Trump’s Order to Shutter Education Department Ushers in Period of Uncertainty for Universities

Updated March 24, 2025, at 3:00 p.m.

After firing half of the Education Department’s personnel, President Donald Trump signed an executive order Thursday to close the Education Department – the latest blow to higher education and a move that puts the status of crucial programs, like student aid, in limbo.

The order alone can not fully dismantle the department without an act of Congress, but it could lead to a reshuffling of many of the department’s key programs to other agencies.

While the order directs the U.S. Secretary of Education to “take all necessary steps to facilitate the closure of the Department of Education,” it says to do so “while ensuring the effective and uninterrupted delivery of services, programs, and benefits on which Americans rely.”

The Department of Education manages $1.6 trillion in student loans, enforces civil rights at schools and universities, and provides hundreds of millions of dollars in funding for research at higher education institutions.

A day after signing his order, Trump said at a White House event that the Small Business Administration “will handle all of the student loan portfolio.”

After the SBA announced plans to fire 43 percent of its workforce the same day as Trump’s remarks, Paul Reville, former Massachusetts Secretary of Education and a Harvard Graduate School of Education professor, said it’s questionable whether it can effectively manage student loans.

“There’d be reason to wonder whether they can or not, since most of the people who worked on those grants and on student loans at the Department will now be fired, and this new agency to which they’re going has already experienced personnel cuts themselves,” Reville said.

“It raises the question: who’s going to administer those loans?” he added.

Trump’s order also compares the size of the federal student loan program to the size of Wells Fargo, one of the largest private banks in the U.S., which has 200,000 employees compared to the Office of Federal Student Aid’s 1,500 employees.

The order states that “the Department of Education is not a bank, and it must return bank functions to an entity equipped to serve America’s students.”

Kenneth K. Wong, a professor of education policy at Brown University and a former advisor to the U.S. Secretary of Education, said that another potential avenue for the student loan program is outsourcing to private financial institutions, which aligns with the Trump administration’s goals to downsize the federal government by partnering with the resources of the private sector.

Wong said that this move could prove harmful to low-income students. While the federal government ensures “full, equitable access” for student loans, Wong said private lenders “could be financially conservative” and set different criteria and interest rates for students.

Another key office of the Department of Education is the Office of Civil Rights, which could be moved to the Department of Justice, according to the administration.

After Trump’s signed the executive order, U.S. Secretary of Education Linda McMahon told reporters that “the Department of Justice already has a civil rights office, and I think that there is an opportunity to discuss with Attorney General Bondi about locating some of our civil rights work there.”

While Trump’s order condemns federal control over education and aims to revert authority over to states, Wong said that the Trump administration will begin “re-prioritizing” OCR resources to “move more into that space in higher education in terms of making sure that university policies around the country are in compliance with the Trump administration’s policy.”

The Trump administration has already been ramping up its use of civil rights authority by cutting federal funding to Columbia University over pro-Palestine protests and to the University of Pennsylvania over transgender athlete policies. The OCR recently sent a letter warning Harvard of punishment for allegedly allowing “antisemitic harassment” on its campus.

“They’re now leaning into public and private institutions to tell them what they can and can’t teach and how they go about their business,” Reville said. “This is just an unprecedented level of federal involvement in higher education.”

Wong said he is especially worried about the elimination of education research grants through the Institute of Education Sciences, which funds research projects on education-related issues and the collection of statistics used for education-planning systems.

The IES, which recently saw cuts of $900 million, has given a total of $60 million in research grants to Harvard faculty since 2005, as well as funding for Harvard’s Center for Education Policy Research.

“This will create perhaps significant disincentive for future generations to commit to education research and education in general,” Wong said.

Wong called Trump’s executive order “a historic moment” that creates “uncertainty with regard to the future of the core functions of the agency.”

Regina M. Federico, a civil litigator in Boston who specializes in higher education disciplinary misconduct, said “it’ll be very interesting to see how the tasks of the Department of Education are divided among existing federal agencies.”

Federico said now “is a critical time to monitor the courts” as Trump’s efforts to dismantle the Department of Education will likely face legal challenges.

Reville said that at a time when “most nations are bending over backwards” to invest in education and make higher education more affordable, “we have an administration that’s basically saying education isn’t important enough at the national level for us to even have it in the cabinet.”

“I think that’s a big mistake for the country,” he added.

—Staff writer Annabel M. Yu can be reached at annabel.yu@thecrimson.com. Follow her on X @annabelmyu.