Under the new Trump presidency, can US student protestors learn from Chinese students?
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Wednesday, November 13, 2024
Friday, November 8, 2024
What a Second Trump Administration May Mean for Higher Education (Robert Kelchen)
For the last two presidential transitions, I have written pieces about what the new president (Trump in 2016 and Biden in 2020) may mean for higher education. My expectations back in 2016 were the following:
- He would not repeal the Department of Education. (He never seriously tried.)
- Tuition-free public college was dead. (True at the federal level, but state-level programs grew following Tennessee’s lead.)
- He talked about income-driven repayment changes and going back to having private banks guarantee loans. (Neither happened, although he did pause payments during the pandemic.)
- There would be fewer regulations and an accountability reprieve for the for-profit college sector. (True.)
After four years of President Trump in power, the higher education community has a better sense of what is coming than we did back in 2016. Here are some of the key things that I am watching over the next several months and years.
(1) The subtitle for my piece on the incoming Biden administration was, “If the Democrat wins, he will have to govern by executive order, much as his predecessor did.” That is not going to be as easy this time around. One of conservatives' biggest Supreme Court wins recently was the overturning of the Chevron precedent that will result in less authority for federal agencies to enact regulations. For at least the next four years, this is going to bite the Trump administration right in the behind. Unless…
(2) Political appointees try acting through issuing directives that are implemented before courts can step in, hoping that they will be unwilling to unwind something that is already being done. It hearkens back to the alleged quote from Andrew Jackson: The Chief Justice “has made his decision; now let him enforce it.” A frequent refrain among progressives over the last few years has been that the Biden administration should immediately cancel student debt, making it difficult for the debt to be reinstated later upon court order. It would not be surprising to see Trump appointees trying to score a policy win (or at least some political points with their base) in that manner. Two likely areas are around federal financial aid to so-called “woke” colleges and international student visas.
(3) While Republicans retook the Senate with at least three votes to spare, House control is still too early to tell as of this writing and is likely to be razor-thin. House Republicans had more than a few challenges in the current Congress with a slim majority, and it is going to be difficult to pass a lot of legislation when hardliners and moderates within the GOP disagree on so many things. Conservatives detest omnibus budget bills and have been pushing for 12 separate budget bills for years. But the result is usually one large bill passed in mid-December, which creates incentives for compromise. Trump has not been particularly concerned about deficits, so conservatives are unlikely to get major budget cuts.
(4) The Higher Education Act was last reauthorized in 2008. I still might retire before it happens again, and I don’t plan on going anywhere for a while. While the Department of Education is not going away anytime soon, there are enough Republicans who would rather throw out the entire department than make substantive reforms. Democrats likely prefer the status quo to any new major legislation, so we can keep waiting on reauthorization for a long time. This does not mean that some policy changes cannot happen; the major changes to the FAFSA last year came through an omnibus budget bill in 2020. But any changes will be piecemeal in the grand scheme of things.
(5) President Trump and Congressional leaders will use the bully pulpit to go after selective colleges and their leaders. Last year's House hearings were very effective for Republicans, as they led to several presidents resigning. If something works in Washington, expect to see it again—especially as both Trump and Vance are products of those institutions. Community colleges and regionally-focused public and private institutions are likely to fly under the radar, as going after them will not generate media attention. But I would not want to be a president of a blue-state flagship university or an elite private college right now, and any leader who is not a white man is likely to face additional scrutiny if last year’s hearings were a guide.
(6) Keep a close eye on who ends up at the Department of Education. Most of the commentary out there about potential Cabinet secretaries barely even mentions ED, but he still needs to identify someone to run the agency on an acting basis. Betsy DeVos is off the table for a second term because she resigned in the aftermath of January 6, and this is a job that many conservatives do not aspire to reach. A name that I am watching is Oklahoma’s state superintendent of education, Ryan Walters, as he tried to get Trump-branded Bibles into public school classrooms and supports the elimination of the Department of Education. Will K-12 or higher education be the focus? I have long contended that higher ed is the area of greatest importance for a Secretary of Education, but a focus on social issues may change that.
Higher education was in for a challenging period regardless of who was elected, thanks to growing skepticism over the value of a college education, increasing political polarization by educational attainment, and the state of federal student loans. This week’s election just magnified all of those concerns. Buckle up, folks…it’s going to be a bumpy ride.
[Editor's note: This article first appeared at the Kelchen on Education blog.]
Thursday, November 7, 2024
Christian University Students Celebrate After Trump Wins Election
Students at two of America's largest Christian universities had boisterous public celebrations as Donald Trump was elected the 47th President of the United States. This first video is from Phoenix, Arizona, home of Grand Canyon University.
A similar celebration occurred at Liberty University in Lynchburg, Virginia.
Grand Canyon University and Liberty University are schools with more than 100,000 students apiece. Both are bolstered by their online robocolleges, which have an enormous national and international presence.
Wednesday, November 6, 2024
Perspective After a Trump Victory
It is clear that when thousands demonstrate over a prolonged period dramatic changes can be made. People have wrought changes in the past, and they will continue to do so. Dr. DuBois, the great Negro historian, wrote in his "Farewell Message": "Always human beings will live and progress to greater, broader and fuller life. The only possible death is to lose belief in this truth because the great end comes slowly; because time is long..." We should proceed calmly and with optimism—our actions tempered always by our perception of reality.
Bettina Apthekar, Big Business and the American University (1966)
Thursday, October 31, 2024
Carl Barney, Ex-Owner of Deceptive For-Profit Colleges, Donates Big to Trump (David Halperin)
Carl Barney, the ultra-wealthy former owner of a chain of collapsed for-profit colleges, is the third biggest California-based donor to efforts to elect Donald Trump in 2024, the Los Angeles Times reports today.
Barney has donated $924,600 to the Trump 47 Committee, according to federal records.
Like Donald Trump, who in 2016 paid $25 million to settle civil charges by New York’s attorney general that his unaccredited real estate school, Trump University, defrauded its students, Barney saw his schools shut down after law enforcement agencies and former students went to court over claims of deceptive practices.
Barney explained his reasons for supporting Trump in a fascinating post last month on his personal website.
According to Barney, Trump “approaches the job of President as a businessman, not a politician,” which Barney sees as “mostly a major strength.”
“I’m aware of President Trump’s shortcomings,” Barney acknowledges, “but I won’t criticize him here. (If you want criticism, you’ll find all you need in the popular ‘news’ media.)”
Barney evaluates Trump’s term in office and concludes that the ex-president “significantly improved the individual freedom of Americans to pursue their goals with less government hindrance.”
While Barney concedes that he does not like Trump’s “proposed tariffs and some of his economics,” he likes that Trump “wants to work with Elon Musk to reduce spending, regulations, waste, and fraud in the federal government.
