Newly-inaugurated President Donald J. Trump may enact one of the policies he has been most associated with, Project 2025.
Project 2025 is roughly a 900-page document published by the Heritage Foundation on what Trump and his administration should do within his first 180 days of inauguration.
However, Trump claims that this project is not his idea, saying, “Project 2025 has nothing to do with me.”
He only said this after Project 2025 was released to the public and faced heavy backlash.
Before it had been officially released, at the Heritage Foundation’s annual leadership conference he said, “They’re going to lay the groundwork and detail plans for exactly what our movement will do.”
Many of the authors of Project 2025 were in the former Trump Administration, and many are predicted to be appointed to the new Trump Administration.
A co-author of Project 2025, Russel Vought, who was in the former Trump Administration, was recorded saying, “He’s very supportive of what we do.”
Whether or not Trump truly supports Project 2025 may only be known once he is finally inaugurated as the president and decides whether or not to follow the plans laid out by Project 2025. And, while the entire Project 2025 document is important to look at, the 61 pages dedicated to education are the most relevant to HCP students and teachers.
One of the Primary focuses of Project 2025 is the breaking up, and eventual abolishment of the U.S. Department of Education (DOE). They intend to achieve this by dismantling some of the programs the DOE manages and transferring control of the rest of the programs to various other departments over the next ten years.
The author of the education segment of Project 2025, Lindsey M. Burke, wrote, “Federal money is inevitably accompanied by rules and regulations that keep the influx of funds from having much, if any, impact on student outcomes.” (320)
They provide seven graphs as their evidence for this point. On page 329, they present graphs that show, from 2012-2020, nine-year-old reading scores have fallen by an average of one point, from a score of 221 to score of 220, and 13-year-old reading scores fell from 263-260. Again, on page 329, they show that from 2012-2020, nine-year-old math scores fell from 244-241, and 13-year-old math scores fell from 285-280. Meanwhile, the amount of government appropriations regarding education has risen from around 60 billion dollars to 95 billion dollars from the years 2010-2020. While the government appropriations have had a roughly 60% increase in ten years, compared to inflation’s 18.7%, the total amount that the government has spent on education has decreased. The U.S. spent 191 billion dollars on education in 2010, but only 161 billion dollars in 2020; a roughly 16 percent decrease.
In place of the DOE, all educational policies and funding would be managed at the state level, and all current funding would be transferred to states. This means that local representatives would have more say in what gets taught, and funding would be based on the amount of money the state pulls in taxes.
Currently, schools receive government funding based on the number of students they teach. Under Project 2025’s plan, every parent would have the option to direct the money the school is paid to teach their child into their own private Education Savings Account (ESA). They accredit the great success of Arizona’s form of ESAs as inspiration for this idea, however they were distinctly different.
Rather than Education Savings Accounts, they were called Empowerment Scholarship Accounts (ESA’s), which were first created in Arizona in 2011, and only those in extenuating circumstances, like having a disability or attending a school district with a ranking of D or F, could apply.
Another item in the document was abolishing various forms of loan forgiveness, such as Public Service Loan Forgiveness (PSLF). PSLF is a government program that removes all left-over student loan debt if you have been paying it off for the last ten years and work in a non-profit organization or a government job. This program is supposed to encourage people to enter low paying government jobs like firefighting, teaching, government, nursing, public interest law, the military and religious work. Since the PSLF program started four years ago, roughly $180 billion has been forgiven.
All federal student loan programs will be consolidated into one federal loan program, which would give greater power to fewer people to decide who would get a loan.
State agencies will be allowed to give out Title IV funding, which is a loan program that is intended for students wishing to attend postsecondary school, however, Title IV loan forgiveness will have greater restrictions placed on it.
Burke wrote, “Private lenders, backed by government guarantees, would compete to offer student loans, including subsidized and unsubsidized, loans.” (340)
There is a lot more within the Project 2025 document, however these are what’s most likely to affect any Harding students, and graduates. Whether education will improve, worsen, or stay the same won’t be known until these plans are ultimately enacted. However, we do not even know if the Trump administration will. Only time will tell.
