Donald Trump pledged to make major reforms to higher education during his presidential campaign.
Trump was elected the 47th president of the United States on Tuesday, meaning these campaign promises could soon be in the offing — everything from abolishing the U.S. Department of Education and reforming the accreditation process to banning men from women’s sports and cracking down on DEI and antisemitism.
“The time has come to reclaim our once great educational institutions from the radical Left, and we will do that,” Trump stated during his campaign.
Perhaps the biggest reform Trump touted was saying he would eliminate the Education Department.
“I will shut down the federal Department of Education and we will move everything back to the states, where it belongs, and where they can individualize education, and do it with the love for their children,” Trump said.
He also pledged to address leftist bias within accreditation, which often mandates diversity, equity and inclusion programming be embedded as a condition of approval.
“President Trump has pledged to fire the radical Left accreditors that have allowed our colleges to become dominated by Marxist Maniacs and lunatics,” his campaign stated as part of his “Agenda 47” plan.
According to the platform: “He will impose real standards on American colleges and universities, to include defending the American tradition and Western civilization, protecting free speech, eliminating wasteful administrative positions that drive up costs, removing all DEI bureaucrats, offering options for accelerated and low-cost degrees, providing meaningful job placement and career services, and implementing college entrance and exit exams to prove that students are getting their money’s worth.”
Trump has also stated he will not tolerate the rampant antisemitism seen on campuses over the last year, and may use accreditation to help enshrine stronger protections for Jewish students.
Trump also cited “equity” as a concept he will target, saying he’ll direct the Justice Department to pursue federal civil rights cases against universities that engage in racial discrimination.
“And schools that persist in explicit unlawful discrimination under the guise of equity will not only have their endowment taxed, but through budget reconciliation, I will advance a measure to have them fined up to the entire amount of their endowment,” Trump stated.
He also promised protections for women’s sports.
“We will of course keep men out of women’s sports,” Trump said during a campaign stop.
He is also “expected to roll back the Title IX changes and other changes put in place by the Biden administration,” Inside Higher Ed reported. Student loan forgiveness is also on the chopping block, according to the report.
As for campus protests, Trump praised police intervention and strong crackdowns on encampments, and called some student protesters who took over a building at Columbia University — blocking exits and trapping some custodians — “raging lunatics and Hamas sympathizers.”
Higher Ed Dive also reported that “Trump’s platform calls for more affordable postsecondary alternatives to a four-year degree, rather than focusing on lowering the cost of traditional undergraduate education.”
“Trump has also proposed the creation of a free online college funded through a tax on large private university endowments,” the outlet reported. “ The so-called ‘American Academy’ would allow students to transfer previous coursework. Trump said the online college would not allow ‘wokeness’ — a common conservative complaint of traditional colleges.”
MORE: Trump pledges to ‘shut down’ U.S. Education Department if reelected
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