The Southern Association of Colleges and Schools Commission on Colleges denied Saint Augustine’s University’s appeal to remain accredited, SAU announced Thursday.
The decision is the latest blow to the embattled historically Black university in North Carolina, which has struggled to maintain its accreditation since December 2023, when SACSCOC voted to strip it of its membership due to compliance issues related to governance and finances. Following that decision, SAU lost an appeal to remain accredited; it won a reprieve in the courts last July but lost accreditation again in December. Now that SASCOC has denied SAU’s latest appeal, the university will again pursue a legal remedy, officials announced.
“We have made substantial progress and are confident that our strengthened financial position and governance will ensure a positive outcome,” Board of Trustees chairman Brian Boulware said in a Thursday statement announcing plans to contest the accreditation decision in court. “SAU is resilient, and we are resolute in our commitment to academic excellence.”
Beyond accreditation issues, Saint Augustine’s has navigated severe fiscal issues that left it teetering on the brink of closure for months as it pursued various financial lifelines. SAU recently attempted to lease its campus to 50 Plus 1 Sports, a fledgling Florida company. The $70 million deal to lease property for 99 years with development options would have provided much-needed funds for SAU, but following a review required by state law, North Carolina officials declined to sign off on the arrangement due to the transfer of nonprofit assets.
SAU had unsuccessfully sought approval of the deal before its appeal to SACSCOC last month.
The North Carolina attorney general’s office, which reviewed the deal, cited insufficient documentation and concerns that SAU was only receiving $70 million for property appraised at $198 million. Saint Augustine’s and 50 Plus 1 Sports have since restructured the terms of the deal.
In Thursday’s statement, SAU announced it “secured up to $70 million in sustainability-focused funding at competitive market rates and terms,” which it expects to close later this month. It added that nondisclosure agreements “prevent SAU from publicly disclosing the partners’ names.”
Advocates for apprenticeship programs came into a second Trump administration with a rosy outlook on their future.
Historically, these on-the-job training programs have enjoyed bipartisan support, and apprenticeships featured prominently in Project 2025, the conservative policy blueprint for a second Trump administration put forth by the Heritage Foundation, a right-wing think tank. The plan encouraged their expansion, lauding the programs as a meaningful alternative to “the woke-dominated system of public schools and universities.”
But now, apprenticeship proponents are divided on how hopeful to feel.
Some maintain their optimism. They foresee a potential period of growth for the programs, as Trump administration officials and supporters speak positively about apprenticeships and nondegree pathways.
But others worry that at least some apprenticeship programs—and their financial supports—could be hurt by the administration’s slashing of federal spending. Already, some grants supporting apprenticeship programs have been cut to trim costs or for perceived connections to diversity, equity and inclusion work. The Advisory Committee on Apprenticeship, which advises the Department of Labor on apprenticeship issues, has been disbanded, along with other federal advisory bodies.
“If the approach is to just cut, cut, cut grants across the government—and the kind of machete-wielding, indiscriminate cutting of things continues—I think that could pose some long-term stress on the system and halt a lot of the momentum that it’s had,” said Taylor White, director of postsecondary pathways for youth at New America, a left-wing think tank, and a former member of the now-defunct advisory committee. She fears the uncertainty caused by federal spending cuts in general could scare off employers or state agencies that otherwise would have invested in these programs.
Apprenticeship-related grants have gotten “caught up” in efforts to scrutinize government spending, said Vinz Koller, vice president of the Center for Apprenticeship and Work-Based Learning at Jobs for the Future, an organization focused on workforce development, though he doesn’t think “they’ve been the target” or that the moves are necessarily indicative of apprenticeships’ future under Trump.
“What we are hearing from the administration is a commitment to registered apprenticeship and to apprenticeship writ large and to making it more widely accessible,” he said. “That leads us to believe, looking into the future, that’s where we’re headed.”
Reasons for Optimism
John Colborn, executive director of Apprenticeships for America, a nonprofit working to expand apprenticeships in the U.S., said it’s “too early to say for sure” what the next four years hold for apprenticeships. But he sees “plenty of positive signs out there,” including supportive rhetoric from current and nominated Trump administration officials.
For example, Secretary of Education Linda McMahon posted on X in November that apprenticeship programs “are a pathway to successful careers,” praising Switzerland’s apprenticeship system as “a model the rest of the world can adapt.”
Similarly, Trump’s pick for secretary of labor, Lori Chavez-DeRemer, said during her Feb. 19 confirmation hearing that she values investing in and “doubling down” on registered or federally recognized apprenticeships.
“Right now, we’re focused on the registered apprenticeships, growing those, investing in those and making sure that those are adhered to,” she told lawmakers.
