By Hugh T. Ferguson, NASFAA Managing Editor

Now that President-elect Donald Trump is beginning to formulate his cabinet, questions are being raised concerning how his campaign platform will translate to federal policymaking.

For higher education, a common question is whether the administration will fulfill campaign rhetoric related to “abolishing” the Department of Education (ED) and what that could mean for student aid policy.

Trump’s comments and speeches from the campaign trail have explicitly called for “closing up” the department and sending portions of ED’s authority, along with some of its K-12 programs, “back to the states,” implying that this time around, the administration plans to significantly overhaul the federal agency.

Since the department’s 1980 creation under President Jimmy Carter, it has faced continued calls to be abolished, which date back to President Ronald Reagan’s administration. However, neither Congress nor the following presidencies have shuttered the agency.

Last year, the House considered an amendment to a bill that sought to eliminate the department but more than 60 Republican members joined Democrats in rejecting the effort.

Following the 2024 presidential election, shuttering ED was a part of the GOP platform and outlined as part of Project 2025, a conservative policy agenda published by the Heritage Foundation focused on guiding the next Republican president. However, it remains unclear what steps the second Trump administration will take to actually implement these high-level frameworks, which the incoming president had distanced himself from during the campaign.

Policy experts continue to monitor the new administration’s approach to governing, but some believe it would require significant political capital for the Trump administration to dismantle the department.

Abolishing a Department Requires an Act of Congress

The executive branch needs congressional approval to shut down an agency's operations. The current makeup of the House and Senate and congressional rules would seemingly make that process nearly impossible.

In the House, Republicans have eked out a narrow majority with fewer than half a dozen seats to spare. Those numbers could be reduced further as Trump continues to tap certain Republican members to join various positions within the administration.

The Senate meanwhile has a roughly three to four seat majority for Republicans and a vote to abolish the department would need to meet a 60-vote threshold unless the chamber changed its rules to allow for a simple majority (51 or 50-vote threshold with the Vice President breaking the tie) to pass certain bills.

While we have seen an amendment on the House floor and now an introduced Senate bill with aims of “abolishing” ED, neither of those proposals will likely advance on their own with such slim margins. Further, these efforts to “abolish” ED don’t eliminate its function; instead, they reassign the department’s operations to other agencies.

“These proposals are just saying, well, we're just reshuffling the decks so there's no Education Department,” said Jon Fansmith, senior vice president at the American Council on Education (ACE). “But everything the federal government's been doing, they'll still continue to do.”

Absorbing ED’s Operations Would Strain Another Agency

It is also important to note that the department administers a $1.7 trillion student loan portfolio. If ED simply ceased to exist, then all the loans it currently holds would not be able to be collected unless the systems used to process those payments were transferred to another agency.

Other departments such as the Department of Justice (DOJ), Department of Labor (DOL), or Treasury – agencies that have been floated as possible outlets to absorb some of ED’s functions – would need more staffing and new systems in order to carry out ED’s day to day operations.

Additionally, there would be significant hurdles, as new oversight and compliance processes would need to be established to maintain borrower protections, manage repayments, and ensure continuity in customer service. The operational shift would likely demand a long-term, phased approach to avoid disruptions for millions of borrowers.

Aside from these obstacles, the department’s functions still need to be administered, and the administration would need to come up with a way to carryout and oversee federal student aid programs.

“The law requires you to run financial aid programs. The law requires you to collect student loans. The law requires you to enforce civil rights at schools and campuses,” Fansmith said. “Simply getting rid of the organizing entity doesn't actually change the hundreds, possibly thousands of responsibilities the Department of Education has across a myriad number of laws.”

ED Offers Trump Administrative Tools to Carry Out His Education Policies

One reason the Trump administration may reconsider its effort to abolish the department is the fact that ED, as an agency, offers the administration a powerful tool to carry out Trump’s vision for education policy.

While most of Trump’s desired education policy changes have been focused on the K-12 system, the department is the strongest tool for influencing states.

According to Fansmith, eliminating this tool wouldn’t be all that practical.

“It doesn't make a lot of political sense [to eliminate ED] because you're surrendering a tool that helps you elevate policies that you think are popular and resonate with your voters,” Fansmith said. “I don't see that this will really happen.”

