US higher education faces uncertain future under Trump | education

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 step down from his post as the Edward Said Chair in Modern Arab History at Columbia University, he said“I didn't want to be a cog in that machine anymore.

“For some time I have been both disgusted and horrified by the way higher education has become a cash register—essentially a money-making, lawyer-run MBA, hedge fund-real estate operation with a minor side business in education, where money determines everything, where respect for pedagogy is minimal”.

Unfortunately, the situation that pushed Khalidi into what many consider an untimely retirement is likely to get much worse in the near future.

President-elect Donald Trump has vowed to launch an all-out attack on America's universities as soon as he returns to the White House.

During his campaign, Trump pointed to rising college and university tuition fees. But Trump, who studied at UPenn, blamed “radical left-wing accreditors” for allowing universities to be “dominated by Marxist maniacs and lunatics.” His deputy prime minister, Yale graduate JD Vance, meanwhile, called university professors “enemies” and staked for “an honest and aggressive attack on universities”.

The outlines of what this presidency plans to accomplish in higher education are already laid out in the Heritage Foundation's blueprint for a conservative takeover of the state and all of its institutions, Project 2025. The blueprint calls for eliminating all Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) initiatives and the rejection and removal of “gender ideology” and critical race theory from all teaching materials. It emphasizes the need to prohibit accreditors from requiring educational institutions to adopt DEI policies. It insists on the need to protect religious institutions from the standards and criteria of accreditation agencies, which they say “undermine religious beliefs”. Project 2025 also calls for ending loan forgiveness programs and ultimately closing the Department of Education.

Trump may not be able to achieve all of this during his upcoming term. But some of his stated plans for higher education are entirely achievable and will likely be implemented in one form or another in the coming year.

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

To the detriment of minority and marginalized communities' access to higher education, Trump could easily weaponize the Justice Department and federal civil rights laws to target institutions that continue with DEI efforts and tax donations. He could also freeze federal funding to “enforce ideological conformity and promote conservative programmatic preferences” at American universities. That would include forcing university leaders to crack down on Palestinian solidarity activists, or as Trump puts it, “pro-Hamas radicals” to make college campuses “safe and patriotic again.”

Title IX, the federal law banning sexual discrimination in schools, is also likely to be at the center of the storm. The Biden-era expansion of the definition of gender discrimination to include discrimination based on sexual orientation has irked conservatives. Therefore, the incoming Trump administration can be expected to eliminate existing protections for LGBTQ+ students and staff at federally funded colleges. Under Title IX, the Biden administration also strengthened “safeguards for victims of campus sexual assault” by expanding the definition of sexual harassment and ending the requirement for live hearings that Trump put in place during his first term. Trump is now expected to reverse those changes by “tightening the definition of sexual harassment, raising the standard of proof for allegations and (re)allowing live hearings.”

Access to higher education will also be under attack under Trump. He has publicly labeled federal loan forgiveness programs and programs aimed at keeping monthly loan payments low and reducing the time it takes to pay off loans as “illegal and unfair.” His administration is expected to cancel them. Of course, this will mean that millions of low- and middle-income students will not be able to afford higher education.

Trump's immigration policies and mass deportation plans will also have an effect on higher education. There are currently 408,000 undocumented students in US higher education institutions. Many states provide these students with access to in-state tuition and in-state financial aid. Only three states do not allow undocumented migrants to enter public colleges. Under Trump, many more public institutions may feel compelled—or outright compelled—to do the same. Trump's new Secretary of Education, former World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE) CEO and passionate DEI advocate Linda McMahon, will undoubtedly work hard to make Trump's dark vision for American higher education a reality.

Some promised to back down.

In August, in response to JD Vance's promise to “aggressively attack the universities of this country” if elected to office, AAUP President Todd Wilson said, “We are at 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 let the fascists rob it. Now is the time to fight.”

After the election, Wilson called on institutions, faculty, staff and students to organize, arguing that the crisis in the sector, with declining public funding, rising student debt and increasing attacks on academic freedom, “will only intensify” under Trump 2.0.

Others, however, seem to see Trump's higher education agenda as the will of the American people and appear willing to compromise with an administration that has openly expressed its desire to reshape the entire sector to fit its ideological preferences.

For example, in a post-election statement defending DEI's efforts and academic freedom at American universities, Wesleyan University President Michael Roth also suggested that universities “should be ready to listen” to the Trump/Vance viewpoint as millions of Americans had “made the votes for them to be heard in their voices (for them)'. Meanwhile, the Western Association of Schools and Colleges (WASC) — one of seven nonprofit accrediting groups in the U.S. that oversees 170 colleges in Hawaii and California — has already proposed removing “diversity, equity and inclusion” from its accreditation standards. PEN America expressed its concern about the timing of this measure, adding that this “in the face of an incoming president who has threatened to 'fire the accreditors' … can't help but create the impression that WASC is bowing to political pressure.”

That some leaders and institutions of American higher education appear to be bowing to Trump even before he officially returns to the White House should surprise no one. Higher education has always been an instrument of American soft power, and its institutions have eagerly served the nation's agenda—whatever that agenda may be—since their inception. Under Trump, America is ready to reposition itself in the world and restructure its internal dynamics. The new administration has made it clear that these sweeping changes to “make America great again” will require a complete overhaul of the education system. American universities may have no choice but to accept their fate and adapt.

The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial position of Al Jazeera.