After the 2024 presidential election results were announced, Matt Walsh tweeted, “Now that the election is over I think we can finally say that yeah actually Project 2025 is the agenda.” Matt Walsh is a conservative political commentator who has had a leading role in the development of Project 2025.
With Republicans set to gain control of both chambers of Congress, put Donald Trump in the White House without having to worry about re-election and be backed by a friendly Supreme Court, they may get their wish in Project 2025. Project 2025 contains a series of radical changes that threaten the basic functions of government for college students.
The seed for the Education Department was planted when Congress decided in 1964 that racial disparities in the country were unacceptable and merited federal action. In 1965, Congress passed the Elementary and Secondary Education Act and the Higher Education Act as part of President Lyndon B. Johnson’s “War on Poverty.” Subsequently, Congress passed more laws like the Rehabilitation Act and Individuals with Disabilities Education Act. Eventually, President Carter signed the Department of Education Organization Act into law which consolidated all of the federal education programs under a single Cabinet-level agency.
Project 2025 calls for the Department of Education to be disbanded with necessary component offices being consolidated under other departments or, in the case of the Office of Federal Student Aid, privatize it.
Project 2025 takes the position that students should borrow responsibly, and taxpayers should not be subsidizing a college education. To accomplish this, Project 2025 makes the following proposals: phase out all income-driven repayment plans with income exemptions equal to the poverty line, abolish loan forgiveness and interest rate subsidies, including annual and aggregate limits on borrowing, eliminate graduate and parent loans and privatize student loans because according to the authors, the government is incapable of making sound decisions.
Not only does this make a college education unaffordable, but it also completely defeats the purpose of having the government issue loans because the government is in a unique position to issue loans for the purpose of educating society rather than the purpose of making as much profit as possible. Should these proposals pass, many college students will likely be in debt for most of their lifetimes as interest rates would increase as high as the market can bear, income driven repayment would require much higher payments and loan forgiveness for making 25 years (10 if working in public service) of payments would cease to exist. Project 2025 also wants to eliminate loan discharges if a school closes. All of these actions would make college, at the very least, a much riskier financial move, or more likely, a financially impossible decision, which may discourage students from attending college altogether. At a time when many universities, including Drexel, already face financial difficulties, such a move may lead to more school closures which reduces access to higher education overall.
Luckily, some of these programs are written in statute which means Congress will have to act to amend the law. Although changes to terms of federal loans can most likely be done through budget reconciliation to avoid a filibuster, Congress will still have to spend valuable time that it will probably not have as it focuses on higher priority issues like renewing Trump’s tax cuts, working on appropriations for this fiscal year and the next and repealing parts of the Inflation Reduction Act. Unluckily, other changes, such as abolishing income driven repayment plans, can be pursued unilaterally by the president. Still, these changes must go through the federal rulemaking process under the Administrative Procedure Act which will most likely take about two to three years to complete.
Project 2025 also wants to severely limit Title VI and Title IX, the two prominent civil rights laws that apply to universities. Under Project 2025, the government would interpret Title VI to allow policies with disparate impact and policies that seem neutral on its face that disproportionately impact certain protected classes without a legitimate reason to continue, which allows universities to try targeting groups where minority students are concentrated. In addition, Project 2025 wants to reverse the Biden Administration’s actions that consider sex as nonbinary by redefining “sex” under Title IX to mean “only biological sex recognized at birth.” These changes severely narrow what constitutes illegal discrimination in the eyes of the federal government, so students would be unable to petition the federal government to enforce their rights. The changes can be made administratively which bypasses Congress. Even if officially changing federal rules takes years, the Department of Education under Trump can effectively change them immediately by refusing to enforce violations that rely on more expansive definitions.
International students have additional difficulties. In his last administration, Trump attempted to rescind the two year extension of Optional Practical Training for STEM students instituted under Obama and make H-1B visas so difficult to obtain by drastically increasing the minimum salary of an H-1B worker–sometimes doubling the minimum in certain fields–and application costs such that it would be impractical for any company to employ H-1B workers. Project 2025 complains that immigrant workers depress American jobs even though companies are required to prove that American jobs are not affected, and the economy benefits from immigrants filling in jobs that Americans do not. Because the H-1B visa is the main temporary visa an international student can use while waiting for a green card, a Trump administration could make it impossible for an international student to continue to stay in the United States.
The incoming Trump presidency is a huge threat to college students and college education as a whole. As stated many times during campaign season, Project 2025 is a radical threat that erodes the bank accounts and rights that Americans have come to rely on. For the sake of higher education and the country, Project 2025 must not come to fruition.