What doesn’t Barney like about Kamala Harris? A number of things, but he zeroes in on this: “Kamala Harris is an avowed enemy of private career colleges and boasts about closing them. Her boasts reveal her disregard for the schools’ students and teachers, as well as the entrepreneurs and investors who created the schools.” Harris, Barney concludes, “holds the anti-freedom values common to radical leftists.” He warns, “These people hate profit, business, and businessmen.”
Barney prepares his audience for the attacks he will face for his endorsement. “Since my contribution to President Trump will be public,” he writes, “I know that I will become more of a political target than I’ve been over the last 10 years. I’ve been a target of trolls, lawfare, and political operatives who finally destroyed my beautiful colleges. I know they will now target me with renewed force and energy. That’s something I will have to confront.”
Barney concludes his post with this unifying message, “If anyone sees something wrong with Making America Great Again (MAGA), then they’re not friends of mine, nor of yours.”
While Barney’s focus on Harris’s role in taking on abusive for-profit colleges is no surprise, his identification of fighting government waste, fraud, and abuse as a key policy priority for him is particularly rich, given his role in running a college operation, the Center for Excellence in Higher Education (CEHE), that received billions in federal taxpayer dollars and ultimately was found liable for deceiving students — and given his schools’ troubling conversion to tax-free non-profit status in a deal that increased his staggering wealth.
In August 2020, following an extensive trial, a Colorado state court sided with that state’s attorney general and found CEHE, its CollegeAmerica school, Carl Barney, and CEHE CEO Eric Juhlin liable for deceptive practices and awarded a $3 million judgment.
The Colorado court found that Barney’s schools used a detailed playbook to manipulate vulnerable students into enrolling in high-priced, low-quality programs; that the schools directed admissions representatives to “enroll every student,” regardless of whether the student would likely graduate; that the schools’ recruiters and advertisements greatly overstated starting salaries that graduates could earn; and that the schools falsely inflated graduation rates.
In April 2021, Independence’s accreditor, ACCSC, ended its approval of Independence University, which by then was CEHE’s main school, effectively repealing its eligibility for federal student grants and loans. Soon after, the U.S. Department of Education restricted the flow of such aid. In the wake of those developments, CEHE shut down classes and laid off most staff.
CEHE and the Colorado attorney general’s office were back in the state trial court in Denver this week, after high-priced lawyers for Barney pursued an appeal to the Colorado Supreme Court that resulted in an order requiring the trial judge to make some additional findings.
Barney also used clever lawyers and accountants to keep making big money off the CEHE schools even after he converted them to non-profit status. When for-profit operations are converted to non-profit in such a manner, U.S. taxpayers can pay a big price.
Although its schools are shuttered, CEHE still faces additional legal challenges. The U.S. Justice Department is moving ahead with a long-pending lawsuit in which it has joined whistleblowers in pursuing False Claims Act fraud charges against the schools. The federal Consumer Financial Protection Bureau has pursued a separate investigation into CEHE’s private loan practices.
CEHE, despite the probes, bad publicity, and collapse of its schools, has continued trying to collect the high-interest private loan debt it created for its broke former students.
And CEHE has portrayed itself as a victim of a political conspiracy against it, with ongoing vitriol on Twitter from former CEO Eric Juhlin, whom the Department of Education took the rare step of suspending from federal contracting. More attacks on CEHE critics, and the Colorado attorney general office and court, have come from Barney.
Barney has charged on his grievance-heavy blog that the case brought by the Colorado AG against his schools is a “horror story of government corruption,” and “a multi-agency collusion to put schools out of business” — a supposed plot that involved not only a senior assistant Colorado attorney general, but also the executive director of accreditor ACCSC, officials of the U.S. Department of Eduction, and “the cabal of progressive haters of private colleges (David Halperin, Robert Shireman, entities funded by Arnold Ventures, Sen. Elizabeth Warren, and Sen. Richard Durbin).”
In December 2022, CEHE took its grievance campaign to a new low by suing the United States government for $500 million in the U.S. Court of Claims, asserting, as a press release statement by Juhlin contended, that the Department of Education “in coordination with ideological confederates… has been on a campaign to cripple and close as many private career colleges as possible” and that CEHE’s schools were “a victim of this campaign.”
As we reported yesterday, billionaire Betsy DeVos, who helped Barney and other predatory college operators as Donald Trump’s secretary of education but resigned over Trump’s incitement of the deadly January 6 assault on the U.S. Capitol, recently donated $250,000 to America PAC, the pro-Trump super PAC created by Musk.
Like Donald Trump, who in 2016 paid $25 million to settle civil charges by New York’s attorney general that his unaccredited real estate school, Trump University, defrauded its students, Barney saw his schools shut down after law enforcement agencies and former students went to court over claims of deceptive practices.
Barney explained his reasons for supporting Trump in a fascinating post last month on his personal website.
According to Barney, Trump “approaches the job of President as a businessman, not a politician,” which Barney sees as “mostly a major strength.”
“I’m aware of President Trump’s shortcomings,” Barney acknowledges, “but I won’t criticize him here. (If you want criticism, you’ll find all you need in the popular ‘news’ media.)”
Barney evaluates Trump’s term in office and concludes that the ex-president “significantly improved the individual freedom of Americans to pursue their goals with less government hindrance.”
While Barney concedes that he does not like Trump’s “proposed tariffs and some of his economics,” he likes that Trump “wants to work with Elon Musk to reduce spending, regulations, waste, and fraud in the federal government.
What doesn’t Barney like about Kamala Harris? A number of things, but he zeroes in on this: “Kamala Harris is an avowed enemy of private career colleges and boasts about closing them. Her boasts reveal her disregard for the schools’ students and teachers, as well as the entrepreneurs and investors who created the schools.” Harris, Barney concludes, “holds the anti-freedom values common to radical leftists.” He warns, “These people hate profit, business, and businessmen.”
Barney prepares his audience for the attacks he will face for his endorsement. “Since my contribution to President Trump will be public,” he writes, “I know that I will become more of a political target than I’ve been over the last 10 years. I’ve been a target of trolls, lawfare, and political operatives who finally destroyed my beautiful colleges. I know they will now target me with renewed force and energy. That’s something I will have to confront.”
Barney concludes his post with this unifying message, “If anyone sees something wrong with Making America Great Again (MAGA), then they’re not friends of mine, nor of yours.”
While Barney’s focus on Harris’s role in taking on abusive for-profit colleges is no surprise, his identification of fighting government waste, fraud, and abuse as a key policy priority for him is particularly rich, given his role in running a college operation, the Center for Excellence in Higher Education (CEHE), that received billions in federal taxpayer dollars and ultimately was found liable for deceiving students — and given his schools’ troubling conversion to tax-free non-profit status in a deal that increased his staggering wealth.