According to Fansmith, if the administration was somehow successful in splintering ED’s functions to various other cabinets and agencies, then Trump would limit his ability to directly influence education policy. ED, as its own entity, has a “powerful and direct voice in shaping how educational institutions behave,” Fansmith said.

Could Trump Still Move to ‘Abolish’ ED?

There are still ways Trump could move to constrict or effectively shutter the agency’s operations.

His former education secretary Betsy DeVos said recently that the next secretary could work to “de-power” the department.

When Trump announced that Linda McMahon – a former wrestling executive who also worked for the American First Policy Institute, and led the Small Business Administration (SBA) during Trump’s first term –  would be his nominee to lead ED, he repeated campaign language about states having greater authority. However, Trump did not indicate whether he’d require his nominee to “abolish” the agency, and McMahon has not weighed in on the topic.

McMahon doesn’t have extensive experience in higher education, but she has supported efforts to expand the Pell Grant program through “Short-Term Pell” legislation and has advocated for increasing access to career and technical education programs.

However, the nomination of Russ Vought at the Office of Management and Budget (OMB), who previously served in the role and contributed to Project 2025, might indicate that the administration intends to pursue other means of dialing back the department’s authority. 

One area of concern for Fansmith is the prospect of the administration putting political appointees into the roles of career federal employees who typically continue in their posts from one administration to the next.

Fansmith also expressed concern about efforts to dramatically reduce the federal workforce, as outlined in Project 2025.

“Skilled, experienced, knowledgeable people like career federal employees understand the programs, they understand the statute, and the regulations,” Fansmith said. “It doesn't mean they're infallible, certainly, but they are people who have shown, consistently, their goal is to make the programs work, and to work with stakeholders.”

Fansmith noted that during Trump’s first term, McMahon’s leadership at SBA fostered a positive relationship between the agency, outside stakeholders, and career staff.

“The Department of Education has a lot of staff who are really important in specialized roles,” Fansmith said. “You would like to see some continuity, some stability, in the operations of the department, it seems like she's the kind of person who could come in and provide that.”

Going forward, this will be an important dynamic to monitor.

"As the nomination process unfolds for the next Secretary of Education, as well as other key positions, the higher education community will be watching closely,” said Karen McCarthy, vice president of public policy and federal relations at NASFAA. “The department’s leadership will play a pivotal role in shaping policies that impact everything from student aid to institutional funding, and the nominee’s priorities will likely indicate the administration’s direction for years to come."

What About the Budget and Appropriations Process?

While the Trump administration may face long odds at getting Congress to pass a stand-alone bill that would shut down the department, his administration will have significant influence over the annual budgeting process, which could significantly reduce funding for various programs.

As a reminder, the previous Trump administration repeatedly proposed flat or reduced federal budget funding for higher education programs, including cuts to federal student aid initiatives like the Pell Grant surplus and work-study programs. While many of these proposals were ultimately rejected by Congress, they signaled an intent to limit growth in federal support for college affordability and access."

House Republicans have also put forward proposals that would have dramatically reduced funding for ED and its programs.

“If you have an administration that's now echoing those views, that first-year budget request from the president – which will see probably later than March – that’s where we’re going to see the first indicators of how seriously they are looking at cutting funding,” Fansmith said.

Lessons from FAFSA Simplification

The incoming administration may want to consider looking into the rollout of FAFSA simplification, a multi-year congressionally spearheaded effort to streamline the annual process of applying for federal financial aid, before moving to massively reallocate ED’s operations.

Just by sheer scale, the prospect of overhauling the entire agency would make FAFSA simplification look like a minor project.

Fansmith said that such an undertaking, requiring a complete reworking of the Department’s K-12 and higher education portfolio, would be a massive undertaking that would likely face far more significant problems than FAFSA simplification.

“It is complicated, it's multifaceted, and encompasses hundreds of different programs and other areas for federal intervention,” Fansmith said. “You can't simply just box [ED] up and move it away. It will be a multi-year complicated process and it will likely lead to worse outcomes for all of the involved areas.”

Publication Date: 12/9/2024

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