Her comments were a notable departure from the vision for apprenticeships laid out in Project 2025, which called for a return to an earlier Trump policy of industry-recognized apprenticeships, a separate system to circumvent what Republican lawmakers view as excessive federal regulation. Registered apprenticeships are required to meet certain quality standards to receive federal dollars.
Chavez-DeRemer’s position “came as good news to many of us listening and watching,” White said, though she wonders if Chavez-DeRemer will retain that stance if there’s pressure from the administration to do otherwise.
Colborn believes the current administration might improve the registered apprenticeship system, including speeding up program approvals and expanding the types of occupations that offer apprenticeship options.
He added that so far, the Trump administration hasn’t interfered with financial supports for apprenticeships that the Biden administration instituted. Under Biden, the Department of Labor announced the State Apprenticeship Expansion Formula grant program, which makes $85 million available for states and territories to grow the capacity of existing registered apprenticeships and invest in new offerings.
“I don’t have any official word on this, but every indication we have is that that grant process is going forward,” Colborn said. “We take that as a signifier that this administration is committed to apprenticeship.”
Some apprenticeship advocates hope the moment might be ripe to push for more support and see their policy wish lists fulfilled, including more reliable federal and state funding for apprenticeships, rather than one-off grants, and incentives like tax credits for employers to participate in apprenticeship programs.
“There’s definitely room for the administration to make a mark on the broadening of apprenticeship into more sectors where traditionally they haven’t been as common,” Koller said.
Causes for Concern
Still, some advocates worry apprenticeships will be negatively affected by other policies advanced by the Trump administration.
White, for example, was jarred by the Department of Labor’s decision to ax its Advisory Committee on Apprenticeship, a group of about 30 employers, labor organization representatives and other stakeholders that advises the department on apprenticeship-related policy.
She doesn’t believe the move was intended to signal an anti-apprenticeship stance, given that the committee isn’t the only federal advisory body to bite the dust. A February executive order got rid of a handful of them and called on government officials to flag “Federal Advisory Committees that should be terminated on grounds that they are unnecessary.”
But the disbanding of the committee still feels like a “confusing signal” and a potential obstacle to progress, White said.
“What’s lost by dissolving a community like that is the connection to the people on the ground who are actually having to interpret regulation, live regulation, build the programs, implement the programs,” she added. She sees such perspectives as critical to making apprenticeships “more efficient, more accessible, more functional and, frankly, a more mainstream training option for Americans to access high-quality training and good middle-class jobs.”
Like the advisory committee, some federal funding for apprenticeship programs and apprenticeship-related research projects has gotten caught in the crossfire as the administration works to downsize government and curtail DEI work.
Notably, the Department of Government Efficiency’s website shows about $18 million in cuts to three grants issued by the Department of Labor’s Office of Apprenticeship, according to The Job, a newsletter that covers education and workforce issues.
Managed by the consulting firm ICF, one of the grants was for “technical assistance and coaching support” and one for “industry engagement and outreach.” DOGE’s documentation said only that the grants were terminated “for convenience,” meaning the cuts were in the government’s interest. Another impacted grant was for “technical and coaching assistance support,” managed by a subsidiary of the American Institutes for Research. The Job also reported in late February that several research projects related to apprenticeships had their federal funding frozen.
Another victim of federal cuts was Reach University, a nonprofit institution with a mission to offer on-the-job credentials, called apprenticeship degrees. The institution lost three grants, totaling $14.7 million, from the Education Department. (Teacher-training grants at other institutions have also been slashed for supposed connections to DEI. Three teacher preparation groups sued the Department on Monday over the slew of grant cuts in the field.)
The grants to Reach were supposed to support apprenticeship-based degree programs training teachers in rural Arkansas and Louisiana through 2028. One program helps associate degree holders earn bachelor’s degrees while learning teaching skills on the job in local schools. (The grant application mentioned that the program is a partnership with Delgado Community College, a predominantly Black institution in New Orleans, and would “increase the number of teachers of color in high-need Louisiana schools,” The Jobreported.) The other two grants were partnerships with nonprofits to help people in more isolated rural areas earn teaching credentials on the job.
Joe E. Ross, president and CEO of Reach, wrote to Inside Higher Ed that he remains “hopeful” the university will regain the funds through the Education Department’s internal appeals process, and he said university leaders are in touch with department officials. Despite the financial hits, he’s optimistic the administration will be good news for apprenticeships over all.
“We are confident that the projects funded by these grants align with long-standing, bipartisan priorities, including those of this administration,” Ross said. “As applied by Reach, all three of these grants are a merit-based, discrimination-free application of federal funds to meet the department’s long-held priority of alleviating the teacher shortage with residents of the local community.”
A new report finds that $41 million in state appropriations “were not properly restricted and in some instances were co-mingled with other funds” at Oklahoma State University in violation of state laws and policies, according to an internal audit obtained by media outlets in the state.