In August 2020, following an extensive trial, a Colorado state court sided with that state’s attorney general and found CEHE, its CollegeAmerica school, Carl Barney, and CEHE CEO Eric Juhlin liable for deceptive practices and awarded a $3 million judgment.
The Colorado court found that Barney’s schools used a detailed playbook to manipulate vulnerable students into enrolling in high-priced, low-quality programs; that the schools directed admissions representatives to “enroll every student,” regardless of whether the student would likely graduate; that the schools’ recruiters and advertisements greatly overstated starting salaries that graduates could earn; and that the schools falsely inflated graduation rates.
In April 2021, Independence’s accreditor, ACCSC, ended its approval of Independence University, which by then was CEHE’s main school, effectively repealing its eligibility for federal student grants and loans. Soon after, the U.S. Department of Education restricted the flow of such aid. In the wake of those developments, CEHE shut down classes and laid off most staff.
CEHE and the Colorado attorney general’s office were back in the state trial court in Denver this week, after high-priced lawyers for Barney pursued an appeal to the Colorado Supreme Court that resulted in an order requiring the trial judge to make some additional findings.
Barney also used clever lawyers and accountants to keep making big money off the CEHE schools even after he converted them to non-profit status. When for-profit operations are converted to non-profit in such a manner, U.S. taxpayers can pay a big price.
Although its schools are shuttered, CEHE still faces additional legal challenges. The U.S. Justice Department is moving ahead with a long-pending lawsuit in which it has joined whistleblowers in pursuing False Claims Act fraud charges against the schools. The federal Consumer Financial Protection Bureau has pursued a separate investigation into CEHE’s private loan practices.
CEHE, despite the probes, bad publicity, and collapse of its schools, has continued trying to collect the high-interest private loan debt it created for its broke former students.
And CEHE has portrayed itself as a victim of a political conspiracy against it, with ongoing vitriol on Twitter from former CEO Eric Juhlin, whom the Department of Education took the rare step of suspending from federal contracting. More attacks on CEHE critics, and the Colorado attorney general office and court, have come from Barney.
Barney has charged on his grievance-heavy blog that the case brought by the Colorado AG against his schools is a “horror story of government corruption,” and “a multi-agency collusion to put schools out of business” — a supposed plot that involved not only a senior assistant Colorado attorney general, but also the executive director of accreditor ACCSC, officials of the U.S. Department of Eduction, and “the cabal of progressive haters of private colleges (David Halperin, Robert Shireman, entities funded by Arnold Ventures, Sen. Elizabeth Warren, and Sen. Richard Durbin).”
In December 2022, CEHE took its grievance campaign to a new low by suing the United States government for $500 million in the U.S. Court of Claims, asserting, as a press release statement by Juhlin contended, that the Department of Education “in coordination with ideological confederates… has been on a campaign to cripple and close as many private career colleges as possible” and that CEHE’s schools were “a victim of this campaign.”
As we reported yesterday, billionaire Betsy DeVos, who helped Barney and other predatory college operators as Donald Trump’s secretary of education but resigned over Trump’s incitement of the deadly January 6 assault on the U.S. Capitol, recently donated $250,000 to America PAC, the pro-Trump super PAC created by Musk.
[Editor's note: This article originally appeared on Republic Report.]
DeVos Funnels $250k to Musk’s Pro-Trump Super PAC (David Halperin)
Billionaire Betsy DeVos, who resigned from her job as Donald Trump’s secretary of education over Trump’s incitement of the deadly January 6 assault on the U.S. Capitol, has donated $250,000 to America PAC, the pro-Trump super PAC created by the world’s richest man, industrialist Elon Musk.
The Independent first reported the contribution, disclosed in a Federal Election Commission filing that covers the period October 1 to 16.
DeVos sent Trump a letter of resignation dated January 7, 2021, telling the then-president, “There is no mistaking the impact your rhetoric had on the situation, and it is the inflection point for me. Impressionable children are watching all of this, and they are learning from us.”
DeVos told Trump her decision to resign was “in support of the oath I took to our Constitution, our people, and our freedoms.”
On January 6, after Trump encouraged his supporters to march to the Capitol to fight the counting of electoral votes that would declare Joe Biden the winner of the 2020 presidential election, he sat and watched television as an armed mob violently attacked police officers and threatened the lives of Members of Congress and Trump’s own vice president, Mike Pence — who, like DeVos, has grounded his conservatism in a deep Christian faith. For hours, Trump repeatedly ignored the pleas of his staff to call off the rioters.
Now, while Pence has refused to support Trump’s 2024 election bid, DeVos has sent cash to help Trump become president again.
And it’s not as if Trump subsequently was revealed to be a Sunday school teacher.
Since leaving office, Trump has been impeached and indicted for encouraging the January 6 attack on our democracy and Constitution, for other efforts to cheat in the 2020 election, and for stealing classified documents from the White House. He was convicted in New York over the summer of 34 felonies for falsifying business records to hide his misconduct from voters in the 2016 election.
Trump’s central business enterprise, the Trump Organization, was in January 2023 fined $1.6 million by a New York state court after the company was convicted by a jury of 17 criminal felonies, including tax fraud and falsifying business records. Trump himself was found liable in February 2024 by a New York state judge for civil fraud and was ordered to pay a $355 million penalty.
And in May 2023, a New York federal jury in a civil case ordered Trump to pay E. Jean Carroll $5 million for battery and defamation after it found that Trump sexually abused Carroll in a department store dressing room in 1996.
But DeVos’s own version of morality makes her conversion back to Trumpism less than surprising.
As Trump’s Secretary of Education, DeVos hired as her top higher education advisors former executives of predatory for-profit colleges, and she trashed almost all the work done by the Obama administration to protect students against deceptive, over-priced schools. Instead of holding predatory colleges accountable, DeVos mocked broke students ripped off by these schools as people demanding “free money.”
DeVos as secretary also repeatedly attacked and demeaned public schools and criticized her own cabinet Department.
In August, DeVos appeared to revisit her view of Donald Trump, telling The Detroit News she was willing to join a new Trump administration “if it was with the goal of phasing out the Department of Education….”
DeVos and her husband’s wealthy family, which made its fortune through the troubling multi-level marketing company Amway, have been major donors to Republican candidates and right wing causes for decades. Two of DeVos’s brothers-in-law, and their two wives, gave $250,000 each to the Musk PAC.
[Editor's note: This article originally appeared on Republic Report.]
Wednesday, October 30, 2024
A Trump v Harris Decision
The US has never been a true democracy. Since its inception, it has systematically disenfranchised entire groups of people because of their race, class, gender, and national origin. Some of those undemocratic levers have been reduced over time as more folks have become enfranchised through waves of legislation, at the state and federal level. By the mid-1960s, with the Voting Rights Act, progressives believed that a more perfect union was possible. But those times seem so long ago.
