CounterCurrent: Week of 08/05/24
With the election just over three months away, Americans wonder, who will be the next president? Which party will control the House and Senate? What will the country look like over the next four years?
For better or worse, America’s decision on November 5th will guide education policy through the next election and beyond.
Republican presidential hopeful Donald J. Trump has already released his platform to the public, outlining his objectives for education reform. Today's CounterCurrent will focus on the policies that will influence higher education, with another edition following in the coming weeks—likely after the Democratic National Convention (DNC), when presidential nominee Kamala Harris and the DNC release their party’s platform.
Public statements made by Trump and documents released by the RNC make clear that he and the Republican party plan to put the screws to higher education. Based on the available data, like the Trump/Vance campaign website, which hosts a number of videos and documents dedicated to their various policy initiatives, and the 2024 GOP Platform, we can make the assessment that colleges and universities will be facing heightened pressure should Trump win. First, let us kick things off with a few snapshots taken from the GOP Platform regarding higher education:
Page 10: “To reduce the cost of Higher Education, Republicans will support the creation of additional, drastically more affordable alternatives to a traditional four-year College degree.”
Page 14: “Republicans support the restoration of Classical Liberal Arts Education.”
Page 15: “We will keep men out of women’s sports, ban Taxpayer funding for sex change surgeries, and stop Taxpayer-funded Schools from promoting gender transition, reverse Biden’s radical rewrite of Title IX Education Regulations, and restore protections for women and girls.”
In addition to these platform points, Trump pledges to “reclaim our institutions from the radical left” by going after the college accreditation system. His plan involves firing the accreditors who have allowed American colleges and universities to be overrun by “Marxist Maniacs and lunatics,” and then hire new accreditors who will impose “real standards” on institutions. Trump proposes the following:
These standards will include defending the American tradition and Western civilization, protecting free speech, eliminating wasteful administrative positions that drive up costs incredibly, removing all Marxist diversity, equity, and inclusion bureaucrats, offering options for accelerated and low-cost degrees, providing meaningful job placement and career services, and implementing college entrance and exit exams to prove that students are actually learning and getting their money's worth.
Trump’s position on accreditation, and higher education overall for that matter, is much more clear cut than when he was previously ensconced in the White House. The former president has proposed the creation of a free online university funded by taxing wealthy colleges and universities, has stated he would deport pro-Palestinian campus protestors and crackdown on campus protests, and has supported green card extensions to certain foreign-born college graduates. Other policy ideas include rewriting or nixing the Biden administration’s current regulations—i.e, the student loan forgiveness plan, Title IX changes, etc.—to even potentially getting rid of the Education Department.
For more coverage of each candidates’ education platform, be sure to read up on NAS.org and MindingTheCampus.org—you can even submit articles on this topic to Jared Gould, gould@nas.org, if you have an interest in this topic or an analysis to share.
Until next week.
CounterCurrent is the National Association of Scholars’ weekly newsletter, written by the NAS Staff. To subscribe, update your email preferences here.
Photo by Worawut on Adobe Stock
