Category: Linda mcmahon
Trump takes a wrecking ball to the woke campus economy
To the far-left loons and anti-American activists who dominate large swaths of the nation’s four-year college campuses, a reminder: Donald Trump is your president. And whether you like it or not, he now functions as your college dean.
The title may be unofficial, and no one expects Trump to hand out diplomas, but the reality is unavoidable. Through executive orders and funding decisions, Trump is now calling the shots in higher education. His administration is dismantling a long list of Obama-Biden-era policies that entrenched DEI bureaucracies, racial discrimination, radical gender ideology, and other woke orthodoxies that turned college campuses into centers of political indoctrination rather than education.
Faculty lounges and administrative offices dominated by liberal orthodoxy have failed students for too long.
Trump, alongside Education Secretary Linda McMahon, is not only shrinking the Department of Education’s bureaucratic footprint but demanding that universities deliver measurable value to students. For the first time in years, outcomes matter again.
End this discriminatory rule
That shift should become unmistakable this month, when the Department of Education launches the Accountability in Higher Education and Access through Demand-driven Workforce Pell Committee negotiated rulemaking. Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act directs the department to establish new accountability measures tied directly to student outcomes, including a uniform earnings premium standard for all colleges and universities.
This reform creates an opportunity to finally eliminate the Gainful Employment Rule, a discriminatory relic of the Obama and Biden administrations’ radical education agenda. Under Trump’s approach, earnings standards would apply across the board, regardless of an institution’s tax status or curriculum.
The goal is straightforward: Colleges should prepare students for productive careers. Programs will be evaluated by comparing graduates’ median earnings to those of working adults with only a high-school diploma — or, in the case of graduate programs, a bachelor’s degree. Programs whose graduates fail to outperform those benchmarks for two out of three years would lose access to federal student aid.
That standard exposes the true purpose of the GER under Democrat administrations. It was never about protecting students. It was about punishing institutions disfavored by the academic establishment — especially career colleges and faith-based schools — while shielding traditional four-year universities from scrutiny.
Biden’s war on for-profit schools
Obama and Biden applied the GER almost exclusively to proprietary schools, even though public and nonprofit universities enroll the vast majority of students. A Wall Street Journal analysis found that if the Biden administration’s debt-to-earnings metrics were applied evenly, nearly 80% of failing programs would be housed at public and nonprofit institutions.
The left sees no problem saddling students with six-figure debt for degrees in fashionable but economically useless fields. But students training to become construction managers, electricians, or caterers must be “protected” from choice — even though they typically graduate with far less debt and far better job prospects.
Selective enforcement reveals the real agenda. By targeting career colleges while exempting elite institutions, Democrat administrations sought to limit educational choice and justify mass student loan forgiveness. The system was designed to funnel students into four-year degree programs regardless of whether those programs matched their skills, interests, or career goals.
RELATED: Christian students are pushing back — and universities are cracking
Kent Nishimura/Bloomberg via Getty Images
Reversing the damage
It is no coincidence that public confidence in higher education collapsed during this same period. By 2023, a majority of Americans said a four-year degree was no longer worth the cost. Only about 30% of recent graduates found entry-level jobs in their field of study, and roughly two-thirds of Gen Z graduates say they would reconsider attending college if given the chance.
The AHEAD committee now has an opportunity to reverse that damage. By repealing the Gainful Employment Rule and implementing a single, fair accountability standard, it can restore value to higher education and respect the diversity of educational paths students choose.
Higher education should foster intellectual growth, opportunity, and freedom — not ideological conformity or lifelong debt. Faculty lounges and administrative offices dominated by liberal orthodoxy have failed students for too long. Americans should welcome a president who not only recognizes the problem but is finally doing something about it.
DOJ Sues Loudoun County for Transgender Bathroom Policy: ‘Students Do Not Shed Their First Amendment Rights at the Schoolhouse Gate’
The Department of Justice is suing the Loudoun County, Va. school board after the district punished Christian students who oppose sharing bathrooms with students of the other biological sex.
