It’s been a tough stretch for college presidents, but things are about to get tougher. The past few years have been marked by falling enrollment and declining trust in higher education, public frustration with campus protests, and Congressional hearings that helped end the tenures of several high-profile university presidents. Now, the pressure is about to rise to a whole new level.
The vice president-elect has deemed universities “the enemy.” President-elect Trump has promised to dismantle DEI, bust the accreditation cartel, and boost the tax on college endowments. Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy, the co-chairs of Trump’s Department of Government Efficiency, have discovered the hefty overhead rates that higher education pockets for taxpayer-funded research and each suggested that slashing those is on their to-do list. Another administration priority, getting tough on illegal immigration, will have big ramifications for students and staff at many campuses. It’s going to be a long four years for college presidents.
So there’s a lot going on. But what may be the biggest potential shift is one that’s received far too little attention. Lost amidst the fevered speculation about whether the Department of Education might be dismantled (it won’t) is the likelihood that we’re about to see something truly novel: a Republican Department of Education aggressively wielding every inch of its executive authority, just like the department did under the Obama and Biden administrations (think college loan “forgiveness”).
Under Obama and Biden, the political appointees who helmed the Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights used investigations to compel colleges to adopt their preferred policies on school discipline, sexual assault definitions, gender identity, and much else. Then, the department used the resulting settlements to issue guidance that produced sweeping changes. In the case of Title IX, for instance, Obama appointees used this tactic to push campuses to adopt a series of controversial procedures that raised substantial due process concerns and led to hundreds of disciplinary rulings that were later reversed by state and federal courts.
Trump’s first secretary of education, Betsy DeVos, deliberately eschewed this heavy-handed approach. A traditional Reagan-style conservative, DeVos sought to rein in the federal government’s role. But the Republican party of 2016 is no longer the Republican party of 2024. The rise of a more populist GOP and the growing sense that the right must confront the failings of higher education means that things are likely to go very differently in a second Trump administration.
Waiting in the wings are a slew of potential Trump appointees ready to adopt the familiar Obama-Biden playbook but use it in unfamiliar ways. They look at the harassment of Jewish students on campus and see a catastrophic failure to protect civil rights. They suspect that selective colleges may be disregarding the Supreme Court’s 2023 ruling that race-based admissions are unconstitutional. They’ve seen research universities collect billions federal research funds but fail to uphold commitments to protect free inquiry. They’ve watched colleges collect large sums from foreign nations but not report it in accord with federal statute. They suspect that practices like race-based affinity groups and mandatory DEI statements create hostile learning environments in violation of federal law.
There is now a community of activists on the right prepared to aggressively employ investigation, threaten litigation, and apply departmental guidance to address these issues. They’ll wield an enormous cudgel as they do so, as access to vast sums in federal grants, aid, and research funding is at risk for institutions that are deemed noncompliant.
Years of pitched battles over school closures, CRT, DEI, gender, loan forgiveness, Title IX, and campus antisemitism have birthed a web of right-leaning education groups that now offer a playbook of policies. This has yielded a deep bench of potential appointees at organizations that didn’t exist in Trump’s first term, like Speech First, Parents Defending Education, the Defense of Freedom Institute, Moms for Liberty, and the America First Policy Institute. These outfits are full of staffers with the experience—and motivation—to hit the ground running.
While leaders at two-year colleges and workforce programs could be in for a rewarding stretch, leaders of America’s four-year colleges (especially at high-profile, deep-pocketed institutions) would do well to carefully assess their institution’s vulnerabilities in light of these changed dynamics. They should take a deep dive into institutional policies and recent campus conduct; ask whether their campuses have fulfilled the commitments they’ve provided in exchange for federal funds; gauge how much federal funding could be at risk; and scrutinize their relationships with Republican members in Congress and the incoming administration.
Come to think of it, college presidents may want to have their attorneys on speed dial.