The Trump Administration’s Attacks on Higher Education
Updated April 29, 2025
Author: Chenelle Hammonds, Senior Policy Associate
Since Donald Trump has returned to office, he has launched aggressive and illegal attacks targeting America’s higher education system, using executive orders, funding freezes, and retaliatory budget cuts. These actions have destabilized financial aid, undermined academic research, gutted civil rights enforcement, and chilled free expression on college campuses. Each new directive reflects an escalation in the administration’s effort to exert ideological control over what is taught, who can access education, and which institutions receive support.
This fact sheet provides an overview of key actions taken by the administration and the consequences to date.
| What’s Happening | Has it Happened Already? | Impact & What’s at Stake |
|---|---|---|
| Massive layoffs at the Department of Education. Over 1,300 employees, including nearly half of the Federal Student Aid (FSA) office, were laid off. Additional layoffs are likely, following President Trump’s renewed calls to abolish the Department entirely. | Directed; under legal challenge | Student aid services, loan processing, and oversight of servicers are severely degraded. Millions of students face delays and disruptions in accessing financial aid. |
| Title IX Reversal and Executive Action on Gender Identity. The administration has reinstated the Title IX rule, narrowing the definition of sex to exclude protections based on gender identity. A new executive order mandates that all federal agencies—including the Department of Education—define sex as assigned at conception. A special investigations team has been launched to enforce this policy on college campuses. | Directed; under legal challenge | Colleges may face federal investigation for allowing gender-nonconforming students to participate in sports or access gender-aligned housing and facilities. This shift jeopardizes the rights and safety of transgender and nonbinary students and creates legal uncertainty for institutions navigating conflicting federal, state, and local laws. |
| Federal Funding Suspensions Targeting Higher Education Research. The Trump administration has suspended or revoked billions in federal research funding from universities, targeting projects it perceives to be misaligned with its agenda. Moreover, universities across the country have also seen their research funding slashed as agencies pull back on grant funding. This includes the Department of Health and Human Services, which funds the National Institutes of Health. | Directed; under legal challenge | These actions have disrupted major research initiatives in areas like technology, climate resilience, AI innovation, and public health. Faculty and graduate researchers face project cancellations, funding gaps, and layoffs, undermining higher education’s role in driving innovation, advancing scholarship, combating climate change, curing diseases, and serving the public good. |
| Retaliatory Defunding of Universities. Institutions like Columbia University and the University of Pennsylvania have had federal funds frozen due to the administration’s opposition to school policies, leadership decisions, or responses to campus protests. Harvard’s tax-exempt status has been threatened for refusal to comply with federal directives. | Ongoing; under legal challenge | These punitive freezes have created financial and operational chaos. The threat of future retaliatory defunding remains, raising alarms about political interference in campus governance and the erosion of institutional and academic independence. |
| Defunding Health Equity Science. The NIH terminated grants focused on HIV/AIDS prevention, Black maternal health, LGBTQ+ mental health, and other equity-driven public health research. Much of this research was carried out through grants to universities. | Ongoing; under legal challenge | Lifesaving medical research addressing the health of marginalized communities is being eliminated. This jeopardizes medical innovation to improve health outcomes within these communities, increases health disparities, and undermines global public health efforts, including HIV prevention for vulnerable populations. |
| Elimination of Campus DEI Support Programs. Under new federal directives, many student support services—such as student affinity groups, mentorship initiatives, and mental health services centered on race, gender, or sexuality—have been dismantled. | Directed; under legal challenge | Students of color, LGBTQ+ students, and first-generation students lose vital community and support systems, potentially increasing isolation and dropout risk. |
| International Students & Campus Crackdown. Over 1,500 international student visas have been revoked as students are targeted, arrested, and held in detention centers to punish speech the administration opposes. The administration has threatened to punish some colleges by stripping their ability to enroll international students entirely. | Ongoing; under legal challenge | Foreign students risk detention, deportation or loss of their immigration status for their beliefs. Universities face pressure to surveil and discipline students to avoid federal retaliation. Institutions’ ability to host international students—a major economic and academic driver—is now destabilized. |