The audit—conducted by an office of the Oklahoma Agricultural and Mechanical Colleges Board of Regents, which oversees Oklahoma State and other public institutions—found “significant issues in the allocation and management of legislatively appropriated funds” at OSU.
The report found examples of such funds being transferred improperly, including $11.5 million for aerospace, health and polytechnic programs being directed to the OSU Innovation Foundation instead, without a contractual agreement or approval from regents.
“As a result, some state appropriated funds were utilized for unauthorized and unrelated purposes, and were not retained in full by OSU, the intended recipient,” the audit found.
A university spokesperson told the Tulsa World that “while the financial decisions and transactions which occurred are concerning, they were isolated and do not impact OSU’s overall financial foundation.”
The audit also called on Oklahoma State to improve financial oversight and transparency.
Though the audit did not name former president Kayse Shrum, who resigned abruptly without explanation last month, it indicated the alleged misappropriation happened during her administration. Shrum did not appear to be interviewed as part of the audit, according to a list of individuals who were contacted as part of the investigation into the use of appropriated funds.
Student protesters at Barnard College were arrested Wednesday afternoon for refusing to leave the campus’s library when asked by police, who were clearing the building due to a bomb threat, The New York Times reported. The students were protesting the recent expulsions of three student demonstrators.
Protesters gathered for a sit-in in the Milstein Center at around 1 p.m. Wednesday. Several hours later, administrators shared that they had received a bomb threat, and police began evacuating the building. The New York Police Department posted on social media that “anyone who refuses to leave the location is subject to arrest.” (The bomb threat was later found to be false.)
Many students initially refused to leave, continuing to chant above the sound of a fire alarm, until police began pushing students out of the building. Eventually, nine students were taken into custody for resisting police.
Columbia University Apartheid Divest, a pro-Palestinian activist group, as well as the college’s student government, condemned Barnard’s leaders for calling on NYPD officers to remove students from the building.
“Barnard College has broken a long-standing promise. SGA has been explicitly told by President [Laura] Rosenbury, in the presence of other senior staff, that the College would never invite the NYPD onto campus,” student government members wrote in an email to the Barnard community. “To go against this commitment blatantly violates a precedent that was meant to protect our students.”
Rosenbury defended the decision to bring NYPD officers to campus, saying it was necessary to protect protesters from injury after they refused to follow staff members’ instructions to leave the Milstein Center. (Copies of both the SGA’s and Rosenbury’s emails were shared in an article by Bwog, an independent student newspaper at Columbia.)
“For the safety of our entire community—including the safety of the masked disrupters—Barnard made the necessary decision to request NYPD assistance so they could evacuate the building to reduce the risk of harm … The decision to request NYPD assistance was guided and informed entirely by the absolute obligation we have to keep every member of our community safe,” Rosenbury said via email.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio plans to use artificial intelligence to review and revoke visas of foreign students who appear to be Hamas sympathizers, Axiosreported Thursday, citing State Department officials.
The “Catch and Revoke” initiative will use AI to review tens of thousands of student visa holders’ social media accounts, looking for signs that they supported Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel.
If officials find a social media post from an international student that appears to endorse the attack and looks “pro-Hamas,” that could be grounds for visa revocation, an official told Axios.
Officials also plan to check news reports of anti-Israel demonstrations and lawsuits brought by Jewish students that might indicate a foreign national engaged in antisemitic activity.
Axios reported that to launch Catch and Revoke, the department examined a database of 100,000 people in the Student Exchange Visitor System since October 2023 to see if any visas had been revoked but the student was allowed to stay in the country during the Biden administration.
“We found literally zero visa revocations during the Biden administration,” a State Department official said, “which suggests a blind eye attitude toward law enforcement.”
The official said, “It would be negligent for the department that takes national security seriously to ignore publicly available information about [visa] applicants in terms of AI tools … AI is one of the resources available to the government that’s very different from where we were technologically decades ago.”
“Under President Trump, the Immigration Nationality Act [sic] is great again,” the official added.
Smith College has received a $51 million gift from an anonymous alumna, the Massachusetts women’s college announced Thursday.
It is the largest planned gift in the institution’s history and will be used to support financial aid and two faculty positions: one in engineering and one in statistical and data sciences.
Boosting financial aid “will allow young women from all economic backgrounds to realize their biggest dreams for educational opportunity, permitting them to make a difference in their local communities, in their nations, and in the advancement of humankind worldwide,” said the donor, who graduated in 1979.
She also articulated her belief in the value of STEM education.
“In an age in which it is more important than ever for women to excel in technology, especially in the fields of engineering and computing, it is crucial to endow a leading educational institution like Smith College and to benefit women’s contributions in the STEM fields.”
