who’re refugees from locations like Syria, Ukraine, Afghanistan and elsewhere going to face deportation? Are we going to see 18-year-olds deported due to how they view the struggle in Gaza? Will directors, fearing overly aggressive Title VI circumstances, choose to suppress speech and educational freedom? No college ought to tolerate college students being harassed or intimidated or bullied. However I concern that the brand new Congress and administration are going to attract traces not round precise security however emotional security, punishing universities that enable demonstrations with political expressions that some detest.
Vice President–elect JD Vance mentioned that, as in Victor Orbán’s Hungary, the U.S. ought to give universities “a selection between survival or taking a a lot much less biased method to instructing.” Funding and endowments could also be focused after Jan. 20, and students instructing contentious topics could also be within the crosshairs. Sixty-eight years in the past, the Supreme Court docket in Sweezy v. New Hampshire rejected a authorized assault towards a Marxist professor, upholding the significance of educational freedom. I don’t like a few of what’s being taught at this time, both, however the treatment is actually not government-imposed guidelines on what to assume or educate.
Ted Mitchell
President of the American Council on Schooling and U.S. beneath secretary of schooling from 2014 to 2017
We’re inspired by the emphasis the incoming Trump administration and the brand new Congress have positioned on points similar to transparency and accountability associated to scholar outcomes. This isn’t new, and it isn’t partisan, however significant change is lengthy overdue. Discovering the appropriate stability between making certain college students have entry to postsecondary schooling whereas creating significant penalties for applications that aren’t serving their college students effectively isn’t simple. However there are a variety of considerate proposals being mentioned that we hope will result in an actual answer within the subsequent two years. As I mentioned in an open letter to President-elect Trump earlier this month, our overriding aim is to offer extra alternative for all People.
Given the big checklist of competing priorities a brand new administration juggles, my greatest fear is that in making an attempt to pay for main spending cuts and move tax laws, the administration and Congress will do the shortsighted factor and enact insurance policies like cuts to scholar monetary support and analysis funding—all of which might harm college students, hold them from reaching their full potential and hamper our nation’s financial system and safety.
Jim Blew
Co-founder of the Protection Freedom Institute and assistant secretary of planning, analysis and coverage improvement for the Schooling Division from 2017 to 2020
I’m optimistic that within the wake of the Biden-Harris administration’s administration of FAFSA and the scholar mortgage portfolio, the incoming administration and Congress will agree on find out how to repair the damaged Workplace of Federal Scholar Assist. That can require a brand new method, maybe positioned exterior the division, that shields FSA’s operations from partisan agendas and adjustments the damaging incentives inherent to a performance-based group that isn’t held accountable for monetary efficiency. Throughout these talks, I hope they will additionally align on coverage reforms that can assist all college students entry submit–highschool alternatives for a variety of high-value profession paths.
I’m nervous that greater schooling establishments will misinterpret the second and attempt to stonewall efforts to carry them accountable when their college students don’t get return on their investments or don’t repay their federal loans. If the upper ed foyer isn’t sincerely on the desk, there’s a excessive danger that the ensuing coverage options might be much less workable, or unworkable. There’s already a rising sentiment that the scholar mortgage portfolio has turn out to be a weapon of partisan politics. I wouldn’t check Congress’s persistence, or there is perhaps a extreme discount in the usage of federal taxpayer funds to assist our college students afford postsecondary schooling.
Greg Lukianoff
President and CEO of the Basis for Particular person Rights and Expression
My highest hope through the second Trump administration is for Congress to move a invoice that defines student-on-student harassment constantly with the speech-protective definition set forth by the U.S. Supreme Court docket in Davis v. Monroe County Board of Schooling. Campus speech codes, nevertheless effectively intentioned, are routinely used to punish nearly any speech that somebody on campus doesn’t like. Till a federal decide vacated the Biden administration Title IX guidelines, the Schooling Division was forcing faculties to make use of an unconstitutional definition of student-on-student harassment in each the Title IX and Title VI contexts. Correctly utilized, the Davis commonplace ensures that establishments shield college students towards precise discriminatory habits versus punishing college students who merely categorical controversial viewpoints.
My best concern additionally includes doable laws. Final Congress, the Home of Representatives handed the unconstitutional Antisemitism Consciousness Act. Whereas antisemitic harassment is a significant issue on campuses, the AAA’s examples of antisemitism embody statements essential of the state of Israel, which is core political speech protected by the First Modification. Relatively than resurrect the AAA, members of Congress can craft constitutional laws that will tackle antisemitism on campuses by prohibiting harassment based mostly on faith, confirming that federal legislation forbids discrimination based mostly on ethnic stereotypes and codifying the Supreme Court docket’s definition of discriminatory harassment.
David Hoag
President of the Council for Christian Schools & Universities
We aspire to a better schooling system that’s extra reasonably priced, extra accessible and extra centered on the lifelong worth of upper schooling, significantly inside Christian establishments. In 2025, the CCCU hopes that the incoming administration acknowledges the invaluable position of faith-based faculties in the USA. These establishments present instructional alternatives and improve neighborhood engagement to the advantage of your complete nation. I’m involved that the present method seeks to measure greater schooling via purely transactional, monetary metrics, overlooking the holistic worth of a liberal arts diploma.
