Donald Trump has been elected the next president of the U.S., setting the stage for dramatic changes to the policies and regulations that impact colleges once he returns to the White House in January.
Trump campaigned on several polarizing higher education proposals, including vowing to shut down the U.S. Department of Education and roll back the Biden administration’s contested Title IX regulations, which provide protections for LGBTQI+ students.
Republicans have won control of the Senate, meaning the fate of the House will at least partly determine whether Trump is able to push through more ambitious elements of his agenda. If Republicans secure control of both chambers of Congress, Trump will have wider leeway to pursue his legislative goals. As of Wednesday evening, the votes for House races were still being counted.
Trump has indicated one of his most controversial proposals — eliminating the Education Department — may also be one of his urgent priorities.
“I say it all the time, I’m dying to get back to do this. We will ultimately eliminate the federal Department of Education,” he said during a campaign rally in September.
Congress would need to approve eliminating the agency. But it’s unclear if there is enough political will among lawmakers to do so.
“So far, it hasn’t looked like even a lot of Republicans in Congress want to do that,” said Jonathan Fansmith, senior vice president of government relations and national engagement at the American Council on Education, the higher education sector’s top lobby.
Sweeping regulatory changes, meanwhile, are all but certain.
“There is a lot of area for the administration to exert its authority and its will through administrative action where they need nothing from Congress to do it,” Fansmith said.
How will Trump respond to campus protests?
Trump's second ascension to the presidency comes at a time of tumult for colleges. Campuses nationwide have been grappling with widespread student protests and concerns about free speech since the Israel-Hamas war erupted after Hamas attacked Israel on Oct. 7, 2023.
Many colleges tightened their rules on campus demonstrations over the summer, and they haven’t seen the extensive protest encampments they did during the spring term. However, scrutiny from Republican lawmakers over how colleges have handled these protests has continued to grow, most notably with a recent 325-page report accusing institutions of not doing enough to protect Jewish students from antisemitism and calling for review of their federal funding.
In early October, Rep. Steve Scalise, the House majority leader, warned that Harvard University — one of several high-profile institutions under investigation by lawmakers — could lose its accreditation under a second Trump term, The Harvard Crimson reported. Although the Education Department doesn’t grant accreditation to colleges, it certifies the agencies that do so.
Meanwhile, Trump has said he would use accreditation as a “secret weapon” against colleges and has promised to fire “radical left” accrediting agencies. He has also echoed Republican criticisms against how colleges have handled campus protests.
His campaign platform promises, in all capital letters, to “deport pro-Hamas radicals and make our college campuses safe and patriotic again.” However, campus protest organizers have noted that the majority of demonstrators are U.S. citizens, and Muslim American civil rights activists have said most of these events have not had displays of support for Hamas, NBC News reported.
Trump has also praised the New York police officers who cleared out an encampment at Columbia University, and he urged other college administrators to take a similar approach.
As of June, the Education Department’s Office for Civil Rights had more than 100 pending Title VI investigations that were opened since the latest Israel-Hamas war broke out. Title VI requires federally funded colleges to prevent discrimination based on race, color and national origin.
But those investigations may look different under the Trump administration.
“They are entering the space very critically,” Fansmith said. “They believe there have been problems that need to be addressed, and they are not especially sympathetic to institutions in the struggles institutions have balancing free speech and free expression rights against civil rights protections.”
Jeff Weimer, a partner at law firm Reed Smith who specializes in higher education, said the Trump administration may seek to make an example of certain institutions to send a message to other colleges.
“Is it likely that numerous universities and colleges will face investigations or potential adverse consequences? That I don’t know,” Weimer said, adding he believes the Trump administration is likely to be “more selective and targeted.”
During the next four years, Weimer said, colleges may have to rethink their typical approach of attempting to avoid the political fracas on these issues.
“Schools may be forced to become more aggressive in relying on their state governments, working with their state governments, working through the court system to attempt to protect their students and what they believe to be the fundamental goals and missions and obligations of institutions of higher learning in this country,” Weimer said.
What will happen to higher education regulations?
Trump’s presidency will likely bring about major changes to higher education regulations, including rules that govern the accreditation system and those that threaten to cut off federal student aid access to poor-performing institutions.
Under Biden, the Education Department released a new version of borrower defense to repayment regulations, which provide full debt relief to students who were defrauded by their colleges. However, a federal appeals court temporarily blocked the rules earlier this year, a move that for-profit groups praised.
The Biden administration also debuted new gainful employment regulations, which require career education programs to prove their graduates earn enough to pay off their federal student loans. The for-profit industry has slammed the rules, arguing they unfairly target the sector.
Alongside the gainful employment rule, the Biden administration released a financial value transparency rule that requires colleges to provide the agency with information, such as costs and debt loads, for all programs.
Jason Altmire, president and CEO of Career Education Colleges and Universities, a group that represents for-profit institutions, said in a statement Wednesday that CECU looks forward to working with Trump.
“This Republican landslide is a clear rebuke to the Biden-Harris administration,” Altmire said. “Their partisan and overzealous approach in exceeding their regulatory authority, particularly within the Department of Education, has been rejected in the courts and now decisively by the voters.”
Under Trump, the Education Department rolled back the Obama-era gainful employment rule in 2019, with then-Education Secretary Betsy DeVos saying it unfairly singled out for-profit colleges. The administration also released its own version of borrower defense rules that made it harder for students to prove they had been defrauded and get debt relief.
Those actions offer a roadmap for what his second term could look like.
“There’s no certainty in anything,” Fansmith said. “But it seems almost a guarantee that a lot of these regulations — but especially [gainful employment financial value transparency] — will go away.”
Trump has also vowed to roll back protections for transgender students under the Biden administration’s new Title IX rule on Day 1 of his presidency. If he does, it will mark yet another change to the Title IX rule, which has undergone sweeping rewrites in each administration since former President Barack Obama was in office.
“It's not just, ‘Oh, the regulations have changed,’” Fansmith said. With each rewrite, colleges have to hire different personnel, train their staff and revise their policies and procedures, he noted.
“It is substantive and impactful when these changes happen,” Fansmith said. “You've probably just spent the last couple of years coming into compliance, making all those changes already — you now need to reverse them or alter them. It's time consuming, it's expensive, it's burdensome.”
Changes to regulations governing accreditation could also be coming down the pike. However, the administration will likely need consent from Congress to make radical changes to the accreditation system, Fansmith said.
Republican lawmakers — including Vice President-elect JD Vance — have signaled the issue is important to them, pushing legislation that would force accreditors to drop diversity, equity and inclusion requirements.
Weimer said the Trump administration might set expectations for the types of criteria that approved accreditors could use.
“Those accreditors, if they want to remain in existence, will have to make a decision whether to modify their criteria, or potentially face the possibility of not being approved by the government to serve as an accrediting body,” Weimer said.
