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The chaos keeps President Trump’s political opponents on their heels, but that was only partly by design. Beneath the surface, three different visions are competing to define the Trump higher-education agenda: Elon Musk’s attempt to reform government with a chainsaw, Rep. Virginia Foxx’s plans to slash student-aid spending, and Christopher F. Rufo’s culture war. Ironically, none of these three people are Trump appointees themselves. But the confluence and conflict among them will determine the course of a White House that moves forward decisively when there is internal consensus but swerves erratically when major players fight over the steering wheel.
Let’s start with Musk. At the beginning of the term, the so-called Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, engineered sweeping staff layoffs and canceled billions of dollars of grants and contracts seemingly overnight. Musk is now planning to return his focus to the private sector. But it will take years for the Department of Education to recover from the DOGE cuts, even as more sudden budget cuts and staff firings remain possible and DOGE’s goals in accessing confidential data remain unknown. The Department of Education already had one of the biggest budgets and the smallest staff among cabinet agencies. No matter: Roughly half its staff have quit or been fired since January 20. Civil-rights enforcement will be hobbled for years to come. Fewer borrowers may get the advice they need, just as millions face loan default for the first time in five years.
Meanwhile, Foxx’s influence is growing. A Republican of North Carolina, Foxx is a former community-college president. Her College Cost Reduction Act would cap student aid, hold colleges accountable for costs and student debts, and deregulate student protections. Though she no longer leads the House Committee on Education and the Workforce, her ideas continue to shape the congressional agenda. In the coming weeks, Congress may cut some $300 billion from student-aid programs. Much of the savings will likely come from repealing President Biden’s SAVE repayment plan, which is now tied up in litigation. It may also limit loans available to graduate students and penalize colleges for student-loan defaults.
Some of these ideas are worthwhile, such as cutting loans that borrowers will not be able to repay. But putting the savings toward tax cuts instead of reinvesting in student support will mean fewer students can afford to go to college, particularly in fields like public service and early-childhood education that do not lead to high salaries. Meanwhile, Foxx’s allies within the Department of Education have already begun to rewrite regulations to carry out Trump’s promises to enlist accreditation in the culture war and cut back on public-service-loan forgiveness. Their changes may not arrive with DOGE’s blinding speed, but they could be longer-lasting.
Despite the ambition of these ideas, it is the final group — Rufo and his allies — who seek the most far-reaching changes. Rufo is the conservative activist who designed the administration’s attack on the “money, power, and status” enjoyed by Columbia, Harvard, and other top-ranked universities. He wants to cut the number of students at four-year colleges in half. It’s not clear if the administration will go that far — they may be satisfied by winning headlines at the expense of the Ivy League. But the government has more ambitious goals than its enumerated demands. That’s why, despite conceding to federal demands, Columbia has not gotten its funding back. The more universities concede, the more the administration will demand.
At the same time, now is not the time to retreat to the partisan barricades. While it is tempting to count down the days remaining in the Trump administration, colleges will still need to win over some members of the MAGA movement to escape the threats against them. Fortunately, college leaders are well-equipped to build environments that encourage respectful disagreement. That means teaching students to disagree well and ensuring that some voices are not shouted down or intimidated into silence. Efforts like the Middlebury College’s Conflict Transformation Collective and the Duke University’s Civil Discourse Project are needed now more than ever.
It is time for academics to reach outside the ivory tower to humbly share expertise and resources to help solve our communities’ problems. Community-engagement efforts can include service learning, community-engaged scholarship, and partnership around economic development and elementary and secondary education. It is also time to address valid concerns shared beyond just the MAGA movement about the cost and value of college degrees. College is still seen as an important route to the American Dream, and for many students it is. But more than one in three students do not graduate, and some are left with loans they cannot afford.
The good news is that graduation rates are already climbing — they are up eight percentage points in the last decade. We need to build on that progress by giving students the guidance and money they need to succeed, offering more seats at our best colleges, investing in making college affordable, and making sure that students leave campus on a path to a job that pays a decent wage.
The Trump administration has put colleges on the ropes. But higher education is not helpless. It needs to defend its contributions to our country now while also recognizing the need to better live up to its potential. And buckle up — we have 1,361 days to go.
