Trump's plans and Project 2025

Although Trump has claimed he doesn't know where Project 2025 came from or who was involved in drafting it, his potential future administration is clearly the focus. How Project 2025 could impact U.S. higher education is speculative but raises very unsettling questions about the politicization of higher education through appointments to boards as well as intervention in hiring of campus administrators.

In addition to Project 2025, Trump has proposed revolutionizing higher education through a national on-line university. Skeptics say that, even if he is able to gain reelection, the proposed university will end up like "the wall" - a promise unfulfilled. The strategy to fund it is to use taxes on college and university endowments that are larger than $500,000 to redirect to the new higher education option.

Project 2025 and the national on-line university are designed to addresses multiple points of dissatisfaction that are expressed by his electoral base. The issues that are wrapped into them include: cost, recognizing prior learning, expanding access, replacing "radical left" accreditors (dismantling DEI), and uprooting "wokeness."

"I think it suggests frustration with the political direction of higher education. Trump thinks he can score political points by basically poking higher education and saying that they're too liberal and woke and that his university won't be like that," opined a professor at the University of Tennessee. Trump's choice of J.D. Vance as his VP running mate signals two things: 1) an attempt to reinforce the MAGA base in the Midwest, and 2) the critique of higher education and its role. The AAUP's new president labeled Vance a Fascist for his condemnation of U.S. higher education and calling professors "the enemy." A Trump 2nd term would assuredly result in increased pressure on higher education intensified by controversies that have unfolded during the Biden intermission.

Vice President Harris' selection of Tim Walz as her running mate in the 2024 election appears to be a direct counter to Trump's Project 2025. Walz' advocacy for education and policy positions are likely to be targets for Trump and Vance as they seek to take the U.S. Presidency from what they label as "dangerous liberalism."

The Hamas and Israel war added fuel to the fire of anti-wokeness with higher education institutions attempting to navigate the ground of allowing expression of different views in the face of attempts to silence any advocacy for Palestine as anti-semitic. It is easy to conclude that Trump might have observed DeSantis' attack on higher education in Florida as an indication that having a higher education strategy as part of his platform could pay dividends. DeSantis' assault has taken on many of the same issues that Trump champions.