About four in 10 college students believe developing specific skills needed for their career is among the most important outcomes to them in their academic experience, according to a winter 2023 Student Voice survey by Inside Higher Ed and College Pulse. However, 22 percent of all respondents indicated they had never participated in experiential learning or an internship.
Over the past two years, the partnership has resulted in real-life case studies and client-facing work for students and faculty, as well as greater engagement with young talent for employers.
What’s the need: “One thing that’s very apparent in Vermont is we need young talent,” says Angelika Koukoulas, Champlain’s Innovation Hub Project Manager, who oversees the Hula-Champlain partnership.
Vermont experiences the worst brain drain in the country, losing 57.5 percent of its college graduates, many of whom move to Massachusetts or New York, according to 2022 data analysis.
Koukoulas’s role is to help students identify work experiences in Vermont and build relationships with employers to fill holes in their workforces.
“They need more hands, they need big ideas, they need students who are excited about their work and are willing to put in effort to learn,” Koukoulas says.
There’s also a national shortage of internship opportunities, one that is tied to a mismatch in employer needs and student interests. The partnership addresses both comprehensively by weighing all stakeholders’ interests.
How it works: Hula is about a mile away from Champlain College and just down the road from the college’s Miller Center campus.
The coworking space supports 60 member businesses and up to 600 coworking individuals. The businesses belong to a variety of industries, including green technology and marketing, as well as traditional business or finance roles.
A majority of the collaborations fall into two camps: companies providing projects for capstone-like courses for experiential learning or companies creating internships for students.
Inquiries can come directly from faculty members looking to revamp curriculum or offer real-world scenarios for students to engage their skills or from employers who have a specific need and want young talent to assist them. Often, start-ups are looking for student support for social media or blog-writing campaigns, but there’s also a need for general business admin or accounting support, Koukoulas says.
For internships, Koukoulas will serve as a recruiter of sorts for the company partner, assisting them in creating the job description and posting it on Handshake and also encouraging students she believes would be a good fit to apply and increasing the number of applicants for the business partner.
“It widens their candidate pool and hopefully gets more students opportunities that they wouldn’t have even thought of otherwise,” Koukoulas says.
All projects have been pro-bono, so the company invests zero dollars to enlist a class for work, but almost all internships have been paid roles.
What’s different: Hula serves both as a business partner, hiring interns and supporting class projects, but also as an incubator for small businesses in Vermont.
The people who work on Hula’s campus rotate, meaning there’s continual variety of the types of industries or groups students could partner with. The climate of the office building also means businesses are innovation and creatively minded, making partnership more natural.
Koukoulas has an office at Hula, meaning she can directly engage in communal spaces or in building channels to solicit employer partnerships.
Vermont also has a very relational culture, something Koukoulas has had to navigate as a more recent resident to the Green Mountain State, whether the relationships are with faculty—who have taught a course for a long time and may be hesitant to make changes—or with businesses leaders, who consider their start-up to be their baby and may be uncomfortable letting a student participate in their work.
There’s an educational piece to the puzzle, both helping faculty identify their ask for project and employers create meaningful internships for learners. Koukoulas hosted an Internship 101 workshop for Hula businesses to set expectations for internships and provide guidance on best practices, such as providing students a mentor. She also hosts regular lunch for interns who work within the Hula offices to check in and provide support as needed.
The impact: Since the partnership launched in summer 2023, 90 students have engaged in a Hula-based project within a course, and 18 students have participated in an internship.
The partnership is in its early stages, so Champlain doesn’t have data on how students have translated their work with the start-ups into longer-term career development, but exposure to new careers and experiential learning are two benefits Koukoulas is eager to see manifest.
“I can’t wait to see if it works; I can’t wait to see the fruit of that labor in the next couple of years,” Koukoulas says.
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It’s been a whirlwind week at the Department of Education, and some career staffers are anguished over its bleak, uncertain future.
On Monday, the Senate confirmed Linda McMahon as the new secretary of education, and shortly afterward, she released a memo laying out department personnel’s “final mission”: “the elimination of bureaucratic bloat here at the Department of Education.”
The next day, department leaders scheduled a meeting to announce a major reduction in force, which current staffers say is rumored to include layoffs of nearly 50 percent of the workforce—but the meeting was canceled at the last minute, according to a department employee.
Then, on Wednesday, media outlets, citing sources in the administration, reported that President Trump would sign an executive order to abolish the Education Department as soon as Thursday, sending frenzied staffers scrambling to prepare.
When White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt announced Thursday morning on X that Trump wouldn’t be signing the order that day after all, one staffer said it felt like cruel misdirection.
“It’s definitely feeling like whiplash,” they said. “Folks had steeled themselves for today … Everyone seems ready to rip off the Band-Aid, and the delay feels like a game to torture people.”
