Defunding Education Will Make Us Great Again, Right?
"Defend the Dream", a young girl protesting at a rally is in Pomona, California, with focus on preventing teacher layoffs and protecting seducation. Courtesy of Scarlett Sappho via Flickr
On Nov. 18, the Trump administration announced a plan to continue dismantling the Education Department, completely ending the agency’s heavy involvement in supporting academics in elementary and high school, all the way to access to college.
Now, any responsibilities that belong to the Office of Elementary and Secondary Education and the Office of Postsecondary Education will be largely taken over by the Labor Department. Additionally, a major child care grant program for college students and foreign medical school accreditation will now fall into the hands of the Health and Human Services Department; Fulbright programs and international education grants will now go to the State Department and the Interior Department will take over the Indian Education Office.
Shifting responsibilities away from the Education Department directly follows President Trump’s plan of eventually getting rid of the agency altogether, a plan he has been very adamant and open about.
Completely getting rid of the Department of Education is an act that is heavily opposed by teachers’ unions, college students who rely on federal aid and students' rights groups alike.
With this dismantling, a full list of degrees that are no longer considered “professional” has been released. On this list are education degrees.
A degree no longer being considered professional means that pursuing these degrees may no longer result in receiving the same amount of reimbursement for their studies.
The cost of college is ever-rising. According to NPR, over the past 30 years, the average tuition for both public and private schools has doubled. Now, under Trump’s Big Beautiful Bill, the Repayment Assistance Program (RAP) will replace many federal loan programs. Programs such as the Grad PLUS program, designed to help graduate and professional students cover educational expenses, will no longer be valid, and Parent PLUS loans will be limited.
This new version of RAP will cap borrowers at $20,500 for graduate students and $50,000 for professional students. Meaning if you’re pursuing what is deemed a non-professional degree, you’re now entitled to less financial aid. For many students, federal aid is what allows them to pursue a broader education. And now, they are being told to choose their career wisely, as the government will reward them if they do so.
Trump’s attack on education, along with future and current teachers alike, is not something new. Many times, as Trump said or alluded to the fact, he is threatened by the educated and what education can entail.
Trump has openly stated before how he is “Ending Radical Indoctrination In K-12 Schools.” This entails the ending of teaching “anti-American rhetoric in schools,” which actually means improperly teaching history so that America never seems to be in the wrong. Rather than learning from our past, Trump wants to revise education so that America is seen as a perfect nation without flaws, a task that his administration is eager to complete.
Diminishing the value of teachers is a direct threat to this nation as a whole. Without educators, where would we be? How would we be able to read this article or function as a society? There are reasons why education has a standard and has gone through many changes. Education is valuable, and if it weren’t, so many people wouldn’t have fought for generations for it to be available to everyone.
Every single politician who is openly claiming that education is not important has one or more college degrees, probably from an Ivy League university. Some have master's degrees and doctorates. Yet, education is not important? Or is education a blatant danger to repressing American society?