Reading Project 2025, part 4: overthrowing the Department of Education

How might a likely second Trump administration impact higher education?  How can academics plan for and anticipate that major event, should it occur?

This week we continue our reading of Project 2025, a key document in understanding the near- and medium-term future of American politics.  This is an online, open, and distributed reading and anyone can participate. Here’s a post explaining how it works.  You can find all of our Project 2025 posts here.

In today’s post I’ll summarize this week’s reading, pages 319-416, which continues under last week’s header of “The General Welfare.”  Then I’ll draw out the bits which bear directly on higher education. Next I’ll add some reflections followed by several discussion questions.  At the end I’ll add some more resources.  Please join in with comments below – for examples of that, you can see good comments at the end of our first post.

Reactions and discussion keep coming in.  Paul and Matthew shared some thoughts about last week’s reading.  Ed, Laura, and sibyledu discussed the week before. One blogger fed Project2025 texts into an AI music generator to create death metal tracks.  Consider that a soundtrack.

Summary overview

With this section the book continues to explore non-military government operations, and starts with one unit crucial to educators: the Department of Education.

Lindsey M. Burke criticizes the Department of Education for having too much red tape, for being too ideological, for having too much power, and not having a positive educational impact She prefers a DoE which devolves power to states and cities, which doesn’t forgive student loan borrowers, and which avoids pursuing certain causes (“rejecting gender ideology and critical race theory”).

Burke would also rather see the department closed up and its functions distributed to other agencies, like Health and Human Services.  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 to the Department of State.” (327).  The Department of Justice would take over the Office for Civil Rights (OCR)’s functions. (330)

Student loans loom large in this chapter, which would set up a new entity to organize student loans. “The next Administration should… work with Congress to spin off FSA and its student loan obligations to a new government corporation with professional governance and management.”  Further,

this new entity would be (1) professionally governed by an agency head and board of trustees appointed by the President with the advice and consent of the Senate; (2) funded with annual appropriations from Congress; and (3) operated by professional managers… The new federal student loan authority would manage the loan portfolio, handle borrower relations, administer loan applications and disbursements, monitor institutional participation and accountability issues, and issue regulations.  (327)

As part of the new arrangement, “Federal loans would be assigned directly to the Treasury Department, which would manage collections and defaults.” (327-330) Income-based repayment schemes can continue, but with restrictions. (337-8) Burke 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)

On the K-12 side, Burke’s chapter wants the new administration to encourage charter schools and to undo the Obama administration’s disparate impact regulations concerning student discipline and race.  It would end the National Education Association’s federal charter, while holding hearings on NEA members’ activities. (342) It would require schools to use students’ birth names. (346).  The federal government would offer more support to school choice while allowing states to opt out of some federal education directives and policies. (351)

After Burke on education, Project 2025 continues as Bernard L. McNamee addresses another DoE, the Department of Energy, along with the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC).  He calls for “energy and science dominance,” several times, notably for lower prices and plenty of domestic energy provision.  “The next Administration must commit itself to ensuring that the U.S. continues to dominate scientific discovery and technological advancement.” (394) McNamee is also very focused on beefing up energy infrastructure’s defenses from cyber and other attacks.   He would have the DoE and other agencies expand American energy work in Alaska and the Arctic Ocean, while supporting “[d]eveloping new nuclear weapons and naval nuclear reactors.”

The enemy in this chapter is climate change policies.  The author would repeal the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA).  The chapter offers many ways of ending energy agencies’ climate work, such as cutting carbon sequestration programs, erasing Biden-era appliance standards,  closing the Office of Clean Energy Demonstrations (OCED), and ending any talk of climate reparations. (376-390)

What does this week’s reading mean for higher education, beyond what we’ve said so far?

There’s a lot going on in Burke’s chapter.  The document wants a new administration to undo the Biden administration’s Title IX regulations, completely, returning to those promulgated by Betsy Devos.  Beyond that, a hypothetical administration 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)

Related is a 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 new government would also launch a series of investigations into how the DoE has supported DEI. (359)

Burke also wants the next administration to change its relationship with 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 targets higher education accreditation agencies, calling for a new administration to prevent them from advocating for diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) work on campuses. (352)

This chapter wants a new agency to “[r]equire… ‘skin in the game’ from colleges to help hold them accountable for loan repayment.” (341) It’s not clear what this means.

The new federal administration would also reduce funding to academic research by cutting reimbursement for indirect costs. (355) It would reduce funding to “area studies” programs.  Instead, “the next Administration should promulgate 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)

Project 2025 would have the federal government support competency-based education by offering new definitions. (356). It would also shatter the “paper ceiling” for federal jobs, preferring that “[t]he 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; here’s one example of that already occurring at the state level)

On the Department of Energy side, Project 2025 enthusiastically promotes scientific research and development.  That chapter 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)

Reflections

This section of Project 2025 represents an ambitious call to overhaul the Department of Education. It targets the Biden administration’s policies, from gender and race to loan forgiveness. It also echoes pre-Biden Republican ideas, starting with just shutting down the department.

I note that the Departments of Energy and Education sections include strong notes about geopolitics.  Consistent with the rest of Project 2025, they turn these departments against immigration and China.  As I’ve written before, this can have many implications for colleges and universities,.

Questions

Let me start with my usual questions:

1. How would the policy changes expressed in this week’s chapters impact your professional and personal lives?
2. Do you see Trump as likely to attempt what this week’s reading describes?
3. How might the world change if these global policies take effect?
4. If you oppose what these three chapters call for, what opposition strategy and tactics would best resist it?
5. Having read this far, what do you anticipate from the rest of the book?

Then add:

• How would the sprawling, complex, not too organized ecosystem of American higher education respond to such a transformed Department of Education?
• What might a transformed accreditation landscape look like?

Resources

• Katherine Knott, “Project 2025 Would Radically Overhaul Higher Ed. Here’s How.”
• Rick Perlstein, “Crow Jim: Project 2025’s Obsession With Reverse Racism”
• ProPublica and Documented published fourteen+ hours of Project 2025’s training videos.
• Seth David Radwell, “Project 2025: The Department of Education: The crucial investment we may not make”
• Alex Walters, “Could George Mason U. Be Republicans’ ‘Test Case’ for Project 2025?”

…and that’s it for this week’s reading.  For next Monday, August 19, we’ll continue with “The General Welfare,” advancing to pages 417-516.

Please do comment in the boxes below this post.  If you’d prefer to share your reactions on other platforms, tag me or otherwise let me know about those comments so I can include them in our next post.  If you want to respond but are worried about what people could make of your reactions, feel free to contact me here without the web knowing.

Comment away!  And on to the next tranche of Project 2025.

(thanks to many people, like Vanessa Vaile, who made this possible)