What Are Donald Trump's Plans to Overhaul US Colleges and Universities? 🎓

[appalachiablue]

The Guardian, Nov. 18, 2024. 'What are Donald Trump’s plans to overhaul US colleges and universities?' - Republican president-elect says he wants to dismantle the US education department and fire ‘radical left accreditors’
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Donald Trump hates the state of higher education in the US so much that he wants to start a new online university that will dole out bachelor’s degrees free of charge to challenge existing colleges. Trump has also vowed to “deport pro-Hamas radicals and make our college campuses safe and patriotic again”. He wants to dramatically alter the accreditation process that ensures colleges meet set standards, opening the door for programs that currently do not.

These are just a few of Trump’s ideas for overhauling colleges and universities – frequent targets of rightwing campaigns that view them as incubators for leftist ideology. Many of Trump’s higher ed proposals involve driving out these perceived ideas. [People protesting on a college campus. Trump likely to use antisemitism claims to launch crackdown on US universities, Read more]

What is Trump proposing? Trump’s higher education platform isn’t terribly detailed; it is composed mostly of one-liners that propose, for instance, to “Make Colleges and Universities Sane and Affordable”. He has, however, suggested what would be a seismic change to higher education: the dismantling of the US Department of Education, which helps distribute federal financial aid to college students. It would take congressional approval to shutter the agency, something Republicans haven’t been able to achieve despite saying for decades they want to close it.

His allies have proposed policies with more meat on the bones. Project 2025, the conservative blueprint created by the Heritage Foundation, includes ways to peel back protections for LGBTQ+ students, “restore due process” for people accused of assault and harassment on campus, and curtail student loan forgiveness. If implemented fully, the conservative changes for higher education under Trump would be monumental...
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/nov/18/trump-education-policies

[VMA131Marine]

1. The next paragraph after the section you quoted

Would destroy universities with large endowments i.e. the Ivy League schools, or at least make them unaffordable for all but the wealthiest students.

What is ‘American Academy’?
One videoin Trump’s platform, dubbed Agenda47, focuses on the American Academy, which is designed to work against higher ed institutions that are “turning our students into communists and terrorists and sympathizers of many, many different dimensions”.

He says he would tax, fine and sue private university endowments, which fund those universities, and use the money to create this academy. It would offer a “free world-class education” without adding to the federal debt, he claims, by offering online courses that then give credentials that the federal government and contractors would be required to recognize, and grant people with the “equivalent” of a bachelor’s degree.

“It will be strictly non-political and there will be no wokeness or jihadism allowed,” Trump said in the video.

[appalachiablue]

4. Thanks for adding this part, esp the online Academy, so Wrong.

[slightlv]

8. It would also NOT be recognized globally as an

accredited university. Take all their money, feed them bullcrap, and send them out into the world to make a living knowing nothing about how the world actually works. This seems to be our education system via the R's, from pre-school on. Only those who are very smart, very creative, and dedicated to knowledge, itself, will find themselves employable by any worthwhile endeavor.

[VMA131Marine]

2. Sure, let's get the communism and Marxism out of science and engineering

Newton said for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. He was obviously a radical left winger.

And no more teaching evolution …

Overhauling accreditation
In another video, Trump refers to the accreditation system as the “secret weapon” for overhauling higher ed. Accreditors basically oversee colleges and programs to ensure they meet educational standards, a form of industry self-regulation. But some conservatives claim the process is weaponized and overly burdensome.

Trump calls accreditors a failure and says he will “fire the radical left accreditors that have allowed our colleges to become dominated by Marxist maniacs and lunatics”. He will then seek new accreditors that will create standards that 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” and more.

Last month, the Guardian published video of a meeting between the House majority leader, Steve Scalise, and the pro-Israel lobby group the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (Aipac), in which Scalise detailed plans to pull billions of dollars of federal funding from some of the most prestigious universities in the country, and to strip them of accreditation to punish them for allowing pro-Palestinian protests on their campuses.

[appalachiablue]

5. Backward, extremist and dangerous, like the Red Scare 2.0. Thanks for replying.

[LymphocyteLover]

3. most obscenely IMO was his idea of reparations for white people harmed by DEI and huge fines to schools

practicing DEI.

Link to tweet

"Trump announces reparations for white people. He says he will ask the Justice Department to penalize colleges that consider diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) and fine them so he can pay “restitution” to white people who he considers the real victims of racial discrimination."

[appalachiablue]

6. Just nuts, and dangerous. How much crazier does it get. Thanks

for the post.

[LymphocyteLover]

7. it's so unbelievably awful... every day is another horror show