CounterCurrent: Week of 05/05/2025
The deluge of education news out of the White House has yet to cease. President Trump signed six Executive Orders (EOs) at the end of last month, encompassing a range of efforts, from discipline measures within K-12 to increased accountability standards in higher education. What these mean for education is varied, but will do much to weed out more of the corruption within academia.
“Transparency Regarding Foreign Influence at American Universities” handles renewed enforcement efforts of Section 117 of the Higher Education Act, a piece of legislation that is imperative to our work on malign foreign influence on higher education at the National Association of Scholars. Foreign gifts to American colleges and universities are woefully under-tracked and underreported, even though gifts amounting to $250,000 in a given calendar year are required by law to be reported to the Department of Education (ED). Last year, the Biden ED even shut down the public reporting portal—released in 2020—meant to bring transparency and accountability to higher education finances. Since then, schools have flouted Section 117 to a greater degree because of laissez-faire leadership and a lack of enforcement. To fix this problem, the Trump EO on foreign influence aims,
[T]o end the secrecy surrounding foreign funds in American educational institutions, protect the marketplace of ideas from propaganda sponsored by foreign governments, and safeguard America’s students and research from foreign exploitation.
To achieve these ends, the Secretary of Education will work to rescind previous administration actions allowing higher education to skirt reporting foreign funds. Secretary McMahon will require schools to disclose their received foreign funds or face investigation, audits, or loss of federal funding, among other actions.
Tensions are high and feelings are mixed at the renewed focus on Section 117 compliance. Though the law has been in effect for years, enforcement was rarely carried out, leading to at best, laziness in reporting, and at worst, outright cooking the books by many colleges and universities (such as Texas A&M). Excuses of “we didn’t know how to comply with the law” are already circulating, but will fall short. With the Trump administration already pulling federal funding over other issues from major institutions, one can logically conclude that schools claiming naivety or outright flouting Section 117 compliance will be slapped with harsh consequences.
Accreditation reform is at the top of many reformers' minds. The accreditors abuse their power by using ideological guides and political fads (“diversity, equity, and inclusion” (DEI); emotional social learning; misapplication of Title IX; etc.) approving which colleges and universities receive the mark of a quality institution—qualifying the school for federal funding. To bring accountability to the accreditation system, the administration has written “Reforming Accreditation to Strengthen Higher Education,” an EO focused on reforming accreditation so that colleges and universities can once again “focus on delivering high-quality academic programs at a reasonable price.” Current accreditation subsidizes low-quality education and contributes to rent seeking.
Accreditation is a hurdle for new institutions. Most accreditors require schools to have a student body, faculty, and programs for a set number of years before the school or degrees are accredited. A massive gamble for students, faculty, and investors. The new EO seeks to tear down this wall and make room for the introduction of new institutions to compete with the existing tired, worn, and failing model of higher education.
Clearly, the current system has serious issues.
The Trump administration recognizes the seriousness of DEI-based standards of accreditation, as they are discriminatory at their core—and problematic as a condition of undergraduate and graduate schools receiving federal aid as accredited institutions. To solve this problem, the EO provides a long list of “New Principles of Student-Oriented Accreditation” for the Secretary of Education to enforce, here are two examples,
(i) accreditation requires higher education institutions to provide high-quality, high-value academic programs free from unlawful discrimination or other violations of Federal law;
(ii) barriers are reduced that limit institutions from adopting practices that advance credential and degree completion and spur new models of education;
Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) comprise a portion of higher education institutions within America. HBCUs were founded to provide education to black Americans and are primarily found within the Southern states. The Trump administration has reupped a commitment to strengthening HBCUs and the quality of education provided through such institutions in the “White House Initiative to Promote Excellence and Innovation at Historically Black Colleges and Universities.” Within the ED there already exists the President’s Board of Advisors on Historically Black Colleges and Universities, and this Board will now report to an Executive Director designated by the President in order “to increase the capacity of HBCUs to provide the highest-quality education to an increasing number of students.”
Disciplinary procedures within K-12 education are facing scrutiny under the Trump EO “Reinstating Common Sense School Discipline Policies.” For context, a 2014 “Dear Colleague Letter” (DCL), issued by the Obama ED and the Department of Justice, told schools they could lose federal funding by violating Title VI if disciplinary policies ran afoul of proposed disparate-impact framework. This meant that race-neutral disciplinary policies, if applied evenly, “may be improper if members of any racial groups are suspended, expelled, or referred to law enforcement at higher rates than others.” Effectively, schools were told discipline must be doled out on racial characteristics. To apply the law equally, regardless of race, meant the loss of federal funding.
Later in 2018, a Federal Commission on School Safety report found that because of the 2014 DCL, “schools ignored or covered up—rather than disciplined—student misconduct in order to avoid any purported racial disparity in discipline numbers that might catch the eye of the federal government.” The 2014 DCL was rescinded after this study. But in 2023, the Biden administration issued new guidance encouraging schools to once again alter disciplinary policies based on racial disciplinary data—weaponizing Title VI once more. Currently, behavioral issues and violence abound in K-12. The Secretary of Education is tasked with a series of actions to be taken within 120 days of the EO issue date which will provide guidance to local educational agencies and state educational agencies on school discipline measures that comply with Title VI and cease engaging in racial discrimination policies.
The last two EOs of mention, “Preparing Americans for High Paying Skilled Trade Jobs of the Future” and “Advancing Artificial Intelligence Education for American Youth,” will be more quickly covered. To advance labor force competitiveness, the Trump administration has proposed increasing the number of available apprenticeships in the country in addition to training students in artificial intelligence (AI) tools. First, to achieve more available trade jobs, the administration promises to equip workers with the knowledge and skills necessary to be skilled tradesmen, and to “consolidate and streamline fragmented Federal workforce development programs” in order to grow secure and high-need American jobs. Second, AI is here to stay, and thus, to retain a competitive edge in the world, the administration has proposed that American students receive training on AI technology. By promoting AI integration into education, training educators on AI technology, and exposing students to AI concepts, the Trump administration believes American students will have an edge in leading the charge on AI.
As always, I will leave off with a cautionary note: to effectuate lasting change, the Trump administration and education reformers must push for congressional action to codify this good work.
Until next week.
Photo by Trump White House Archived on Flickr