The post DOJ Sues Loudoun County for Transgender Bathroom Policy: ‘Students Do Not Shed Their First Amendment Rights at the Schoolhouse Gate’ appeared first on .
Trump admin takes major step toward dismantling Department of Education
The Trump administration is advancing its plan to dismantle the Department of Education, seeking to return more power to the states.
The department announced on Tuesday that it had entered into six new interagency agreements with four government agencies to “break up the federal education bureaucracy” and “ensure efficient delivery of funded programs.”
‘What we want to do is to show Congress that this implementation works.’
These new agreements involved partnerships with the Departments of Labor, Interior, Health and Human Services, and State.
“Cutting through layers of red tape in Washington is one essential piece of our final mission,” Secretary of Education Linda McMahon said. “As we partner with these agencies to improve federal programs, we will continue to gather best practices in each state through our 50-state tour, empower local leaders in K-12 education, restore excellence to higher education, and work with Congress to codify these reforms. Together, we will refocus education on students, families, and schools — ensuring federal taxpayer spending is supporting a world-class education system.”
The Education Department and the DOL will establish the Elementary and Secondary Education Partnership, which aims to “empower parents and states” to promote improvements in the education system that will better serve students.
“DOL will take on a greater role in administering federal K-12 programs, ensuring these programs are better aligned with workforce and college programs to set students up for success at every part of their education journey,” a press release from the Education Department read.
A separate partnership with the DOL aims to improve postsecondary education and workforce development programs. The Labor Department will administer grant programs to “help students from all walks of life obtain the credentials and career training they need to prosper and contribute to the American economy.”
Photo by Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images
The Department of the Interior will work with the Education Department to establish the Indian Education Partnership to improve Native American education.
“Through a vital partnership with the Department of Education, the Department of the Interior will assume administration for enhancing Indian education programs, streamlining operations, and refocusing efforts to better serve Native youth and adults across the nation,” Secretary of the Interior Doug Burgum stated.
The HHS will establish the Foreign Medical Accreditation Partnership to assess whether the standards of foreign medical schools are comparable to U.S. standards.
“Medical education must incorporate timely, rigorous science on nutrition, metabolism, and all medical subjects. [HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.] is leading the charge with American medical schools and HHS will encourage foreign medical schools through this partnership,” Health and Human Services Deputy Secretary Jim O’Neill stated.
HHS will also create the Child Care Access Means Parents in School Partnership to improve on-campus child care programs for parents attending college.
Lastly, the State Department will set up the International Education and Foreign Language Studies Partnership “to streamline international education program funding and data collection measures, consolidate program management, and advance national security interests.”
RELATED: Trump admin battles teachers’ unions in latest Education Department legal challenges
Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images
McMahon told CNN on Wednesday that these partnerships are not yet ready to implement but are in the “beginning stages” of establishing interagency agreements.
She acknowledged that the Trump administration would need congressional approval to make these moves permanent, adding that the current goal is to demonstrate that the changes will be effective.
“What we want to do is to show Congress that this implementation works,” McMahon told CNN.
Randi Weingarten, the head of the American Federation of Teachers, has previously pledged to take legal action against the Trump administration’s attempts to dismantle the Education Department.
Freedom Foundation CEO and Teacher Freedom Alliance President Aaron Withe responded to the Education Department’s latest “bold action” and the union’s roadblocks, in a statement emailed to Blaze News.
“President Trump is delivering on his promise to dismantle the federal education bureaucracy, and who is leading the opposition? Randi Weingarten and the teachers’ unions,” Withe stated. “The teachers’ unions have enjoyed unprecedented power over this department since Jimmy Carter created it as a political favor to the [National Education Association]. They’ve had decades to deliver results. Instead, American students keep falling further behind while spending keeps going up.”
“The unions oppose these reforms because they threaten the special access they’ve enjoyed for too long,” Withe continued. “Well, that era is over. Parents, students, and local communities deserve better than a system designed to serve union bosses. The Freedom Foundation applauds President Trump and Secretary McMahon for taking bold action to break up this failed bureaucracy and return control of education where it belongs.”
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