In recent weeks, I’ve read Philadelphia Citizen pieces that compare candidates in the 2024 election on issues such as criminal justice reform, the economy, climate change and even education. As this publication’s higher education commentator, who has spent an entire career teaching and leading at universities, I feel compelled to do a bit of a deeper dive when it comes to the Democratic and Republican nominees for president and vice president.
Because when it comes to many issues that impact students, faculty, staff and graduates of colleges and universities, there are vast differences between Trump and Harris, and their running mates. I’ve written before that the president of the United States is teacher-in-chief, exemplifying defining cultural principles through his or her character and actions.
The president and vice president of the United States have enormous national influence on education. In addition to the formal powers of overseeing the Department of Education, issuing executive orders and sending legislation to Congress, they project a belief — or disbelief — in education as preparation for citizens to make informed decisions in a functioning democracy. As Thomas Jefferson said, “If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be.”
Here’s a run-down about where both majority party tickets stand on higher ed.
Trump / Vance Higher Ed Policies
Katherine Knott writes in The Chronicle of Higher Education, “Higher ed wasn’t a top priority for Donald Trump when he first took office. But now that he and the GOP see attacking elite institutions and regulating colleges as winning political issues, a second term is likely to bring more aggressive policies.” His running mate J.D. Vance seems to concur. In 2021, Vance titled a speech to the National Conservatism Conference “The Universities are the Enemy.” While Penn-educated Trump purports to “love the poorly educated,” Vance has openly pledged to attack higher education across the nation, despite his own rarified degree from Yale Law School.
Trump’s higher education policy is scattered through the 16-page Republican platform and amplified in campaign speeches. The platform document plans to fire “radical left accreditors” and to dismantle a system of accreditation and institutional financial aid eligibility that has served the nation well for decades. The statement “let the states run our educational system as it should be run,” refers to getting rid of the U.S. Department of Education (DOE), the government entity that has just recently under the Biden administration implemented student loan forgiveness for 1 million public service workers after 17 years of loan mismanagement by private firms.
Under Trump, student borrowers can give up hope for a continuation of the public service program or for a sensible income-driven repayment program (SAVE), which now faces court challenges filed by Republican-led states. In Trump’s first term, the DOE negated Obama-era policies regulating for-profits schools — regulations that the Biden administration has restored. Overseeing for-profits provides an important protection for vulnerable students. (In November 2016, Trump spent $25 million to settle three lawsuits brought against his own for-profit Trump University for defrauding students.)
Undermining higher education threatens democracy. It’s as clear-cut as that.
According to Inside Higher Ed, Trump “threatened to review the tax-exempt status of nonprofit colleges and to cut off federal funding to the University of California, Berkeley, for allegedly restricting the speech of conservative speakers.”
While Trump has tried to distance himself from the Heritage Foundation’s now notorious Project 2025, a blueprint to overhaul the federal government, some of Trump’s policies overlap with what is suggested there, e. g. the elimination of the Department of Education.
I’m not saying U.S. higher education should not be reformed — or, as I have written many times in The Citizen, transformed. But Trump and Vance are clearly not seeking reform; they are seeking to eliminate some of the most treasured qualities of American education, including autonomous universities. Higher ed should challenge students’ assumptions, expose them to new ways of thinking and new cultures. At their best, colleges and universities turn children into thriving adult citizens, with all the rights and responsibilities therein.
Trump and Vance do not want to build a strong and informed electorate through higher ed, and they are openly telling us so.
Harris / Walz higher ed policy
Democratic nominees Kamala Harris and Tim Walz have shared a platform that supports making trade school and community college free for every American. Harris favors supporting post-secondary training in venues other than colleges, as well as free access to community colleges for all. She is not privileging traditional four-year, on-campus education, yet she is positive toward it.
The platform also proposes continuing loan forgiveness for public servants. To accomplish this, the Justice Department must be ready to counter court cases possibly brought to scuttle the 2007 law. The Department of Education must prepare to implement the plan (rather than private loan agencies that have made a mess of it), and the president and Congress should be willing to change the 10-year requirement for loan forgiveness to five years.
If elected, Harris and Walz want to implement the new income-based SAVE plan, which rationally adjusts payment processes to prevent the interest on outstanding loans from exceeding the principle and thereby keeping citizens in student debt well into retirement. The SAVE plan is already facing court challenges.
They’ve proposed doubling the maximum Pell award by 2029. For 2024-2025, the maximum Pell Grant for low-income students is $7,395. Doubling the grant to $14,790 would go a long way toward making bachelor degrees accessible for an increased number of students at four-year, regional public universities like West Chester and Cheyney.
They’d also subsidize tuition at all Minority Serving Institutions (MSIs) for anyone whose family earns less than $125,000 per year. MSIs include Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) — like Harris’ alma mater Howard University. MSIs also include Hispanic-Serving Institutions (HSIs), with at least 25 percent of full-time enrollment of Hispanic undergraduate students, Tribal Colleges and Universities (TCUss), and Asian American and Pacific Islander Serving Institutions (AAPISIs). This policy would support a diverse population of students who might otherwise be discouraged from attending college. The Harris-Walz principle is to motivate college attendance while not fostering resentment in those who do not enroll in universities or colleges.
While Harris and Walz recognize that higher education is not the only pathway to the middle class and support career / technical training, they do not demean colleges and universities. By funding opportunities for a wide range of citizens to attend college, they demonstrate their understanding of the role of higher education in creating more informed citizens. In short, they recognize the fundamental value of universities to a democracy.
American higher education is not immutable
Some might say — as many said in the run-up to the 2016 election — that Trump’s extreme rhetoric is hollow, just “Trump being Trump.” Don’t bet on it. Other leaders have made good on their threats to higher education.
Consider the anti-university actions of Trump’s “favorite strongman,” Hungary’s Viktor Orbán, who launched a smear campaign against his country’s prestigious Central European University, stripped Hungary’s preeminent scientific institution, the Academy of Science, of its independent research institutes, packed the university governing boards with party loyalists, and set up a new institution for traditional, patriotic education. Extreme leadership in Pakistan, Iran, Afghanistan have stripped half of their countries’ populations — women — of their rights not just to higher education but also to education at all.
Closer to home, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis has replaced the board of an elite public university and banned the teaching of entire subjects in public schools. Should Trump be re-elected and make good on his promise, dissolving the Department of Education and kicking education issues to states would mimic what happened when Roe v. Wade fell: Many states will restrict education; others will not.
I clearly remember November 9, 2016, the day after Trump was elected as the 45th President of the United States. A few young faculty members came to consult with the provost and with me about ways they could be unquestionably fair in any discussion of the election, how they could create a safe space for students with diverging views, and how they might transcend their own political opinions in the classroom. Far from being radical left indoctrinators, these faculty members, representative of the vast majority of university employees, are committed to a core value of the academy — helping students find and express their own voice in a democratic society.
As a lifelong news junkie and long-time university president, through the decades I have analyzed the higher education policies of Democrats and Republicans. I’ve always had preferences, but I’ve never before been terrified.
Undermining higher education threatens democracy. It’s as clear-cut as that.
Elaine Maimon, Ph.D., is the author of Leading Academic Change: Vision, Strategy, Transformation. Her long career in higher education has encompassed top executive positions at public universities as well as distinction as a scholar in rhetoric/composition. Her co-authored book, Writing in the Arts and Sciences, has been designated as a landmark text. She is a Distinguished Fellow of the Association for Writing Across the Curriculum.
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