In 2000, the Supreme Court, in Bush v Gore, decided for George Bush despite irregularities in Florida. And the rest is recent history. 9-11 and the Great Recession followed. Mass surveillance is now taken for granted. And bank bailouts are considered the antidote to economic crises.
In 2016, Donald Trump was elected with millions fewer votes than Hillary Clinton, because Trump received more Electoral College votes. During Trump's term, hundreds of thousands of people died from the poorly managed Covid pandemic. And unemployment reached Depression level numbers before massive bailouts were enacted. Bailouts that put a huge hole in the federal government debt.
Democracy in America has not been a straightforward path. Dred Scott (1857) and Plessy v Ferguson (1896) were Supreme Court decisions that took America backward. The Hayes/Tilden compromise (1877) brought the end to the Reconstruction Era, and the US took several steps back in racial equality.
In the weeks ahead, the US Supreme Court may be tasked with deciding the election in what cannot be called democratic. A body of twelve men and women, all with elite degrees, interpreting the Constitution and the law as they see it. And their decision could affect not just the 330 million folks living in the US, but the entire human world. Will this august body make the decision in good faith and with due respect to the People? Let us pray, and organize peacefully, so that if the case comes to the Supreme Court, the justices make the right decision.
Friday, October 25, 2024
Fascism Ahead: The "Education Not Agitation" Act
Republican Greg Murphy (MD) has introduced legislation in Congress to crack down on American college campuses, and to support the restriction of freedom of assembly and other Constitutional rights. The legislation is titled the Education Not Agitation Act.
This legislation disqualifies individuals who are convicted of certain criminal offenses from receiving education related tax benefits including the American Opportunity Tax Credit, the Lifetime Learning Tax Credit, and the deduction on student loan interest.
Specifically, if an individual is convicted of unlawful assembly, rioting, trespassing, vandalism, battery, or battery on a law enforcement officer while conducting a protest at an institute of higher education, they will be disqualified from receiving these tax benefits.
Unlawful assembly is the legal term to describe a group of people with the mutual intent of deliberate disturbance of the peace. Trespassing is knowingly entering another owners' property or land without permission. Vandalism is the intentional destruction or defacement of another person's property. These acts, however, are subject to the varying opinions of law enforcement, prosecutors, judges, and juries.
The threat of arrest and use of force, detention, school suspensions, deportations, and other police and administrative powers may be enough to prevent peaceful protests or reduce the power of the protestors. Some universities and state governments have already acted to reduce and restrict freedom of speech and assembly on campus.
Legislation like the Education Not Agitation Act further sanctions those who may have valid reasons for resistance on existential matters like war and peace, genocide, and catastrophic climate change. History (hopefully) will record that.
Related links:
Democratic Protests on Campus: Modeling the Better World We Seek (Annelise Orleck)
Methods of Student Nonviolent Resistance
Wikipedia Community Documents Pro-Palestinian Protests on University and College Campuses
One Fascism or Two?: The Reemergence of "Fascism(s)" in US Higher Education
A People's History of Higher Education in the US
How Would Trump's Plans for Mass Deportations Affect US Higher Education?Tuesday, October 8, 2024
GOP Attorneys General Shop for Judges in Effort to Crush Student Loan Debtors (David Halperin, Republic Report)
[Editor's note: This article originally appeared on Republic Report.]
Let’s break all that down.
On October 3, U.S. District Judge Matthew T. Schelp of the Eastern District of Missouri issued a preliminary injunction barring the Department of Education from implementing proposed regulations to provide student debt relief to several major categories of borrowers, including those who owe more than they first borrowed because of mounting interest, those who have made payments for more than 20 years, and those whose schools failed to offer them “sufficient financial value.” The Biden administration estimated the new rules would completely cancel student debt for 4 million people and erase accrued interest for 23 million.
Judge Schelp held that the GOP AGs were likely to succeed on their claim that the Department of Education lacked the legal authority to cancel all this debt without authorization from Congress.
The ruling was another notable case of extreme judicial activism by supposedly “conservative” judges; Schelp, unusually, struck down the proposed rule before the Department of Education had even finalized it.
Persis Yu, Deputy Executive Director and Managing Counsel at the non-profit Student Borrower Protection Center, said in a statement that Judge Schelp’s ruling was marked by “a dearth of legal reasoning.”
But Judge Schelp, a Donald Trump appointee, is not the first federal judge to handle the latest case in the month since it was filed. He is, remarkably, the fifth.
Led by Missouri attorney general Andrew Bailey, and that state’s solicitor general, Josh Divine, the states of Missouri, Georgia, Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, North Dakota, and Ohio filed the lawsuit, against the education department, on September 3 in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Georgia, and specifically in that court’s division based in Brunswick, Georgia, on the state’s east coast, close to the Florida state line.
The Brunswick Division has exactly one U.S. District Judge: Lisa Godbey Wood, appointed by George W. Bush.
The Georgia attorney general’s office tends to file its significant federal lawsuits in the U.S. District Court in Atlanta. So why was this action to nullify major student debt relief filed in Brunswick, when the Georgia AG doesn’t even have staff there and had to rely on a private local lawyer to assist? There was always the risk that a case filed in Atlanta would be assigned to a judge skeptical of the Republican AGs’ effort to void debt relief, including whether the AGs would have legal standing to contest the action. Perhaps the GOP AGs thought Judge Wood was a better bet to do what they wanted.
But the same day that the case was filed, Judge Wood issued a two-sentence order recusing herself and transferring the case to R. Stan Baker, Chief Judge of the Southern District of Georgia. Wood did not state the reason she was recusing.
The next day, Chief Judge Baker issued an order reassigning the case to another judge on the court, J. Randall Hall, also a George W. Bush appointee.
One observer posited to me that the GOP AGs might have already known that Judge Wood had a reason for recusal when they filed the case in front of her; under this theory, the AGs bet that, after Judge Wood recused, Chief Judge Baker would hand-assign the case to another “conservative” judge who would be a good bet to strike down the new Biden student debt rules.
That theory might sound far-fetched. But the day after receiving the case, Judge Hall granted the GOP AGs’ motion for a temporary restraining order, thus blocking the regulations. On September 19, after yet another member of the court, Magistrate Judge Christopher L. Ray, had handled several preliminary motions in the case, Hall extended the restraining order an additional two weeks while he considered the AGs’ motion for a longer preliminary injunction.
But on October 2, Judge Hall threw a curveball: He granted the Department of Education’s motion to dismiss the state of Georgia from the case, holding, appropriately, that Georgia had not demonstrated an interest sufficiently concrete to provide standing to contest the debt regulations. In short, Georgia did not have a significant interest in ensuring that its own citizens, and those of other states, would remain mired in student loan debt.
