The White House has yet to issue a widely anticipated executive order calling for the Education Department to be shuttered, but that hasn’t stopped Education Secretary Linda McMahon from eliminating nearly half of its staff. Late Tuesday, the department announced mass layoffs affecting 1,300 people.
“I appreciate the work of the dedicated public servants and their contributions to the Department,” McMahon said in a news release. “This is a significant step toward restoring the greatness of the United States education system.”
The department did not detail how many employees from each division were losing their jobs, but said that all units — including Federal Student Aid and the Office for Civil Rights — would be affected, and that the “reduction in force” will require some areas to undergo a “significant reorganization.”
Previously, another 600 employees accepted either a deferred resignation package announced for all federal workers in late January, or a more recent $25,000 buyout that was only offered to Education Department staff.
At the same time, the department will “continue to deliver on all statutory programs that fall under the agency’s purview, including formula funding, student loans, Pell Grants, funding for special needs students, and competitive grantmaking,” McMahon’s statement said. Before announcing the layoffs, staff received an email instructing them that all of the department’s offices would be closed on Wednesday, March 12, for “security reasons.”
The layoffs come after McMahon wrote a memo to staff last week encouraging employees to help her fulfill the department’s “final mission.”
Some advocacy groups roundly condemned the cuts on Tuesday. The Institute for College Access and Success, which promotes college affordability, described the move as “part of the continued, reckless diminishment” of the department and said it risks harming students and institutions.
“Core functions of the department could experience outages or breakages, leaving students struggling to get or renew financial aid or campus-based aid,” the institute said in a statement.
The American Council on Education, which represents more than 1,600 colleges and related organizations, called on the administration and Congress to reverse “this shortsighted effort.”
Other education groups were more supportive. The Center for Education Reform said the department has “become a cash cow for every university, nonprofit, and research institution that has time and money to apply for grants and contracts, many of which do nothing to support students.”
Reducing the department’s work force is part of the president’s larger effort to downsize the federal government.
But Trump has had a particularly contentious relationship with higher education, beginning with his first term as president, when he threatened to cut off federal financial aid to institutions that, in his view, were not upholding the First Amendment. His administration also rewrote a raft of Obama-era regulations, including how colleges handle sexual misconduct and rules to hold for-profit colleges accountable for student earnings.
Just a few weeks into his second term, Trump has raised the level of confrontation with academe to a new level — by attempting to freeze research grants and cut the amount of money they receive to administer those grants. The administration has also issued directives to eliminate diversity, equity, and inclusion programs at colleges and to ban transgender athletes from participating in women’s collegiate sports.
Trump has also initiated investigations into colleges alleged to have discriminated against Jewish students by failing to protect them during student protests over the war in Gaza. This week, the Education Department published a list of 60 institutions under scrutiny and warned them to shore up compliance with Title VI, the civil-rights law barring discrimination based on race, color, and national origin, including Jewish identity.
The White House has also sought to punish individual colleges, including canceling some $400 million in research grants to Columbia University over student protests, and pausing $100 million in federal Department of Agriculture grants to the University of Maine system after Gov. Janet Mills, a Democrat, told the president the state would allow transgender athletes to continue to participate in girls’ and women’s sports.
“Donald Trump and Linda McMahon know they can’t abolish the Department of Education on their own,” U.S. Sen. Patty Murray, Democrat of Washington, said in a news release, “but they understand that if you gut it to its very core and fire all the people who run programs that help students, families, and teachers, you might end up with a similar, ruinous result.”
Dan Bauman contributed to this report.
