US higher education is staring at an uncertain future under Trump

Rashid Khalidi, America’s foremost scholar on Palestine, best described the sorry state of higher education in the United States today in a recent interview.

Explaining his decision to retire from his position as Edward Said chair of modern Arab history at Columbia University, he said, “I didn’t want to be a cog in that machine any more.

“For some time now, I have been both disgusted and horrified by the way higher education has developed into a cash register – essentially a money-making, MBA, lawyer-run, hedge fund-cum-real estate operation, with a minor sideline in education, where money has determined everything, where respect for pedagogy is at a minimum”.

Regrettably, the situation that pushed Khalidi into what many see as a much too early retirement is likely to get much worse in the near future.

President-elect Donald Trump has promised to launch an all-out attack on American universities as soon as he returns to the White House.

On the campaign trail, Trump cited the rising tuition fees at colleges and universities. But UPenn-educated Trump placed the blame on “radical Left accreditors” who had allowed universities to be “dominated by Marxist Maniacs and lunatics”. His running mate, Yale University graduate JD Vance, meanwhile, called university professors the “enemy” and has pledged to “honestly and aggressively attack universities”.

The broad strokes of what this presidency plans to achieve in higher education are already laid out in the Heritage Foundation’s blueprint for a conservative takeover of the state and all its institutions, Project 2025. The project calls for the dismantling of all diversity, equality and inclusion (DEI) initiatives, and the rejection and removal of “gender ideology” and critical race theory from all teaching material. It underlines the need to prohibit accreditors from requiring educational institutions to adopt DEI policies. It insists on the need to protect faith-based institutions from accreditation agencies’ standards and criteria that they believe “undermine religious beliefs”. Project 2025 also calls for an end to loan forgiveness programs and, eventually, the closing of the Department of Education.

Trump may not be able to achieve all this during his upcoming term. But some of his stated plans for higher education are well within reach and will likely be implemented in some form or other within the next year.

Trump has promised, for example, to “fire radical left accreditors” and “Marxist diversity, equity, and inclusion bureaucrats” and replace them with those committed to upholding a new set of standards, which include “defending the American tradition and Western civilization”. While he will likely not be able to change the way higher education accreditation is done in the US in the short term, he could easily create an environment, and pass regulation, that would pressure institutions to move away from DEI initiatives.

To the detriment of minority and marginalised communities’ access to higher education, Trump could easily weaponise the Department of Justice and federal civil rights laws to target institutions that continue with DEI efforts and tax endowment.  He could also withhold federal funding to “force ideological conformity and promote conservative program preferences” at US universities. This would include forcing university leaders to crack down on Palestine solidarity activists or, as Trump puts it, “pro-Hamas radicals” to make college campuses “safe and patriotic again”.

Title IX, the federal law banning sex discrimination in schools, will likely be in the eye of the storm as well. Biden-era expansion of the definition of the scope of sex discrimination to include discrimination based on sexual orientation has irked the conservatives. Therefore, the incoming Trump administration can be expected to remove existing protections for LGBTQ+ students and staff at federally funded colleges. Under Title IX, the Biden administration had also boosted “safeguards for victims of campus sexual assault” by expanding the definition of sexual harassment and ending the requirement of live hearings Trump introduced during his first term. Trump is now expected to revert these changes by “tightening the definition of sexual harassment, raising the standard of proof for allegations and [once again] allowing live hearings”.

Access to higher education will also be under attack under Trump. He has publicly deemed federal loan forgiveness programs, and programs aimed at keeping monthly loan payments low and reducing the time it takes to pay off loans as “unlawful and unfair”. His administration is expected to scrap these. Of course, this will mean that millions of low-income and middle-income students would be unable to afford higher education.

Trump’s immigration policies and mass deportation plans will also have an effect on higher education. Currently, there are 408,000 undocumented students in higher education institutions in the US. Many states provide these students access to in-state tuition and state financial aid. Only three states prevent undocumented migrants from accessing public colleges. Under Trump, many more public institutions may feel compelled to – or outright be forced to – do the same. Trump’s incoming Education Secretary, former World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE) CEO and passionate anti-DEI advocate Linda McMahon, will undoubtedly work hard to turn Trump’s grim vision for American higher education into reality.

Some have pledged to push back.

In August, responding to JD Vance’s promise to “aggressively attack universities in this country” if elected into office, American Association of University Professors (AAUP) President Todd Wilson said, “We are in a crucial moment that will decide the future of higher education for decades to come. Colleges and universities are the bedrock of American democracy and the engine of social mobility, innovation, and progress. We can’t allow fascists to strip it away. Now is the time to fight.”

After the elections, Wilson urged institutions, faculty, staff and students to organise, arguing that the crisis in the sector, with dwindling public funding, rising student debt and increasing attacks on academic freedom, “will only be intensified” under Trump 2.0.

Others, however, appear to perceive the Trump agenda for higher education as the will of the American people, and seem willing to reach a compromise with an administration openly voicing its desire to reshape the entire sector to fall in line with its ideological preferences.

For example, in a statement after the elections defending DEI efforts and academic freedom at US universities, president of Wesleyan University Michael S Roth also suggested that universities “need to be willing to listen” to the point of view of Trump/Vance as millions of Americans had “made their voices heard with their votes [for them]”. Meanwhile, the Western Association of Schools and Colleges (WASC) – one of the seven nonprofit accrediting groups in the US that oversees 170 colleges in Hawaii and California – has already proposed the removal of “diversity, equality and inclusion” from its accreditation standards. PEN America expressed its concerns regarding the timing of this measure, adding that doing so “in the face of an incoming president who has threatened to ‘fire the accreditors’ … cannot help but create the perception that WASC is bowing to political pressure”.

That certain leaders and institutions of American higher education appear to be bowing to Trump even before he officially moves back into the White House should not surprise anyone. Higher education has always been a tool of American soft power, and its institutions have been eagerly serving the agenda of the state – whatever this agenda may be – since their very inception. Under Trump, America is poised to reposition itself in the world and restructure its internal dynamics. The incoming administration has made it clear that these grand alterations to “make America great again” will require a complete revamp of the education system. American universities may not have a choice but to accept their fate and adapt.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera’s editorial stance.

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