President Donald Trump has paid special attention to education during his first months in office. Supported by his Supreme Court’s 2023 decision to overturn affirmative action, he rolled back diversity, equity and inclusion efforts in schools, demanding that they end any diversity initiatives involving race or risk losing funding from the Department of Education. This aims to end racially conscious training for teachers and the teaching of any race or gender theory in classrooms. Fortunately, schools are unlikely to institute this demand since funding cuts lack legal support.
His administration also moved to allow Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents to enter schools to arrest any students who may not have a legal immigration status. He has not only made the classroom an unstable environment for immigrant students, but his focused attacks on the transgender community have led to the termination of discrimination protections for trans students. Transgender individuals and children of immigrant families are forced to question if it is safe to attend school in America because their identity puts them in danger.
Pitt is already seeing the harm of the Trump regime’s attack on education as a result of slashes in NIH funding. His actions, intended to promote efficient government spending, have caused medical researchers at Pitt to halt project efforts, leaving them untouched or unfinished. DEI orders also leave many professors and students, including myself, to question the fate of our research outside the realm of health sciences that consider race and gender as topics of analysis, as these terms are erased from the public vocabulary.
Political scholars identify Trumpism as radical right-wing populism, which asserts its followers as “pure people” and those who oppose them as “corrupt elites,” including people with higher education. Further, the MAGA movement claims that Trump is the only one who can save Americans from the moral collapse of society.
American populists did not always have a vengeance for education. In the late 19th century, white farmers formed a union, known as the Farmers’ Alliance, to push for greater public education and expand college and research funding. This was an effort to give true American citizens the necessary tools to oppose a corrupt government in order to protect their democracy.
Somewhere along the line, the same Americans who claim to be “patriots,” still a population of people largely excluded from college, stopped fighting to expand education. Now, they see schools and colleges as left-wing institutions corrupting their children’s minds and the well-being of the nation.
It is true that the earning gap between the college-educated and those with only a high school degree has grown and continues to be more disparate. Plus, the cost of tuition has been on a steady incline for at least the past 20 years. Education is increasingly harder to obtain, so in a sense, the highly educated are society’s elites. But it seems counterintuitive to decrease education funding instead of increasing the rest of the population’s access to it.
To disenchant from this confusing paradox, it is necessary to reevaluate changes in the accessibility of this college education that divides the American population. The college attendance rates for Black and Hispanic individuals since 2000 have seen substantial growth, and this change is especially evident for women of color. In 2023, women of color made up 24.8% of those enrolled in higher education.
Additionally, in 2020, 30 years after the initial expansion of LGBTQ+ campus programs, 62% of college campuses had queer student groups. 59.7% of transgender people ages 18-40 have attended a four-year university, but 38.8% of these individuals experience some form of bullying and harassment during their time at these institutions due to the lack of discrimination protections. Legal safeguards and supportive faculty at universities are necessary to support trans students in their endeavors to gain degrees, who have historically been plagued by mental health struggles and discrimination.
Access to education grants disadvantaged populations a greater chance at economic and social mobility. The policies Trump and his allies have targeted, including the 2023 affirmative action decision, current regressions in DEI, student rights for trans and immigrant students and cuts in funding for research that aims to improve the well-being of oppressed communities, all harm the social mobility of people of color and queer people, who face decreased student retention if they do not have the support of their universities.
This cultural backlash attempting to reinstate white supremacy in education is a common topic of exploration in studies of populism. Political scientist Pippa Norris spearheads this theory of populist demand. She proposes that the political aggravation of older generations, due to the liberalization of society, leads them to support conservative right-wing populism in hopes of returning to old societal norms. But Norris’ theory is frequently challenged, as although current cultural backlash includes older generations, it is successful due to the support of young people.
The American right-wing populist cause has become a fight to regain a society that prioritizes the success of white people — mainly white men — through the denial of equity for groups that have been subjugated throughout American history. The fight to reinstate a hierarchy based on race and gender in the U.S. has resulted in the dissolution of fair educational opportunities that improve society as a whole.
What those who support these policies fail to see is that education is not a selfish virtue but an empowering tool. The denial of this right to innovation harms democracy and is currently amplifying the reach of an authoritarian executive branch.
In truth, current education reforms are not going to benefit anyone. The K-12 public school system is what allows low-income individuals to increase their social mobility. Taking resources from the Department of Education will not decrease the dramatic “diploma divide,” which exaggerates an already polarized American public by increasing the income gap. Excluding students of color, immigrants and trans students from classrooms will not allow other children to have a better educational experience. It will deprive other people’s children of their right to knowledge and foster hate between children who are not born with inherent prejudice.
Creating equitable opportunities for Black kids to go to college does not give white kids a worse chance of getting in on “merit.” It means the kids whose parents are rich alumni, who can afford to pay expensive tuition in full, get to fill even more seats. By decreasing access to education and research opportunities, the gap between poor kids and rich kids will grow even more, inhibiting those at the bottom from climbing the ladder. So, let’s regain focus on who the true elites are and fight for an education system that will raise kids from diverse backgrounds, not lock them out of the classroom.
Julianna Steach believes every person has a right to education. Write to her at [email protected].