With Georgia out of the litigation, Judge Hall further ruled that a federal court in Georgia was not the proper venue for the case. He transferred the lawsuit to Missouri, holding that that state had “clear standing” based on the potential harm the rule posed to MOHELA, Missouri’s student loan agency.
The transfer set the stage for the Missouri judge’s decision, the very next day after the case was sent over from Georgia, that blocked the Biden rule pending final resolution of the lawsuit.
So the GOP AGs got the outcome they wanted, at least for now. But why didn’t they go to Missouri, where the argument for standing to bring the case was much stronger, in the first place?
“It appears that the Missouri AG has achieved through dumb luck what they were hoping to get through strategic maneuvering,” Persis Yu told me. “Getting transferred to the Eastern District of Missouri was not necessarily going to be in their favor, which is why I assume they avoided it in the first place. While no liberal oasis, there are a number of Democratic-appointed judges, and so the outcome they got was far from guaranteed.”
But, Yu says, through apparently random assignment the GOP AGs ended up with Schelp, “one of the most ideologically driven judges, who is seemingly happy to eviscerate precedent and the [federal Administrative Procedure Act] to give the Missouri AG what he is looking for.”
Spokespersons for the AGs wouldn’t tell me why they didn’t file in Missouri in the first place, and declined to opine on the reason for Judge Wood’s recusal.
Kara Murray, communications director for Georgia attorney general Chris Carr, said their office was “unable to speak” to my questions, and simply noted that the Missouri District Court “immediately granted a preliminary injunction.”
Madeline Sieren, communications director for Missouri Attorney General Bailey, told me her office “cannot answer these questions at this time, as litigation is ongoing.” She added, “Happy to answer questions that don’t reveal litigation strategy or speculate on judges’ recusal decisions.”
Sieren referred me to Attorney General Bailey’s X (formerly Twitter) feed, where he crowed about the court victory. “A huge -and quick – win for every American who won’t have to pay for someone else’s Ivy League debt,” Bailey tweeted, ignoring that many of those who would benefit from the Biden debt relief plan are struggling middle- and low-income Americans who were scammed by high-priced for-profit colleges. And also ignoring that getting all these people out of heavy debt would help them to have families, buy homes, go back to school, and engage in other activity that would boost the U.S. economy.
Attorney General Bailey struck out with the U.S. Supreme Court in August when, facing a primary election challenge from a lawyer who has represented Donald Trump, he made an absurd effort to press the high court to halt Trump’s criminal sentencing in New York until after the November election. (Bailey won his primary, and the New York judge, Juan Merchan, eventually postponed the sentence on his own.)
The case in which Judge Schelp issued his injunction is the third lawsuit led by Attorney General Bailey to halt the Biden administration’s efforts to grant debt relied to student loan borrowers. Over the summer, the St. Louis-based 8th Circuit Court of Appeals temporarily blocked an earlier Biden debt relief plan called SAVE, as well as blocking parts of other federal Income-Driven Repayment plans on which millions of borrowers have long relied to reduce their debt burden.
Bailey originated that case, Missouri v. Biden, by suing in the St. Louis federal court, but this time he decided to try Brunswick, Georgia, and its only judge.
Shopping for judges is not a new tactic for Republican attorneys general in their quest to nullify Biden administration regulations (or for the for-profit college industry in its efforts to do the same). But proposed federal legislation to curb judge-shopping has gone nowhere in the bitterly divided U.S. Congress.
(Democratic attorneys general and progressive groups often appeared to try judge shopping during the Trump administration, especially by filing in California, headquarters of the relatively liberal 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, but California federal district court rules assign cases at random within a district, preventing the automatic assignment to a local federal judge by filing in a specific courthouse.)
Missouri’s solicitor general, Josh Divine, who has been litigating the case for Bailey’s office, is a former aide to U.S. senator Josh Hawley (R-MO). He also was once a law clerk for Judge William Pryor of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit, the appellate region that includes Georgia, and perhaps gained some familiarity with Judge Wood and Judge Baker in that capacity. After clerking for Pryor, Divine clerked for U.S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, and Divine trumpets his fandom of Thomas aggressively, calling Thomas “the GOAT Supreme Court Justice.”
Meanwhile, Justice Thomas appears to be a fan of Brunswick’s Judge Wood. When Wood was sworn in for her own term as Chief Judge of the Southern District of Georgia in 2010, Justice Thomas, a south Georgia native, showed up to effusively praise her.
When you have MAGA-inspired attorneys general and MAGA-connected judges and justices endless gaming the system and ignoring long-standing legal precedents, fairness and justice are crushed, as are, in this instance, the hopes and dreams of generations of hard-working Americans who are buried under insurmountable student loan debt.
Monday, October 7, 2024
Trump's DOD Failed to Protect Servicemembers from Bad Actor Colleges, But We Demand More Evidence
The Higher Education Inquirer has been waiting since December 2017 for information from the US Department of Defense (DOD) about decades of predatory behavior by subprime colleges against military servicemembers, a disturbing pattern reduced by the Obama Administration and made worse again by the Trump Administration. We are still waiting for information, nearly seven years later and through multiple efforts, as Donald Trump runs again for President and Commander in Chief of the Armed Forces. And today, with yet another delay, DOD says they won't have the response until after the election.
In 2012, the Obama Administration, through Executive Order 13607, established policies for increased oversight of schools that received DOD Tuition Assistance (TA) funds. DOD TA is a program that pays schools for servicemembers going through college. For several decades before Obama was the President, subprime schools systematically exploited servicemembers, veterans, and their families, collaborating formally and informally with military officials and educators. They even held conferences at the national and state level through the Council of College and Military Educators (CCME).
As part of Obama era reform, DOD Voluntary Education and their contractor (PwC and later Gatehouse) were to select for review 200 schools at random and 50 schools that were the worst performing. The worst actors could be sanctioned. But it never happened.
In 2017, the Trump Administration began rolling back these protective measures and decided not to provide information to the media to avoid "a witch hunt." This action shielded bad actor schools from public scrutiny and sanctions that the schools could receive for abusing servicemembers.
In December 2017, we contacted a DOD VOL ED official who refused to answer us. But based on other bits of information, including data from the Department of Veterans Affairs, we believe we know many of these bad actor schools. Some of those schools, like the politically connected University of Phoenix, would be obvious to those who follow bad actors in higher education. But we wanted the DOD to publicly name them. That DOD official is now working as a special advisor to the Department of Education Federal Student Aid. Our intent was not to target that official, but to get to the bottom of the problem, which we believe to be at a higher level of management, and possibly to then-President Trump.