Several current department employees, who spoke with Inside Higher Ed on background and on the condition of anonymity, offered a chaotic picture of upheaval and uncertainty within the department, with staff scrambling to prepare for the dissolution of their offices, even as the administration’s plans and timeline remain unclear.
One current employee told Inside Higher Ed that McMahon’s memo announcing the administration’s plan to downsize the department was “insulting and antagonizing.”
“The notion that we should be honored to undertake this ‘final mission’ is absurd,” they said. “It’s basically saying, ‘You should thank us for firing you.’”
One career staffer who’s been with the department for more than a decade said most employees are anxiously waiting for the other shoe to drop. Over the past few weeks, they said, anger and indignation have turned to heartbreak.
“Reality is sinking in everywhere … Folks are seriously depressed,” they said. “And yet, working to advance the goals of this administration may actually be worse than not having a job.”
‘Slash and Burn’
Trump has advocated for eliminating the 45-year-old Education Department since the early days of his campaign. When he nominated McMahon as secretary, he said he hoped she would “put herself out of a job.” Still, many department employees were taken aback by the sudden escalation.
The longtime staffer said that when Trump was inaugurated, they anticipated some serious changes at the department. But the speed and wantonness of the move to abolish it has surprised them.
“I foolishly believed they’d try to take a studied approach to any changes, consult with seasoned career staffers with institutional knowledge and expertise,” they said. “Instead it’s slash and burn.”
Last week, the Office of Management and Budget and the Office of Personnel Management directed all federal agencies to prepare for “large-scale reductions in force” and the elimination of “non-statutorily mandated functions,” which could be a precursor to the Trump administration’s plans to heavily reduce the head count at Education Department as much as possible without congressional approval.
A draft of Trump’s forthcoming executive order, obtained by Inside Higher Ed, includes a two-paragraph guideline for winding down department activity and little else. James Kvaal, who served as under secretary of education under President Joe Biden, said the absence of a plan is revealing and concerning.
“[The document] reflects a lack of clarity within the Trump administration about what they’re trying to do, or even disagreement among certain elements,” Kvaal said.
Department staffers are concerned about the administration’s strategy for implementing its ambitious spending cuts. One employee who spoke with Inside Higher Ed was placed on administrative leave last month and said their experience was “chaotic and haphazard.” The staffer said cuts to programs, contracts and personnel have been largely left up to a small group of young Department of Government Efficiency employees, whose approach has been “like throwing spaghetti at the wall to see what they can get away with.”
They said that if the Trump administration’s approach to cuts at the department so far is any indication how they will handle plans to gut the department, it could exacerbate the impact on students and educational institutions.
“Nobody is going to know what’s happening, which means zero accountability,” they said. “It’s going to be a mess.”
DOGE has already canceled hundreds of millions of dollars in department contracts, including some that are essential to the operation of the Free Application for Federal Student Aid. And sources within the department say that hundreds of Federal Student Aid staff have either taken a buyout or been placed on leave.
A current department employee who specializes in higher education said they fear that the department’s closure—or the major cuts that precipitate it—will have a devastating impact on the sector, and on affordability and access in particular.
“There’s going to be a huge setback in the progress we’ve made even just in terms of who gets to go to college,” they said. “Universities are being put on such a high alert on every front … it’s a wholesale attack on the sector.”
Kvaal said that even under Biden, the department in general—and the student aid office in particular—were severely understaffed, a problem that he has said contributed to the bungled rollout of the new FAFSA last year. He added that further reductions could hobble agencies’ capacity to perform essential duties like student loan and aid disbursement.
“The department was thinly staffed even prior to these cuts, and as a result it was difficult to run programs smoothly and deliver benefits that students needed,” he said. “If there are, in fact, hundreds of people leaving FSA, that could put our progress with FAFSA at risk and upend our efforts to prevent student loan defaults. If nothing else, asking senior managers to focus on nudging their staff out the door and preparing for legislation that will never come is a real distraction.”
Both Kvaal and current employees are concerned that when the Trump administration does release concrete plans for distributing the department’s responsibilities, they will welcome the private sector into administering services like student loans and financial aid.
“It seems like the longer-term goal here would be to privatize the FSA, like they’re doing with Social Security,” one staffer said. “That’s a mess waiting to happen and would take way longer than four years. In the interim, the damage could be enormous.”
A draft executive order obtained Thursday by Inside Higher Ed directs the newly confirmed education secretary, Linda McMahon, to “take all necessary steps” to return authority over education to the states and facilitate closure of the Department of Education “to the maximum extent appropriate and permitted by law.”
If signed, the order—which has been rumored for weeks but is not yet official—would be the first step in carrying out the president’s controversial campaign promise to abolish the 45-year-old department, which he believes is unconstitutional and has grown too large.
