(WASHINGTON)— For the first time in more than seven decades, Congress has passed a law that will make higher education drastically less affordable and less accessible for students. It is the latest move in the Trump administration’s effort to undermine and dismantle higher education across the country.
The 2025 Reconciliation Bill, dubbed by President Trump as the ‘One Big Beautiful Bill Act,’ not only slashes federal student financial aid funding, placing students in a financial chokehold, but reveals the true nature behind months of attacks on higher education by the White House. Namely, the previously inconceivable idea that the government can assert control of content on campus, can restrict and place ideological conditions on research funding, and now, that it can and will restrict access to higher education, generally, by severely cutting financial aid.
The reconciliation bill is an extension of the ongoing efforts to squander free expression in higher education: price out the average American student while cutting off resources that might help underserved students succeed, and limit the topics that can be taught in the classroom. The bill will irreversibly change the landscape of higher education–creating campuses that are echo chambers of the ideology of the Trump administration and its loyalists.
Before the Senate hastily passed the bill, more than 100 former college presidents sent a letter to Senate Majority Leader Thune and Senate Minority Leader Schumer highlighting the harmful consequences to colleges and universities and urging them to encourage colleagues to reject the House version of the Reconciliation bill.
They wrote: “There is nothing in the long history of federal aid to education that can remotely compare to the effort to reduce federal student aid that we see in the House bill. The results of such a policy are all too predictable and run counter to our shared interest in strengthening our citizenry, workforce, and next generation of leaders – many students and families will find the programs that they have benefited from are no longer available.”
While the Senate did mitigate some of the bill’s worst provisions, limiting student aid eligibility restrictions for immigrant students and grandfathering in previous loan eligibility for current borrowers, the version senators passed and sent on to the White House for signing is a policy disaster.
Since the G.I. Bill opened the doors to higher education to Americans of modest means in the post-World War II years, we have never witnessed an effort to limit the pathways to college for so many people. That is what this new law does.
President Trump’s demands have put colleges and universities between a rock and a hard place, leaving campus leaders frustrated and uncertain what to do. Do they cut programs, specialized offices, and courses or set restrictive campus speech policies based on programs and ideas the administration is targeting, or do they risk losing federal funding and the ability to enroll international students?
After spending months trying to remain in compliance with vague demands from the federal government, colleges and universities find that whatever they do is just not enough. Even after some schools complied with initial orders, they remain under the threat of draconian funding cuts because the goal posts continue to move.
Schools have eliminated their diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) offices/programs, while others have narrowed the scope of student support services to avoid retaliation from the Trump administration. University presidents, faculty, and students have been the targets of Congressional probes into disciplinary actions (or perceived lack thereof) in relation to campus protests, and recently, the Justice Department and Office of Civil Rights have seemed to leverage questions about DEI programming and campus responses to antisemitism to demand changes in university leadership.
By attacking higher education, the administration swiftly ushered in chaos and confusion, leaving many campus leaders with more questions than answers.
Passage of the ‘One Big Beautiful Bill’ will bring long-lasting hardship by making college unaffordable and unattainable for working- and middle-class Americans, many of whom represent marginalized populations and underserved communities.
The Trump Administration’s attack on higher education started with an effort to assert control over content and governance and do away with so-called “illegal DEI,” gender diversity, and antisemitism. Expanding this effort to reduce government’s support for financial aid is dramatically short-sighted for our economy and our democracy.
