Degrees of Damage

Pre-schoolers to grad students — no one is safe from Trump’s attack on education

Credit: Getty Images

Before the words “Project 2025” and the “Big Ugly Bill” entered the conversation, life wasn’t perfect, but we could get through a day without worrying about the next disaster the man in the Oval Office was going to inflict on the country.

For the past 19 months, Donald Trump’s far-right agenda has infiltrated almost every facet of American life. In some cases, it is in your face, like his dragnet against immigrants, and some are more under the radar, like his assault on education.

This reporter is a proud product of America’s public schools. I have long believed the strength of our democracy depends greatly on a well-educated populace. That goal is at odds with Trump’s agenda.

This week, as the first students head back to school, we’re reminded that the president’s plan to comprehensively reshape public education in America is quietly dismantling a system that touches every citizen. Rather than doing everything to enable Americans to receive a good education, the Trump administration makes it harder.

Many of the president’s educational “reforms” were jammed into last summer’s big funding bill, the same one that slashed food assistance for children and gave huge tax cuts to billionaires. It also decimated the federal student loan program. A year later, those measures are in place.

One provision that has gotten little attention is the Student Tuition and Transparency Systems and Earnings Accountability Rule. That’s a lot of words to say the government now has a litmus test to decide if your chosen degree is eligible for student loans. If the government (or its algorithms) estimates that you can’t make enough money with your intended degree, tough luck. No loan for you.

To keep an undergraduate degree or certificate program eligible for federal student loans, the median income for graduates must exceed the median income for someone with a high school diploma. This new federal test will use data from the Internal Revenue Service.

On the surface, this sounds vaguely reasonable. But should the federal government be in the business of deciding what someone can study? And no doubt it will have unintended consequences.

The rule change is likely to affect almost 700,000 current students in 3,200 programs, which, according to The Wall Street Journal, are on track to fail the earnings test. People enrolled in religious studies, arts, and mental and social health programs should be concerned.

The mental health crisis that has gripped the country since COVID caused a significant social-worker shortage — a perfect time to make it harder to become a social worker. It is not unlike Trump’s new rule capping loans for non-professional degrees and shifting nursing to that category — as the nursing shortage becomes increasingly dire.

If a social worker, who might be providing therapy for children in the foster care system or helping seniors navigate Medicare, can’t earn more money than a high school graduate, the problem is bigger than deciding who gets a student loan.

Proponents for curtailing the federal student loan program call it welfare or a handout. Student loans are not charity. They are loans that are paid back, with interest.

Though Trump has made that significantly more difficult too. The spending bill consolidated six student loan repayment plans into two more costly programs. It is about to become more expensive to make those monthly student debt payments. And, with costs rising, many are throwing in the towel. Paying for food, gas, and healthcare comes before student loans.

During COVID, President Joe Biden paused student loan repayments for several years. Once that program ended in 2023, followed by a grace period through 2024, a significant number of borrowers did not restart paying their loans. Now millions are more than nine months behind, which is considered in default.

The number of defaulters has jumped from 5.3 million to 9.5 million in just a year. The Trump administration was going to start garnishing wages, but it walked back those plans. However, a Moody’s Analytics report said garnishments are likely to begin within the next year, while warning of “an additional headwind in an increasingly fragile economy.”

The student loan program is now akin to predatory credit card companies. Case in point, Barbara Howaniec. She is a nurse practitioner from Maine who, in 2001, borrowed $62,000 for her master’s degree. She has more than paid off the principal. But she deferred payment several times during the last 25 years, unaware that interest would continue to accumulate. She told the Associated Press she still owes $67,000.

Trump’s destruction of our education system started with the nomination of Linda McMahon, a founder and former executive at World Wrestling Entertainment, to be the Secretary of Education. Soon after, Trump signed an executive order abolishing the Education Department, though by law it takes an act of Congress to scrap a cabinet-level department. Instead, Trump and Elon Musk took a wrecking ball to the department, hollowing it out from within.

The department was created by President Jimmy Carter in 1979. Its mission is to strive for equal access to education by administering federal funding, providing student loans, and preventing discrimination. The department also collects student data to improve the quality of the nation’s overall education.

What the department doesn’t do is dictate curriculum or certify teachers. States and local school districts make those decisions. So one wonders why McMahon is on a nationwide “Returning Education to the States” tour.

Like much in this administration, it’s an effort to spread a far-right political agenda. The tour has faced criticism and protests from people who oppose efforts to dismantle the department and reroute public funds to voucher programs, an estimated $30-50 billion in federal funds. The term “voucher programs” is code for moving taxpayer dollars from public schools to private schools.

Mass layoffs got rid of about half the Education Department’s employees. Entire programs were moved to the Department of Labor, Health and Human Services, and the Treasury. The Office of Civil Rights, which is supposed to provide equal access to education for all students, saw a 90% reduction in staff and was moved to the Department of Justice.

Any program that even hinted at diversity, equity, and inclusion was dismantled. Priorities shifted from things like literacy programs and free or subsidized school meals to privatization efforts. Grant programs intended to gather critical data on school safety, early childhood education, and teaching students with disabilities were eliminated.

Then the president went after higher education. The changes to the loan programs are just the beginning. Efforts are also underway to gut program quality and give the Trump administration and its allies the ability to exert ideological control over American higher education.

Trump’s assault on education broadly and higher education specifically is no accident — after winning a 2016 caucus, he said: “I love the poorly educated.” Voters with college educations are now significantly more likely to vote Democratic, while more non-college educated voters vote Republican. It’s called the diploma divide.

It wasn’t always that way. Republicans noticed signs of demographic changes in the 1980s as college graduations soared. They quickly did something about it. Slashing federal education funding, promoting vouchers, and attempting to abolish the Education Department didn’t start with Trump; it started with Ronald Reagan. Every Republican president since then has tried to undo this foundational principle.

The belief in educating the electorate dates back to the Founding Fathers. Thomas Jefferson believed education would protect the new country against “degeneracy” and “tyranny.”

Moreover, he believed education must be free. “The tax which will be paid for this purpose is not more than the thousandth part of what will be paid to kings, priests and nobles who will rise up among us if we leave the people in ignorance,” he said.

In the early days of the country, education was considered a collective social benefit, essential for the republic to thrive. Later, it was understood to be integral to America’s ingenuity and economic prosperity.

A smarter citizenry protects freedom and improves economic growth. Now, it is up to citizens at all levels to check the power of the authoritarian in the Oval Office, who is trying to dumb down the American public for political gain.

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Stay Steady,
Dan