Donald Trump’s Secret Weapon to Dismantle American Education

Many experts in higher education have begun to sound the alarm that such actions may infringe on academic freedom and institutional autonomy—two cornerstones of American higher education. “I’ve been a member of probably 15 or 20 accreditation teams over the years,” said Paul Gaston, a former professor at Kent State and expert in accreditation. “I’ve never sensed that any member of those teams was there out of some kind of self-interest or ideological priority.”

“There’s not this brain trust at the top that’s making policy,” Gaston said. “The policies tend to be made by the boards of these commissions,” most of whom work at different types of higher-education institutions themselves.

“Usually, the accrediting agencies are in the background,” said Luther Spoehr, a former professor at Brown University and expert in academic freedom. This lends itself to conspiracies, Spoehr said, as it “feeds into the instinct of a lot of people who follow Trump that they are finding a conspiracy” where there isn’t one. He called Agenda47 “scary.”

With Trump singling out left-wing content at these universities and promising to impose standards of “American values,” this political intervention in higher education echoes the McCarthy era, when academics were called to Capitol Hill for questioning by lawmakers about their suspected affiliation with the Communist Party. But the proceedings, according to historian Ellen Schrecker, “were people being targeted for their external political activities. They were never questioned about their teaching or research.” Schrecker dubbed Trump’s desires as McCarthyism 2.0: a blueprint that would empower politicians to “reach into the content of what people are teaching,” threatening academic freedom. The Trump campaign did not respond to this claim when asked by The Nation.

Over the past century, the federal government has continued to exert and expand its support and influence over institutions of higher education. Congress controls 43 percent of public funding for colleges and universities through federal appropriations, and Pell Grants and funding from the GI Bill can only be used at accredited institutions. These requirements could be leveraged by a new Trump administration to force universities to abide by his ideological wishes.

“The real nightmare scenario is Trump is elected and the Republicans control both the House and the Senate,” Spoehr said. “Then what happens to things like federal funding for Pell Grants? What conditions would have to be met by different institutions in order for them to continue educating?”

“What Trump wants to do is to turn these schools into institutions that will indoctrinate their students with a sort of right-wing populism,” Schrecker said. “That, of course, is going to destroy American higher education.”

Trump’s first term already brought major changes to American education. Through his secretary of education, Betsy DeVos, Trump expanded federal support for religious schools and organizations, invested in school choice programs, threatened gender-accommodation policies and repeatedly requested funding cuts for public education.

John Connelly, a professor at University of California, Berkeley, with expertise in comparative education, said he was “a little more optimistic” that guardrails would be in place to stop or temper Trump’s plans. “If you had a really gifted far-right figure who was figuring out how to manipulate the system, he would probably proceed in a more careful manner to gain allies within higher education,” Connelly said. “Trump is too ignorant to know what an ally would look like within higher education.”

But in predicting what may happen if Trump returns to the White House, there is a test case that can be referenced: conservatives’ intervention in Florida’s public universities.

In 2022, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis approved a bill requiring institutions in Florida to change accreditors each cycle. With SACSCOC credentialing 75 colleges in Florida, many institutions are now scrambling to switch their accrediting agencies to comply with the law. North Carolina also passed a similar law in 2023, a state where SACSCOC credentials 111 colleges.

The attacks on SACSCOC are rooted in what some state officials see as partisan behavior by the accrediting agency. One instance is consistently pointed to by Florida politicians; the University of Florida was investigated by SACSCOC for not permitting three of its professors to testify against the state’s voting restrictions. But Wheelan, the president of SASCSOC, stood by her agency saying that “all we’ve done is follow our policy,” according to Inside Higher Education.

“SACSCOC has often found itself in the target zone of consternation,” Wheelan said to The Nation. “Today, the distinction appears to be that leaders are not talking with those of us who do this work to help offer solutions.”

Despite education’s prevalence in the political discussion, the issue of education is not a top priority for voters heading to the polls this November; less than 1 percent of registered voters said it was their top issue in a May 2024 New York Times/Siena College poll. Despite its lack of saliency, the party that controls the White House will have sweeping powers to shape American education for decades.

“By increasing access to school choice, empowering parents to have a voice in their child’s education, and supporting good teachers, President Trump will improve academic excellence for all students,” Trump’s National Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said in a statement to The Nation. “President Trump believes students should be taught reading, writing and math in the classroom—not gender, sex and race like the Biden administration is pushing on our public school system.”

When asked for specific instances of the Biden administration’s push for increased teachings of gender, sex, and race in classrooms, the campaign did not respond.

In response, James Singer, a spokesperson for the Biden-Harris campaign, said, “Trump and his extremist allies are planning a destruction of our education system that forces their world view down the throats of America’s students,” adding that “book bans, witch hunts, threats, and empowering ideologues is not an education agenda—it’s the end of education all together.”

Singer said that Biden is focused on “increasing teacher pay and making higher and secondary education more affordable and attainable” and would continue to work toward those goals in a second term.

Of the accrediting experts The Nation spoke to, none could name an institution that has lost accreditation for not adhering to a particular ideology or because of the content they teach. The heads of NECHE and SACSCOC both said that they do not regulate the content of classes at any given institution, so long as it aligns with the institution’s mission. If Trump were to do so to impose the traditional American values he’s promised in higher education, according to Spoehr, “it would be unprecedented.”