Several media outlets reported Wednesday night that Trump would sign the order as soon as Thursday, but shortly after the news circulated, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt posted on X, “President Trump is NOT signing an Executive Order on the Department of Education today” and called the reports “fake news.”
Still, the reports set off a wave of comments from advocates and analysts. Liberals warned that shutting down the Education Department would be devastating for families and students, while conservatives backed Trump’s plan and said the draft order was key to cleaning up the agency.
McMahon, who took office Monday and will spearhead the closure effort, is supportive of overhauling the agency. She told department staff earlier this week to prepare for a “momentous final mission” to eliminate “bureaucratic bloat” and return education to the states.
Although vague, the secretary’s memo and the draft executive order give policy experts some idea of what could come next.
At the very least, they expect to see a major reduction in staff and a diminished federal role in education; some of that work is already underway. The agency has slashed millions in contracts and grants as well as fired dozens of employees. A larger reduction in force is also in the works, fueling concerns among department staff.
“There is probably not going to be anything in [the order] that isn’t already happening, largely,” said Kelly McManus, vice president of higher education at Arnold Ventures, a philanthropic group. “The secretary’s final mission was clear … so I’m not particularly worked up about the EO specifically, because I don’t think it’s going to fundamentally change that.”
Abolishing the department would require an act of Congress, which McManus said the draft order appears to acknowledge. She and other experts say any effort to close the department will be lengthy and complicated.
“This is not a flip-on, flip-off situation here,” she said. “Practically, there will have to be a process … You cannot shut the doors tomorrow and be done.”
The 416-word draft order gives little detail as to what the “steps” of dismantling the department are or what would happen to certain congressionally mandated programs such as the Pell Grant, the student loan system or the Individuals With Disabilities Education Act. However, the document does say that any funds allocated by the department should comply with federal law, including Trump’s previous orders on diversity, equity and inclusion and transgender athletes—both of which have been caught up in court.
Neither Trump nor McMahon has so far offered any plan outlining how closing the department would work, though some conservative plans recommend moving the Office for Federal Student Aid to the Treasury and sending the Office for Civil Rights to the Justice Department.
More than 4,000 people currently work for the department, which was created in 1979 and now has a $80 billion discretionary budget. Each year, the agency issues about $100 billion in student loans and doles out more than $30 billion in Pell Grants.
Shutting down the department isn’t popular with voters, recent surveys have found. One recent opinion poll found that 61 percent of all respondents “somewhat” or “strongly” opposed the idea of eliminating the department. Another showed that up to 72 percent either opposed the plan or weren’t sure how they felt. That number was 49 percent among Republicans.
Minimizing a D.C. ‘Footprint’
Trump has signaled for months, if not years, that he wants to shut down the Education Department, and many analysts have already taken a position on the issue.
To Michael Brickman, an adjunct fellow at the conservative think tank the American Enterprise Institute, nothing about the draft was a surprise. Like McManus, he noted that much of what the order directs McMahon to do is already underway.
Brickman expects the next steps will focus on finding new and “better” ways to maintain the department’s core functions as required under law with “less funding, less staff and possibly in conjunction with other agencies.”
“I don’t think anybody’s talking about cutting major programs,” he said, referencing financial aid services like the Pell Grant and disability protection acts like IDEA. “So the question will be, what is required under law? What can Congress change? And how can the department streamline things to minimize the footprint in D.C.?”
Shutting down the Education Department likely would be disruptive for colleges and students, advocates say.
J. David Ake/Getty Images
McManus stressed that it will be important to protect these core functions, especially the ones related to higher ed, saying it doesn’t make sense to send them back to the states.
“What is most important is that those core statutory functions have the people, capacity and expertise to be able to do effective oversight of how taxpayer dollars are being spent,” she said. “We are significantly less concerned about where those people sit, as long as there is the ability to safeguard taxpayer investments and to make sure that programs that are statutorily required and that have had long bipartisan support, like Pell Grants, are being effectively implemented.”
In Brickman’s view, some of the department’s regulatory operations, like analyzing and creating reports on grant or contract applicants and managing third-party accreditors, are simply “make-work.” By hiring hundreds of staff members to execute these tasks, he said, the department pulls tax dollars from local governments and then forces those same communities to spend more writing grant proposals to get it back.
“There’s just a lot of work and churn that evidence shows does not lead to improved student outcomes,” he said.
But when asked what the Trump administration has done to convince stakeholders he not only intends to tear down the department but also build it back up again, Brickman didn’t directly answer the question. Instead, he referenced actions of the Biden administration.
