Here’s How the Education Department Helps College Students—and What’s at Stake if Trump Guts It

President Donald Trump doesn’t have the power to shut down the U.S. Department of Education without congressional approval, an unlikely outcome given Republicans’ wafer-thin Senate and House majorities.

But Trump, and Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency, have still spent the last three weeks pulling the Education Department to pieces.

Since his inauguration, the Trump allies have reportedly ordered a review of college grants with instructions to possibly cut those related to diversity, equity, or inclusion efforts, and put at least 100 employees on leave for the high crime of attending a diversity-related training. They’ve opened the Education Department’s doors (and data) to Musk’s DOGE Service, which is scrutinizing and slicing up federal spending. And they’ve ended dozens of contracts for the Institute of Education Sciences, the department’s research wing that also evaluates the success of federal education programs.

This all foreshadows an executive order that would reportedly aim to dump the entire Education Department. Conservatives have long favored abolishing the Education Department, and baked the idea in Project 2025, the far right-wing blueprint for Trump’s second White House stint. The president initially distanced himself from Project 2025, which was unpopular with voters, but has followed its roadmap since taking office.

Republicans have claimed, without real evidence, that the Education Department has succumbed to administrative bloat and that educational choices would be best left to states, which would build the bones of a privatized system. Trump’s actions are also partially just showboating for his base, his takedown of DEI boogeymen in education. But the consequences that would stem from butchering the Education Department would be real — and devastating, to students across the U.S. higher education system, from rural community colleges to top-ranked research universities.

The Education Department administers billions of dollars in federal Pell Grants and student loans, which help low-income and vulnerable populations attend college and ascend the social mobility ladder. The department monitors colleges that accept federal aid to ensure they don’t hawk junk degrees that lead to poor-paying jobs. It also investigates when colleges that receive federal financial aid discriminate against students for their race, for their sex, or disability.

The department’s demise would severely diminish or eliminate the federal government’s ability to uphold those responsibilities. Republicans have floated punting that work to other federal agencies, but they are already overburdened. And Trump will continue to starve them.

Below are stories of the Education Department at work, protecting and improving the lives of students.

The University of Southern California’s student health clinic for almost three decades employed only one full-time gynecologist: Dr. George Tyndall.

Tyndall in the 1990s became the subject of gruesome sexual assault allegations. His coworkers said he inappropriately photographed students’ genitals, according to The Los Angeles Times, which later won a Pulitzer Prize for its blockbuster report in 2018 on the now-late doctor.

Tyndall would regularly find excuses to insert his fingers in the genitals of women he was treating, or would make comments about their bodies, calling their skin “creamy” and referring to their “perky breasts,” according to the Times, which also reported USC knew of accusations against Tyndall but let him resign quietly with a financial payout.

The Times’ journalism spurred outrage and legal action against USC, which has paid at least $1.1 billion to settle various lawsuits regarding Tyndall.

Another entity stepped in when the allegations against Tyndall first came to light, and made sure USC reworked its sexual abuse policies to protect students from predation: the U.S. Department of Education.

The department’s Office for Civil Rights, which investigates discrimination in federally funded K-12 schools and colleges, opened a probe into the USC case in 2018. Tyndall’s actions constituted sex-based discrimination, the department later determined. The Education Secretary at the time? Betsy DeVos, Trump’s first-term nominee.

The Education Department forced USC to ensure it properly tracked sexual abuse complaints and ordered it to further review whether current and former employees acted properly if they had heard reports about Tyndall.

OCR has an essential job investigating cases like Tyndall’s, efforts that would fall back if the office was outside the Education Department. The Justice Department would be unlikely to take that work on because it is also facing cuts.

Across the country, colleges have a troubling history of ignoring or covering up discrimination and misconduct, allowing harm to persist unchecked. OCR plays a crucial role in uncovering systemic failures and holding institutions accountable — during Joe Biden’s presidency, OCR received 71,385 complaints and resolved 56,383 of them.

Stories of financial aid’s transformative impact are limitless.

A series nearly a decade ago from the National Association of Student Financial Aid Administrators highlighted financial aid success stories — from a longtime judge in Virginia who said financial assistance helped his single mother, a nurse, put him through school, to a first-generation physical education teacher in Washington who never thought she would go to college with a reading disability. Since then, reliance on student aid to attend college has only grown, with over half of all undergraduates receiving federal dollars.

The Education Department leads the federal financial aid system, which last year devoted $30 billion to federal Pell Grants to low- and middle-income families — including a large number of veteran students — to attend college. Many of the red states that went all-in for Trump had large contingents of Pell Grant recipients, according to data published last year, including:

Alabama — 125,913 Pell Grant recipients

Florida — 489,472

Missouri — 125,404

Tennessee — 133,225

Texas — 577,542

In 2020, USA Today published a tale of intrigue.

A South Dakota college, Reagan National University, had secured accreditation, which in theory signified it met certain standards of quality, and allowed it to access federal financial aid. Most colleges rely on this money to stay in business.

But Reagan National didn’t appear to even exist, USA Today uncovered. Reporters visited the purported Reagan National campus on a couple of occasions but found instead a vacant office building. It had no classes, no graduates, no instructors.

The situation prompted sharp questions for the accreditor who greenlit the operation, the Accrediting Council for Independent Colleges and Schools, or ACICS. The accreditor defended itself in the USA Today piece, saying colleges in its purview need to meet all of its benchmarks.

Except ACICS had been continually accused of failing to properly supervise the colleges under it, including two for-profit chains notorious for having defrauded students, ITT Technical Institute and Corinthian Colleges.

Those allegations mounted for years, but it was the Biden administration’s Education Department that finally ensured ACICS’s demise.

The department approves accreditors, which then vet and sign off on individual colleges. In 2022, the Education Department decided to no longer recognize ACICS as an accreditor, making certain it wouldn’t rubber stamp any more faux colleges, saving the government and taxpayers money in the process.

The duty of evaluating accreditors must remain with the Education Department, which is uniquely equipped to navigate accreditation’s complexities.

When Roberta was enrolling in Ashford University, a for-profit institution based in California, she was told the master’s in psychology she was working toward would help her land a job as therapist — only later to find out later the program wasn’t approved by the state.

She graduated from Ashford with $40,000 in loans, but would still need to shell out even more money for her dream career.

Roberta’s story was included in a lawsuit from California’s attorney general against Ashford. The college had faced accusations for years that it lied to students about their job prospects, transfer opportunities, and degree costs.

In 2022, a California court found credence in those allegations, which led to Ashford’s owner paying a roughly $21 million fine. The University of Arizona acquired Ashford in 2020 and converted it into an online school, though students and faculty are still questioning its quality.

The federal Education Department had a key part in the Ashford saga, too. It leveraged findings of the California attorney general’s probe into the school to help determine that students were entitled to loan discharges under a program that protected borrowers whose institutions deceived them.

The Biden Education Department twice forgave loans for Ashford students, including last month when it canceled $4.5 billion in loans for 261,000 Ashford students. Last year, it erased $72 million in loans for over 2,300 former students.

Debt burdens can hinder students from meeting life milestones — finishing their education elsewhere, or buying a house or a car.

By stepping in, the Education Department didn’t just erase debt, it gave thousands of students a chance to rebuild their futures.

This is the department at its best, not an overinflated bureaucracy the conservatives depict, but a government agency charged with making the lives of Americans better. If Trump's and Musk's underlings succeed in bulldozing the department, they won't be streamlining government, they’ll be erasing opportunity and accountability, leaving students locked out of the American (college) dream. The battle to preserve the Education Department isn’t just about policy, it’s about the future of American education itself.