President Donald Trump and Republicans promised to shutter the U.S. Department of Education on the 2024 campaign trail, a goal of many conservatives going back decades.
The department — created by statute in 1979 — legally cannot be eliminated without congressional approval and a president’s signature. Such a move would have to pass the 60-vote threshold for overcoming a filibuster in the Senate, which could partly explain why past efforts to nix the department have not gotten far.
But on Thursday, Trump threw the department’s fate into deep uncertainty after he signed an executive order directing U.S. Secretary of Education Linda McMahon “to the maximum extent appropriate and permitted by law, take all necessary steps to facilitate the closure of the Department of Education" and turn its authority over to states.
The order came just over a week after the department announced massive layoffs that cut its workforce in half.
Thursday’s order provided for the “effective and uninterrupted delivery of [Education Department] services, programs, and benefits on which Americans rely,” but it offered few details on how the Trump administration plans to restructure or distribute the agency’s functions.
Those include managing and distributing billions in Pell Grants and student loans every year, as well as enforcing civil rights laws related to education on college campuses, among other functions.
A statement from McMahon similarly offered scant details on what the shuttering would mean in practical terms.
“We’re going to follow the law and eliminate the bureaucracy responsibly by working through Congress to ensure a lawful and orderly transition,” McMahon said.
On Friday, Trump told media that the Education Department’s management of student loans would be moved to the Small Business Administration. “That’s coming out of the Department of Education immediately,” he said. The announcement came as the SBA said it will cut 43% of its staff.
While much remains uncertain about the ultimate effects of Trump’s order, higher education groups panned the order and raised alarms over what Trump’s unilateral attempt to shutter the agency will mean for students and institutions.
“This is political theater, not serious public policy,” American Council on Education President Ted Mitchell said in a statement Thursday. “To dismantle any cabinet-level federal agency requires congressional approval, and we urge lawmakers to reject misleading rhetoric in favor of what is in the best interests of students and their families.”
Kara Freeman, president and CEO of the National Association of College and University Business Officers, said that Trump’s order “adds to the turbulence colleges and universities are experiencing and the uncertainty students and families are facing at this critical time in the academic year.”
Freeman voiced concerns around key functions of the department, including federal student aid processing, aid to institutions and data tracking “that is so important to institutional decision-making.”
“Most troubling is that these collective actions involving the department could cause enough confusion to discourage students and families from considering a path to college,” Freeman said.
Congressional Democrats were sharper in their criticism. In a letter to McMahon, Rep. Bobby Scott, ranking member of the House Committee on Education and Workforce, and Rep. Gerald Connolly, ranking member of the Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, described both the Thursday order and the Department’s mass layoffs as illegal moves to “usurp Congress’s authority.”
Scott is leading an effort within the House to open an inquiry into the effort to dismantle the department.
He and Connolly also noted in their letter that the Trump administration’s efforts to shutter the agency run “counter to the will of the American people, the majority of whom oppose efforts to close the Department.”
To their point, recent nationally representative surveys have found fairly wide support for the department. A March poll from Quinnipiac University found 60% of those surveyed opposed Trump’s plan to close the Education Department, while only 33% supported it.
A poll from the center-left New America similarly found low levels of support for eliminating the agency. (Kevin Carey, the think tank’s vice president of education, called Trump’s order “short, weak, and substance-free.”)
Morning Consult, meanwhile, recently found a majority of voters favored preserving or expanding funding to the Education Department.
Some conservatives also raised issues with the push to kill the department — at least in the manner Trump has gone about it.
“There are good reasons to streamline operations at the Department and even to shut it down entirely. But efforts to date have been too hasty,” Beth Akers, senior fellow with right-wing American Enterprise Institute, said in a statement. “The cuts we've already seen will likely be disruptive in ways that weren't expected.”
Akers added that department officials should proceed cautiously and ensure “programs mandated by legislation are transferred to other agencies before the staffing reduction makes them impossible to administer effectively.”