In May 2019, we filed a Freedom of Information request (DOD OIG-2019-000702) asking for a list of the 50 worst actor schools for 2017 and 2018. DOD denied that such a list existed despite evidence to the contrary. We filed another FOIA request in 2021, 21-F-0411 and even with more information that we provided, they denied that such a list existed.
Our last attempt for information, DOD FOIA 22-1203-F, was filed in July 2022 to obtain communications between the high-level DOD Voluntary Education official and others. DOD has given us a number of excuses for the delays, and we have modified the request to limit the search. In the meantime, we have contacted politicians and national media to help us with what's been going on. So far, nearly seven years later, no one has acted, as servicemembers continue to be ripped off by predatory subprime colleges.
Related links:
DoD review: 0% of schools following TA rules (Military Times, 2018)Wednesday, October 2, 2024
What would a second Trump administration mean for higher education? Summing up Project 2025 (Bryan Alexander)
[Editor's Note: This article first appeared at BryanAlexander.org.]
We’ve been exploring this question over the past year, including months of reading, analysis, reflection, and conversation about Project 2025 might mean for higher education. Today I’d like to sum up what we found.
The book, Mandate for Leadership, addresses academia directly on multiple levels. I’ll break them down here. The implications for the broader society within which colleges and universities exist – that’s a subject for another post.
I’ve organized the various ideas and threads into several headers: the Department of Education, higher education economics, international education and research, research supported and opposed, military connections, sex education, and anti-intellectualism.
Higher education and the Department of Education Many accounts of Project 2025’s educational impact draw attention to its attack on the Department of Education, which makes sense, since this is where the document focuses its academic attention. to begin with, Mandate for Leadership wants to break up the DoE and distribute its functions to other federal units. For example, the work the Office for Postsecondary Education (OPE) does would move to the Department of Labor, while “programs deemed important to our national security interests [shift] to the Department of State.” (327).
It would revise the student loan system to a degree. “Federal loans would be assigned directly to the Treasury Department, which would manage collections and defaults.” (327-330) Income-based repayment schemes would continue, but with restrictions. (337-8) Project 2025 would end the Biden team’s Public Service Loan Forgiveness program, along with “time-based and occupation-based student loan forgiveness” plans. (361) More ambitiously, the new government could just privatize loans. (353)
The chapter’s author also calls for “rejecting gender ideology and critical race theory” in the department or through its successor units. (322) This might also proceed via changes to one law, as a new secretary would “[w]ork with Congress to amend Title IX to include due process requirements; define “sex” under Title IX to mean only biological sex recognized at birth; and strengthen protections for faith-based educational institutions, programs, and activities.” (333) This culture war move could have another legal feature, given the call to amend FERPA in order to make it easier for college students to sue the government for privacy violations, in response to school support of transgender and nonbinary students. (344-346)
The obverse of these moves is having the new DoE or its replacements “promulgat[ing] a new regulation to require the Secretary of Education to allocate at least 40 percent of funding to international business programs that teach about free markets and economics.” Additionally, the government would “require institutions, faculty, and fellowship recipients to certify that they intend to further the stated statutory goals of serving American interests,” although it’s unclear what that would mean in practice. (356)
This section’s author, Lindsay Burke, also wants the next administration to change its relationship with post-secondary accreditors. She supports Florida’s new policy of requiring public universities to cycle through accrediting agencies. (332) Burke also wants to encourage new accreditors to start up. (355) Her chapter further calls for a new administration to prevent accreditation agencies from advocating for diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) work on campuses. (352)
The economics of higher education The Department of Education chapter would see a revamped Department of Education or its successors “[r]equir[ing]… ‘skin in the game’ from colleges to help hold them accountable for loan repayment.” (341) I can’t see how this would work in detail. Her new federal administration would also reduce funding to academic research by cutting reimbursement for indirect costs. (355)
That section also wants to reduce the labor market’s demand for post-secondary degrees. Under the header “Minimize bachelor’s degree requirements” we find: “The President should issue an executive order stating that a college degree shall not be required for any federal job unless the requirements of the job specifically demand it.” (357). Later on in the book, the Department of Labor section section also calls on Congress to end college degree requirements for federal positions. (597) That chapter wants to boost apprenticeships, mostly likely in competition with college and university study. (594-5)
International research and education. Cutting down immigration is a major Project 2025 theme, and the book does connect this to academia. It calls out international students like so:
ICE should end its current cozy deference to educational institutions and remove security risks from the program. This requires working with the Department of State to eliminate or significantly reduce the number of visas issued to foreign students from enemy nations. (141)
First, this would impact many would-be students’ careers. Second, implementing such a policy would likely depress international student interest.
Project 2025 consistently focuses on China as America’s enemy, and this means it wants United States higher education to decouple from that adversary or else face consequences. For example, the introduction warns that “[u]niversities taking money from the CCP should lose their accreditation, charters, and eligibility for federal funds.” Later in the text is some language about the government and universities supporting American but not Chinese research and development. (100) Another section sees “research institutions and academia” playing a role in Cold War 2.0:
Corporate America, technology companies, research institutions, and academia must be willing, educated partners in this generational fight to protect our national security interests, economic interests, national sovereignty, and intellectual property as well as the broader rules-based order—all while avoiding the tendency to cave to the left-wing activists and investors who ignore the China threat and increasingly dominate the corporate world. (emphases added; 218)
Later on, the Department of Justice discussion offers this recommendation:
key goals for the China Initiative that included development of an enforcement strategy concerning researchers in labs and universities who were being coopted into stealing critical U.S. technologies, identification of opportunities to address supply-chain threats more effectively, and education of colleges and universities about potential threats from Chinese influence efforts on campus. (556)
This seems to describe increased DoJ scrutiny over colleges and universities. I’m not sure what “education… about potential threats” means, although I suspect it might include pressure on academics.
The Department of Commerce section wants to “[t]ighten… the definition of ‘fundamental research’ to address exploitation of the open U.S. university system by authoritarian governments through funding, students and researchers, and recruitment” (673) More succinctly, that chapter calls for strategic decoupling from China (670, 674). We can imagine a new federal administration – along with, perhaps, state governments, businesses, nonprofits, and foundations – asking academia to play its role in that great separation. One of the trade policy chapters broods about how “more than 300,000 Communist Chinese nationals attend U.S. universities” and it’s hard not to see this as a call for reducing that number. (785)
That chapter’s author, Peter Navarro, condemns one leading American university for allegedly enabling Chinese power:
Huawei, well-known within the American intelligence community as an instrument of Chinese military espionage, has partnered with the University of California–Berkeley on research that focuses on artificial intelligence and related areas such as deep learning, reinforcement learning, machine learning, natural language processing, and computer vision, all of which have important future military applications.28 In this way, UC–Berkeley, whether unwittingly or wittingly, helps to boost Communist China’s capabilities and quest for military dominance. (785-6)
I can’t help but read this as a call for federal scrutiny of academic international partnerships, with sanctions in the wings.