“The Biden administration broke the entire Federal Student Aid system on purpose … They were trying to illegally turn the trillion-plus-dollar portfolio from a loan program into a grant program,” he said. “That is not what the Trump administration is doing. The Trump administration has tried to improve these programs and make them actually work again.”
Although what Biden did was “unfortunate,” Brickman said, it also creates an opportunity.
“This mess isn’t being created; it’s being responded to,” he said. “I hope institutions that may be predisposed to oppose anything coming from the Trump administration will welcome this as the end of a failed experiment that just put more restrictions on teaching and learning.”
Democrats Push Back
Meanwhile, Democratic lawmakers, student advocacy groups, civil rights organizations and left-leaning think tanks warn that Trump has no intention of rebuilding, only dismantling. The American Federation of Teachers, a key higher ed union, said the order is a government attempt to “abdicate its responsibility to all children, students and working families.”
Randi Weingarten, the union’s president, recognized in a statement Wednesday night that there are certainly ways the department could be more efficient, but she implied that’s not Trump’s goal.
“No one likes bureaucracy, and everyone’s in favor of more efficiency, so let’s find ways to accomplish that,” she said. “But don’t use a ‘war on woke’ to attack the children living in poverty and the children with disabilities, in order to pay for vouchers and tax cuts for billionaires.”
Senate Democrats criticized the pending executive order to abolish the Department of Education as a press conference Thursday.
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Senator Patty Murray, a Democrat from Washington State, blasted the Trump administration’s plans at a press conference Thursday. She said that Trump and his unelected government efficiency czar Elon Musk “don’t know what it’s like to count on their local public school having the resources to get their kids a great education … And they don’t care to learn why. They want to break the department, break our government, and enrich themselves.”
To the American Association of University Professors, “dismantling the Department of Education would hasten us into a new dark age.”
Former Biden under secretary James Kvaal told Inside Higher Ed that the draft order should dispel any notion that Trump is not trying to shut down the department. But at the same time, he said, the GOP administration’s approach to doing so has been “schizophrenic” and “inconsistent.”
“It can’t be true that students of color and with disabilities will have their civil rights protected, but also the federal government is not going to be involved in those decisions,” he said.
But at the same time, Kvaal and others note that, ultimately, the Trump administration lacks the legal authority to actually close the Department of Education, making full abolishment more complicated than the president suggests.
Shuttering the agency would require 60 votes in the Senate as well as a majority in the House, as the department’s existence is written into statute. And with a 53-seat majority in the Senate, Republicans don’t currently have the votes unless some Democrats back the plan.
“[The Republicans] don’t have the votes to close the department, and they already plan to enforce their plans on DEI, so it’s not clear what the EO adds to that,” Kvaal said. “It’ll get sorted out in the courts.”
Katherine Knott and Liam Knox contributed to this report.
President Donald Trump is planning to sign an executive order directing Education Secretary Linda McMahon to “take all necessary steps” to close the agency, The Wall Street Journal and other media outlets reported.
The president’s order—scheduled to be signed at 2 p.m. in the Oval Office—is the first step in carrying out his controversial campaign promise to abolish the 45-year-old department. A draft of the order provided to Inside Higher Ed criticizes the department for spending “more than $1 trillion without producing virtually any improvement in student reading and mathematics scores.” Trump’s press secretary called reports about the order “fake news.”
Education advocates have already shown staunch opposition to the executive action. The American Federation of Teachers, a key higher ed union, was one of the first groups to pipe up when the news broke Wednesday evening, calling the order a government attempt to “abdicate its responsibility to all children, students and working families.”
“The Department of Education, and the laws it is supposed to execute, has one major purpose: to level the playing field and fill opportunity gaps to help every child in America succeed,” union president Randi Weingarten said in a statement. “No one likes bureaucracy, and everyone’s in favor of more efficiency, so let’s find ways to accomplish that. But don’t use a ‘war on woke’ to attack the children living in poverty and the children with disabilities, in order to pay for vouchers and tax cuts for billionaires.”
The president and his allies have promoted the idea of dismantling the agency since the early days of his 2024 campaign, saying the department has grown too big and interferes in matters best left to local and state authorities. They also argue the agency’s existence violates the Constitution (because the document doesn’t mention education) and is a prime example of federal bloat and excess.
Read More on Trump’s Plans to Break Up the Department
Such an order has been rumored for weeks, and higher education officials have been nervously waiting for the shoe to drop since McMahon was confirmed by the Senate Monday afternoon. But the secretary backed plans to break up or diminish the department at her confirmation last month, and shortly after taking office, she wrote to agency staff about their “momentous final mission,” which includes overhauling the agency and eliminating “bureaucratic bloat.” She never did directly use the words “dismantle” or “abolish” but pledged to “send education back to the states.”