Walter Kimbrough
Interim president, Talladega School
My single highest hope is slim. I hope that the Trump administration will proceed to help the bipartisan HBCU fly-in annually in Washington, D.C., began in 2017 by Republicans. HBCUs are one of many few points that obtain overwhelming bipartisan help, and we hope that help continues not simply with the conferences, however elevated Title III and infrastructure funding, together with Pell Grant progress.
My best fear is broad. The assaults on the Division of Schooling overwhelmingly concentrate on Ok-12. However there can be important hurt completed to school college students and households if a number of the proposed adjustments to the division really happen. As an alternative of viewing greater schooling because the enemy, there is a chance to push greater schooling with assets to be extra energetic in fixing the nation’s issues.
Robert Eitel
Co-founder of the Protection of Freedom Institute, senior counselor to the secretary of schooling from 2017 to 2020 and deputy normal counsel from 2005 to 2009
It’s time to carry cause and sanity again to Title IX. In defiance of the legislation’s textual content, construction and historical past, the Biden administration sought to leverage the legislation to institutionalize gender ideology in faculties, faculties and universities. With the 2024 Title IX rules vacated by a decide in December, I’m hopeful {that a} [Linda] McMahon Schooling Division is not going to solely vigorously examine violations of the 2020 Title IX rules but in addition take steps to safeguard girls’s and women’ athletics and services in instructional establishments that obtain federal funds.
Whereas expectations are excessive for the second Trump Schooling Division, my best concern is that the tempo of Senate confirmations of essential subcabinet positions might be too sluggish. Though the secretary units the objectives, expectations, tempo and tone, it’s within the principal places of work run by assistant secretaries the place the nitty-gritty work of coverage improvement, rule making and grants administration happens. Lengthy-term vacancies in these places of work would severely disrupt the president’s schooling agenda.
Heather Perfetti
President of the Center States Fee on Increased Schooling
We face a possibility to bridge views round essential federal coverage in ways in which advance necessary dialogue for the advantage of our college students, our communities and our international standing whereas making certain that any regulatory shifts comprise a return on funding.
Federal coverage, nevertheless, should not inhibit greater schooling actions in methods which might be misaligned with the wants of scholars or the realities of the shifts within the sector. The more and more numerous scholar inhabitants faces challenges requiring establishments to honor the various individualized approaches that we all know assist college students obtain success alongside their educational journey. Insurance policies that lack flexibility and diminish revolutionary approaches will stray from the popularity that establishments maintain distinctive areas inside their communities and are pushed by distinct missions. Misaligned insurance policies, nevertheless, will make the sector’s challenges extra pronounced. Guaranteeing a deep understanding of at this time’s accreditation and dealing with us accreditors might be essential to tell federal coverage, as accreditation stays one of the vital highly effective levers obtainable for influencing change and assuring worth in greater schooling.
Todd Wolfson
President of the American Affiliation of College Professors
We’re deeply involved that the bombastic rhetoric coming from politicians and propagandists might be used as justification to ramp up political interference and censorship in greater schooling and deepen the continuing disaster of declining educational freedom, ballooning scholar debt and entry to schooling for working-class People. With no thriving, inclusive greater schooling system that serves the general public good, nearly all of People might be excluded from significant participation in our democracy and this nation will transfer backward.
Margaret Spellings
President and CEO of the Bipartisan Coverage Heart, secretary of schooling from 2005 to 2009
We’re falling brief. Many are questioning the worth of a faculty diploma. Too many households discover greater schooling out of attain. And our workforce faces a expertise mismatch, with multiple million unfilled job openings. Nobody is questioning that there’s room for enchancment in greater schooling. BPC has launched a Fee on the American Workforce, which is able to convene throughout 2025 and draft a bipartisan technique for Congress to nurture expertise, broaden alternative and spend money on our workforce.
My highest hope is that we are able to make the long run suggestions from our fee a actuality as Congress appears to be like on the Increased Schooling Act, Workforce Innovation and Alternative Act and Perkins CTE Act.
Brigid Harrington
Increased ed lawyer
My highest hope for greater ed over the following 4 years is that faculties and universities will concentrate on the tangible advantages of schooling and tailor their method to the present American workforce. What does that imply in 2025? Undoubtedly extra reasonably priced choices. In all probability extra distant and versatile choices. Greater than doubtless addressing the wants of scholars who usually are not on a standard submit–highschool path to a bachelor’s diploma.
My best fear is that faculties will neglect their instructional mission within the midst of unprecedented strain from Congress and the manager department to bow to politics. Increased schooling has all the time been a bastion of the free trade of concepts, and that ought to not change. Our college students and associates usually are not wallflowers and must be inspired to interact in strong debate of the problems and to not devolve these discussions into speech that’s harassing or, frankly, uneducated.