Project 2025 looks at other regions of the globe and wants higher education to help. For example, the State Department chapter calls on American campuses to assist its African policy: “The U.S. should support capable African military and security operations through the State Department and other federal agencies responsible for granting foreign military education, training, and security assistance.” (187)
Other federal units come in for transformation which impacts colleges and universities. One chapter calls for “reinstituti[ng] the National Security Higher Education Advisory Board.” (Wikipedia; 218) The USAID chapter would cut some post-secondary support, based on the argument that “[w]e must admit that USAID’s investments in the education sector, for example, serve no other purpose than to subsidize corrupt, incompetent, and hostile regimes.” (275)
Support for and opposition to research Project 2025 consistently calls for research and development, at least in certain fields. The Department of Energy chapter enthusiastically promotes science. That chapter also tends to pair research with security, so we might infer increased security requirements for academic energy work. Alternative energy and decarbonization research would likely not receive federal support from McNamee’s departments, as he might see them as a “threat to the grid.” (373)
The document also calls for transparency many times, which might benefit academics as it could (should it occur) give greater access to more documentation. One passage actually uses the language of open source code: “True transparency will be a defining characteristic of a conservative EPA. This will be reflected in all agency work, including the establishment of opensource [sic] science, to build not only transparency and awareness among the public, but also trust.” (417)
On the flip side, Project 2025 opposes climate research throughout. For a sample of the intensity of this belief,
Mischaracterizing the state of our environment generally and the actual harms reasonably attributable to climate change specifically is a favored tool that the Left uses to scare the American public into accepting their ineffective, liberty-crushing regulations, diminished private property rights, and exorbitant costs. (419)
That passage exists in the Environmental Protection Agency chapter, and fits into its author’s desire to cut back the EPA in general, but particularly to end its support for academic research. There are specific examples, such as “[r]epeal[ing] Inflation Reduction Act programs providing grants for environmental science activities” (440). This is also where we see a sign of Project 2025’s desire to get more political appointees into federal positions. There would be “a Science Adviser reporting directly to the Administrator in addition to a substantial investment (no fewer than six senior political appointees) charged with overseeing and reforming EPA research and science activities.” (436) That would have further negative effects on academic work.
Later on, the Department of Transportation chapter calls for shutting down the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). Why? NOAA is “one of the main drivers of the climate change alarm industry and, as such, is harmful to future U.S. prosperity.” (675) Faculty, staff, and students who rely on NOAA would lose out.
Military and civilian higher education There are many connections here, reflecting a view that all of academia can contribute in an instrumental way to American military and foreign policy goals, while also being reformed by a new administration. For example, the text calls for reforming post-secondary military education, asking a new government to “[a]udit the course offerings at military academies to remove Marxist indoctrination, eliminate tenure for academic professionals, and apply the same rules to instructors that are applied to other DOD contracting personnel.” (104)
There’s also an idea for creating a new military academy, a Space Force Academy:
to attract top aero–astro students, engineers, and scientists and develop astronauts. The academy could be attached initially to a large existing research university like the California Institute of Technology or MIT, share faculty and funding, and eventually be built separately to be on par with the other service academies. (119)
Related to this, a later discussion calls for the creation of a new academic institution dedicated to financial warfare:
Treasury should examine creating a school of financial warfare jointly with DOD. If the U.S. is to rely on financial weapons, tools, and strategies to prosecute international defensive and offensive objectives, it must create a specially trained group of experts dedicated to the study, training, testing, and preparedness of these deterrents. (704)
Earlier in the book there’s some discussion of reforming the Pentagon’s purchasing systems calls for spreading some Defense Acquisition University (DAU) functions to “include accreditation of non-DOD institutions” – i.e., potentially some civilian institutions. (98)
Project 2025 would reverse certain Biden- and Obama-era human rights provisions for military academies’ faculty, staff, and students. It calls for “individuals… with gender dysphoria [to] be expelled from military service…” (103)
Sex education, research, support for student life All of this appears under threat. Here’s the relevant passage from the introduction, a shocking response to pornography: “Educators and public librarians who purvey [pornography] should be classed as registered sex offenders. And telecommunications and technology firms that facilitate its spread should be shuttered.” (5) This seems aimed at K-12 schools, where so much culture war battling has occurred, but we shouldn’t assume higher education would escape. Remember that it’s a common strategy for critics to label sex education and research materials as porn.
Anti-intellectualism Project 2025 respects knowledge and skills insofar as they assist with making a new administration succeed, but is at the same time very skeptical of their role in broader society, when formally recognized. It wants universities to develop new technologies, but not to advance DEI. For a clear sense of what I’m talking about, here’s the introduction’s take on credentials:
Intellectual sophistication, advanced degrees, financial success, and all other markers of elite status have no bearing on a person’s knowledge of the one thing most necessary for governance: what it means to live well. That knowledge is available to each of us, no matter how humble our backgrounds or how unpretentious our attainments. It is open to us to read in the book of human nature, to which we are all offered the key just by merit of our shared humanity. (10)
One could respond that most of the book’s authors possess intellectual sophistication and/or advanced degrees and/or financial success, but that’s part of the conservative populist paradigm.
Summing up, Project 2025 presents multiple challenges, threats, and dangers to American higher education. Proposed policies strike at academic teaching, research, finances, autonomy, and some of the most vulnerable in our community. It outlines routes for expanded governmental surveillance of and action upon colleges and universities, not to mention other parts of the academic ecosystem, such as accreditors and public research entities.
Keep in mind that Project 2025 isn’t necessarily a total guide to a potential Trump administration. The candidate has denounced it and led the publication of another platform. I’d like to explore that document next. We should also track Trump’s various pronouncements, such as his consistent desire to deport millions of people. For that alone we should expect a major impact on higher education.
Yet Project 2025 draws deeply on Republican politicians and office holders, not to mention conservative thinking. It seems fair to expect a new administration to try realizing at least a chunk of it, if not more.
What do you think of this sketch of a potential Trump administration?
Wednesday, July 31, 2024
The American K-12 Pipeline: Inequality and Injustice Start Here
The American education system promises equal opportunity for all. However, that promise is far from reality. The K-12 system, the foundation of this educational pyramid, is riddled with inequalities that create a segregated pipeline towards higher education and future careers. This report delves into the systemic issues within K-12 education and their far-reaching consequences.
