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During his second campaign, President Donald Trump repeatedly asserted plans to eliminate the U.S. Department of Education — a goal many education policy experts and economists dismissed as unlikely.

That changed last Thursday.

Trump’s March 20 executive order pledging to dismantle the department was unprecedented, leaving its potential effects on K-12 and higher education uncertain. By Tuesday, multiple groups — including the American Association of University Professors and the N.A.A.C.P. — had filed two separate lawsuits challenging his decision, The New York Times reported.

The White House has not clarified how it plans to redistribute the department’s responsibilities, which include the oversight of federal financial aid programs and data collection, or how it will implement these changes.

Syracuse University and other colleges, whose students receive billions in aid and grants annually, could face major shifts depending on how — and if — the transition unfolds. The changes threaten funding for student aid and research.

“Ever since the Department of Education came into being during the Carter administration, people have talked about abolishing it, and it’s never come close to happening,” Sandy Baum, a higher education economist with the Urban Institute, said. “I don’t think anyone foresaw the speed and the draconian nature of the cuts that are being implemented.”

Baum described the potential ramifications of the DOEd’s elimination, as well as Trump’s other attempts to change higher education through his policies, as “a big question mark.” Because congressional approval is needed to close the department, she said it’s difficult to predict exactly how these changes would come to fruition.

One of the department’s most significant responsibilities within higher education is its annual distribution of $120.8 billion in student loans, grants and work-study funds. That’s in addition to its oversight of the at least $1.5 trillion in student debt that American borrowers owe in total. On Friday, Trump announced the U.S. Small Business Administration will take over these responsibilities.

Thirty-five percent of SU undergraduates received federal student loans in the 2022-23 academic year, according to the most recent data from the National Center for Education Statistics’ Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System, which the DOEd also oversees. During the 2022-23 academic year, 82% of SU students were awarded “some form of financial support,” including both federal and university-sponsored aid, according to SU’s website.

Around 17% of SU undergraduates are also eligible for Pell Grants, federal aid awarded to students displaying “exceptional financial need,” according to the Federal Student Aid website.

Sean Drake, an assistant professor of sociology at SU’s Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs, said one of the largest ways the SU community will be impacted is through the proposed elimination of those private loans, Pell Grants and other forms of scholarships.

As of February, a U.S. appeals court has also temporarily blocked the department from allowing borrowers to enroll in repayment plans — specifically, former President Joe Biden’s income-driven Saving on a Valuable Education program.

“I’m very concerned that the cost of higher education, which has already gone up a lot in the past few years and even decades, will go up more or that a higher percentage of that cost will be borne by families now that they don’t have that support anymore,” Drake said.

Baum said if the transition to SBA control doesn’t go smoothly, the consequences could be “problematic” for students collecting financial aid or paying back federal student loans, citing last year’s issues involving the rollout of a new Free Application for Federal Student Aid application.

Along with dismantling the DOEd and terminating over 1,300 of its employees, Trump has also issued a number of executive orders targeting higher education institutions for their diversity, equity, inclusion and accessibility practices.

On Feb. 14, the DOEd released a “Dear Colleague” letter which referred to DEIA policies at educational institutions as “discriminatory” and gave schools 14 days to end them. After the letter’s release, Trump threatened to pull federal funding from schools that continue these practices.

A month later, his administration launched an investigation into over 50 private and public universities, which he alleged used “racial preferences and stereotypes in education programs and activities.”

An independent audit obtained by ProPublica found that SU received over $250 million in federal funding from June 2022 to 2023, including money for financial aid and research grants. SU is not one of the universities currently under investigation, but in late January, The Chronicle of Higher Education reported it was listed as one of 131 colleges subject to potential scrutiny due to its status as an institution with an over $1 billion endowment.

“The short term impacts to public universities are probably going to be worse, so Syracuse may have a little bit more of a buffer being a private research university,” Drake said. “But there are government contracts that Syracuse and most research universities have, and so a lot of those are in jeopardy.”

In response to Trump’s anti-DEIA orders, SU announced in a March 6 email that its Office of Diversity and Inclusion would lead a review of existing DEIA programs and make “immediate changes” in compliance with federal law. During a March 19 University Senate meeting, SU Chancellor Kent Syverud said the university will comply with the developing law, but believes its existing programs “do not discriminate against any group.”

As part of its review, SU said it would focus on the language used in university communications. Syracuse.com found in a Feb. 24 article — released between the DOEd’s letter and SU’s statement — that the university had removed multiple references to the word “diversity” and an image of a pride flag on the ODI’s website. The Daily Orange confirmed this claim.

Syverud also said he hopes SU will not need to make any “knee-jerk responses” about its DEIA initiatives, referencing Columbia University’s decision to comply with the Trump administration’s demands related to student protesters. Before Columbia complied, the president threatened to cut $400 million of its federal funding after alleging its response to a pro-Palestinian encampment on campus was antisemitic.

Although the SU undergraduate community has yet to see a direct campus impact following the order, George Theoharis, a professor of educational leadership and inclusive education, said graduate students are noticing changes in their research programs.

An SU graduate program working to institute special education systems in Uzbekistan had previously partnered with the U.S. Agency for International Development and relied on federal funding, Theoharis said. Following Trump’s order, the program lost its funding and is now unable to function, he said.

“One of the reasons that so many people from around the world come to the United States is for our higher education system, and we’re seeing a moment where we are trying to destabilize and fundamentally dismantle that,” Theoharis said. “We will not be the leader of the world in terms of innovation, research and all kinds of things that come out of a productive higher education.”

Theoharis, Drake and Baum all said they expect universities may begin to take legal action against the administration because of its sweeping restrictions. Several institutions, such as Harvard University, have increased their lobbying efforts amid Trump’s second campaign.

During the height of the 2024 U.S. presidential race, SU’s lobbying expenditures amounted to $430,000, according to data from OpenSecrets. This figure is over three times larger than SU’s spending during the previous presidential campaign cycle.

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On March 1, the university also registered an additional lobbyist, Deidre Stach, with the U.S. Secretary of the Senate and the Clerk of the House of Representatives, according to activity logged on the Senate’s Lobbying Disclosure platform. Stach will work on “issues related to higher education,” according to the registration form.

In a Feb. 4 campus-wide email, Syverud wrote that SU’s government relationship team is in “close communication” with its federal delegation in response to the executive orders.

Theoharis said much of what the Trump administration is currently pushing for within both K-12 and higher education is a continued overstep of the executive branch’s power and will require challenges from an outside agency. He also said that even if courts overrule Trump’s executive order, the layoffs he enacted will still severely disrupt the department’s function.

Drake echoed this sentiment, adding that the excess of executive orders could also be a political move aiming to surprise both the agency and the American public, even if the threats end up not amounting to anything.

“If success is shrinking opportunity, if success is just supporting the status quo in terms of … diversity on campuses, if the goal is to have less of all of that, then, sure, you can be successful without a Department of Education,” Drake said.

Published on March 26, 2025 at 1:00 am