“As I’ve learned many times throughout my career, disruption leads to innovation and gets results,” she wrote. “We must start thinking about our final mission at the department as an overhaul—a last chance to restore the culture of liberty and excellence that made American education great.”
Eliminating the Education Department and sending key programs such as the Office for Civil Rights to other agencies was a key part of the conservative blueprint Project 2025’s plans to reshape education policy in America. But recent public opinion polls have foundsupport for keeping the agency.
One survey conducted by the progressive think tank Data for Progress, on behalf of the Student Borrower Protection Center, a left-wing advocacy group, showed that 61 percent of all respondents “somewhat” or “strongly” opposed the idea of eliminating the department. Another poll from Morning Consult, a data-driven insights company, showed that a large chunk of voters—41 percent—actually want to increase funding to the department.
The order doesn’t mean the department will close tomorrow or even this month, as it calls for the secretary to create a plan to wind down operations. McMahon also told senators during her confirmation that only Congress can shut down the agency altogether.
Higher Ed Officials Brace for Impact
As talks about the department’s demise ramped up in recent weeks, lawmakers, student advocacy groups, civil rights organizations and left-leaning think tanks warned how destructive dismantling the department could be.
Democrats in the House started pushing back on the idea as early as Feb. 10, when they walked directly up to the department’s front doors and demanded a meeting with then–acting education secretary Denise Carter. Denied entry, they argued the department’s existence is key to supporting students with disabilities and making higher education accessible to all.
That same week, several key senators wrote a letter to the department outlining their “serious concerns” about its actions.
“We will not stand by and allow the impact that dismantling the Department of Education would have on the nation’s students, parents, borrowers, educators, and communities,” the lawmakers wrote.
Derrick Johnson, president of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, put out a statement expressing similar concerns for students of color just minutes after McMahon was confirmed. The NAACP played a key role in the landmark 1954 Supreme Court case Brown v. Board of Education, which outlawed racial segregation in public schools, and has been a longtime advocate for equality and opportunity in education. He said that protecting the Department of Education is critical, since the agency not only funds public schools, but “enforces essential civil rights laws.”
“This is an agency we cannot afford to dismantle,” he said.
On Tuesday morning, EdTrust, a nonprofit policy and advocacy group, said America has reached “a dangerous turning point for public education.”
“Simply put: If we are truly to reach America’s ‘Golden Age,’ we need to build a better, stronger Department of Education, not tear it down altogether,” the organization wrote in a statement.
Kevin Carey, vice president of education at New America, a left-leaning think tank, said in a statement that eliminating the department is a “deeply unpopular idea,” citing the organization’s own new polling data.
The survey found that over all only 26 percent of adults support the department’s closure. And though the Trump administration says it is carrying out the will of the people who elected him to office, barely half of Republicans want closure. Even fewer members of the GOP support the specific consequences of shuttering the department, like moving federal financial aid to an agency with no experience overseeing the program.
“This is all part of the standard authoritarian playbook for would-be dictators engaged in tearing down democratic institutions,” Carey wrote. Dismantling the department would be “a nihilistic act of civic vandalism, carried out by ideological zealots.”
Gathering Congressional Support
But Carey and others also note that, ultimately, the Trump administration lacks the legal authority to actually close the Department of Education, making full abolishment more complicated than the president suggests.
Shuttering the agency would require 60 votes in the Senate as well as a majority in the House, as the department’s existence is written into statute. And with a 53-seat majority in the Senate, Republicans don’t currently have the votes unless some Democrats back the plan.
Still, Trump has continued to promote the concept, and red states across the country have backed it. Although the president has not disclosed specific details on how he would try to overcome the political and legal hurdles, higher education policy experts predict he’s likely to leave the skeleton of the department standing while gutting the agency of everything but its statutorily protected duties.
Conservative groups, most notably the Heritage Foundation, have suggested redistributing responsibilities by moving programs to other agencies. For example, the federal student loan system could be moved to the Treasury, and the Office for Civil Rights could be moved to the Department of Justice.
Critics of the idea say that such proposals need more specifics that spell out how exactly the plan would work, what programs would stay, which ones would go away and what agencies would take over the department’s responsibilities.
However, higher ed policy experts from the Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank, say getting rid of the department is “a good idea.” They describe the department as “unconstitutional,” given education is mentioned nowhere in the specific, enumerated powers given to the federal government, and call it “ineffective,” “incompetent,” “expensive” and “unnecessary.”
The founding fathers chose to exclude dominion over education from the Constitution “because education was believed best left in the hands of parents and civil society—the families and communities closest to the children—and certainly not in a distant national government,” Neal McCluskey, director of Cato’s Center for Educational Freedom, wrote in a policy handbook. “Nearly 60 years of experience with major and, until very recently, constantly expanding federal meddling in K-12 education have proved them right.”