Under a Trump-Vance Administration,
we should expect these inequalities to widen, with more resources going
to those who need it least--and fewer resources going to families and
communities that need it most. Furthermore, we should expect even less
oversight of federal dollars for programs meant for working class communities that may or may not work,
including charter schools, online education for kids, and exclusively online teacher education. This could further harden the US class system, making social mobility even more caste-like. 
Inequality in the K-12 System
Funding disparities plague the K-12 system. Wealthy school districts often boast smaller class sizes, newer facilities, and access to advanced coursework, while schools in low-income areas struggle with overcrowding, outdated resources, and a lack of qualified teachers. This uneven distribution of resources creates a significant achievement gap, leaving students from disadvantaged backgrounds unprepared for higher education.
Impact on Higher Education
The consequences of K-12 inequality ripple through the entire educational spectrum. Students from under-resourced schools are less likely to meet the admissions requirements for competitive colleges and universities. This disproportionately affects students from low-income families, limiting their access to prestigious institutions and the professional networks they cultivate.
Community Colleges: Community colleges often serve as a steppingstone for students seeking to transfer to four-year institutions. However, the poor preparedness of students from unequal K-12 systems lead to lower completion rates at community colleges.
Regional State Universities: Regional state universities, known for their affordability, become less accessible to students who require extensive remedial coursework due to inadequate K-12 preparation.
Flagship Universities: Flagship universities, the crown jewels of state university systems, become even more exclusive for students from working class backgrounds. The mission of these schools to educate folks from the state is no longer its exclusive or even primary goal. International students who pay greater tuition, or serve as skilled academic labor, are favored.
Elite Universities: Elite universities, with their highly selective admissions processes, remain largely out of reach for those without the academic foundation provided by well-funded K-12 schools.
Regional, State, County, and Local Disparities
The quality of K-12 education can vary dramatically within a single state, county, or even city. Wealthy suburbs often have superior schools compared to their urban counterparts. Rural areas may face challenges in attracting and retaining qualified teachers. These regional and local discrepancies exacerbate existing inequalities.
Demographic Changes
The United States is experiencing significant demographic shifts. The K-12 system needs to adapt to cater to an increasingly diverse student population with varying needs. This includes:
Immigrant Populations: A growing number of students come from families where English may not be the primary language at home. Schools need resources to support these students and ensure their success.
Social Class: Students from low-income backgrounds often have limited access to educational opportunities outside of school, further widening the achievement gap.
Race and Ethnicity: Students of color are disproportionately enrolled in under-resourced schools, creating a system that perpetuates racial and ethnic disparities in educational attainment.
Impact on Employment Opportunities
The unequal K-12 pipeline has a direct impact on opportunities for gainful employment. Students who lack a strong educational foundation are more likely to enter low-paying jobs with limited upward mobility. This cycle of educational disadvantage translates into economic disadvantage, limiting opportunities for social mobility.
The Perpetuation of Poverty and Other Issues
Unequal access to quality education is intricately linked to a web of social issues. Poverty, near poverty, and mass incarceration are more prevalent among those with lower levels of education. Limited opportunities can lead to deaths of desperation, a term encompassing suicides and deaths due to preventable health conditions brought on by chronic stress. Conversely, those who navigate the unequal K-12 pipeline successfully are more likely to accumulate wealth, further widening the gap between the rich and the poor.
Related links:
The K-12 Pipeline for Global Elites: Inequality and Injustice Start Here
A People's History of Higher Education in the US?
Monday, July 22, 2024
How Would Trump's Plans for Mass Deportations Affect US Higher Education?
This America First plan would expel about 11 million men, women, and children, break up millions of families and an untold number of communities, and affect not just businesses but entire industries. Deportees would include those who have crossed the borders with Mexico and Canada. But it could also include hundreds of thousands of non-white workers who have had their visas expire for a number of reasons, including temporary unemployment.
Those folks who concerned about these mass deportations should take Trump and Vance's words seriously--and vote accordingly. Struggling citizens who believe they will get better work or have a better life as a result of Trump policies should also consider whether this is true--and also consider all the other structural reasons for their plight--and vote accordingly. Before November, everyone who is voting should also know about the potential effects of these policies for their communities, counties, states, regions, and the nation.
The Heritage Foundation's 2025 Mandate for Leadership, makes this promise of mass deportations more than a pipe dream. Under a program this radical, we should also expect a backlash on and off college campuses. One that we hope would be nonviolent. Republicans such as Vance have already called professors and universities enemies of the state and of the People, and we should take them at their words.
Foreign relations under a second Trump Administration could also trigger mass surveillance and deportations of students from the People's Republic of China and other nations deemed as enemies. In 2024, Chinese students have already reported being interrogated and deported.
Plans to deport legally documented persons labeled as enemies or radicals, such as those who protest the horrors in Palestine, or call for global climate action, are also a distinct possibility.
A Trump-Vance Administration could also restrict named threats from entering and reentering the US, with help from the US Supreme Court, which they have done before. They could reinstitute the Trump "Muslim ban."
And we cannot rule out that a Trump Administration could require federal troops to use force, if necessary, to maintain order on college and university campuses.
Mass deportations of undocumented workers and foreign students would have several significant impacts on colleges and universities and the communities they serve. This includes:
1. Decreased enrollment and diversity: Many undocumented students and foreign students would be forced to leave, reducing overall enrollment numbers and campus diversity.
2. Loss of talent: Deportations would result in the loss of talented students and researchers, including those with college or graduate degrees, negatively impacting academic programs and research output.
3. Financial strain: Universities would lose tuition revenue from deported students, potentially leading to budget cuts and program reductions.
4. Workforce shortages: Higher education institutions rely on both undocumented and foreign workers in various roles. Their deportation would create staffing shortages across academic and support positions.
5. Research and innovation setbacks: The loss of foreign graduate students and researchers would hinder ongoing research projects and slow innovation in STEM fields and other areas.
6. Reduced global competitiveness: US universities may become less attractive to international students, potentially damaging their global rankings and competitiveness.
7. Economic impact on college towns: Many college towns rely on the economic contributions of international and undocumented students. Their removal would affect local businesses and housing markets.
8. Disruption of academic programs: Sudden deportations could disrupt ongoing classes, research projects, and academic collaborations.
9. Brain drain: The forced departure of educated immigrants and students could lead to a "brain drain," with talent and skills leaving the US higher education system.
10. Social and cultural impact: The loss of diverse perspectives from undocumented and international students would diminish the cultural richness and global understanding fostered on campuses.
11. Potential closure of specialized programs: Some niche academic programs that rely heavily on international student enrollment might face closure due to insufficient student numbers.
12. Increased administrative burden: Universities would face additional administrative challenges in complying with and managing the consequences of mass deportation policies.
These impacts highlight the significant role that undocumented workers and foreign students play in the US higher education system, and the potential disruptions that mass deportations could cause across academic, economic, and social dimensions.
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