| Disruption of Student Loan Repayment Protections. Income-driven repayment plans (including those unrelated to SAVE plan litigation) were frozen and later reinstated. Public Student Loan Forgiveness (PSLF) eligibility has been narrowed to exclude borrowers working at organizations supportive of LGBTQ+ rights, immigration, or Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion. | Partially reversed | Millions of borrowers face uncertainty and fear of unaffordable payment hikes, and struggle to navigate a broken repayment system. Some borrowers reported quadrupled payments, and nearly 8 million borrowers previously on SAVE plans must recertify and resubmit their applications, meaning higher monthly payments.Some longtime borrowers have seen their repayment timelines arbitrarily extended from 10 to 25 years, solely due to the nature of their work. This politically-motivated exclusion also disincentivizes future professionals from entering public service. |
| Suspension of the 1890 HBCU Scholars Program. During Black History Month, the Department of Agriculture suspended a program supporting Black students studying agriculture at Historically Black Colleges & Universities. After public pressure, this decision was reversed. | Reversed | Halted scholarship programs sparked fear among Black college students pursuing careers in industries in which minorities are commonly underrepresented. Even with restoration, trust in federal commitments to HBCUs has eroded, and questions on the assurance of other federally-funded college grants remain. |
| Faculty Surveillance and Intimidation. Faculty members—particularly those teaching about race, gender, or history—have been subject to political investigations, public doxxing, or threats to their employment for unfounded claims of ideological bias. | Ongoing | Professors are increasingly self-censoring to avoid political backlash. Faculty members are leaving U.S. institutions for positions abroad due to concerns over political interference in college classrooms and research departments. This “brain drain” will undermine the quality of academic instruction and research across college campuses. |
| Curriculum Censorship and Ideological Control. Federal and state officials are targeting college-level courses and materials that address race, gender, U.S. history, and systemic inequality—labeling it as “indoctrination”—while attempting to impose politically-motivated restrictions on what can be taught. | Ongoing | What began as K-12 censorship has expanded into higher education, jeopardizing educational integrity and denying students access to a full and accurate understanding of the world around them.Academic freedom is under attack as institutions are being pressured to revise course content, limit programs and services, and monitor classroom materials and instruction. |
| Exacerbation of Student Debt Crisis. Education Secretary Linda McMahon is instructing the Department of Education to abruptly transfer borrowers who miss student debt payments into collections, with automatic wage garnishment. | Directed | More than five million borrowers may face wage garnishment at a time when many are struggling to make ends meet. This will deepen financial insecurity for millions and compound workforce and economic challenges across sectors. These actions follow political and legal efforts that dismantled lower-cost repayment plans, like SAVE, which capped payments at 5% of discretionary income. Without this option, student borrowers will be forced into unaffordable repayment plans (up to 15% of discretionary income). |
| Executive Order Directing the Department of Education to Overhaul the College Accreditation Process. The Trump administration is attempting to dismantle the current college accreditation process by shifting power away from federally-recognized accrediting agencies. | Directed | This move politicizes accreditation by making it easier for partisan actors to influence which colleges and universities are eligible to receive federal funding. State control would replace national standards with a patchwork of inconsistent regulations, undermining students’ ability to transfer credits and employers’ ability to trust degrees. The move would also open the door for more predatory for-profit colleges to exploit students, cause employment and economic disruption, and destabilize the U.S. higher education system by enabling agencies that prioritize political ideology over academic quality. |
Conclusion
These illegal actions are not isolated incidents— they reflect a coordinated ideological assault on higher education. Taken together, they represent a systematic dismantling of the independence that underpins academic research, student equity, and institutional autonomy. While the administration circumvents Congress and breaks the law to slash civil rights protections, suppress academic freedom, and dismantle vital education and research infrastructure, there are real consequences on students, educators, researchers, and the work they produce. Even when policies are reversed under public pressure, the chaos, confusion, and fear they create for students, faculty, and academia linger. Higher education is being destabilized in real time, and advocates and policymakers must remain vigilant as the administration signals more attacks to come.