Update, March 21, 2025, 1:50 p.m.: President Trump told reporters Friday that key Department of Education programs, including its $1.6 trillion student loan portfolio and its oversight of special education programs, would be moved outside of the Department.
According to Trump, the Small Business Administration will now oversee student loans and the Department of Health and Human Services will manage special education and nutrition programs.
This announcement contradicts March 20 statements by White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt, who said that those programs would continue to operate from within the Education Department.
In an executive order signed March 20, President Donald Trump instructed Secretary of Education Linda McMahon to begin dismantling her agency, threatening federal financial aid, administration of Title I funds to low-income schools, and civil rights enforcement at educational institutions.
Republicans have called to abolish the Department of Education since the agency’s inception, but until now those calls never gained traction. Flanked in the Oval Office by children seated at school desks, Trump told reporters, “It sounds strange, doesn’t it? Department of Education. We’re going to eliminate it.”
Trump’s order directs McMahon to “take all necessary steps to facilitate the closure of the Department of Education and return authority over education to the States and local communities while ensuring the effective and uninterrupted delivery of services, programs, and benefits on which Americans rely.”
It also instructs McMahon to ensure that Department of Education funds are allocated and disbursed in line “with Federal law and Administration policy,” specifically referencing a previous executive order aimed at eliminating diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) programs.
Both McMahon and White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said that student loans, Pell Grants, funding for special education, and civil rights enforcement would “remain intact” and continue to operate from within the Department. However, Trump’s executive order did not state that any existing Department programs would be continued.
The Department of Education, as a congressionally created agency, cannot be abolished without an act of Congress, James Speta, Northwestern Pritzker School of Law administrative law professor, told the Maroon in February.
After Trump signed Thursday’s executive order, Senator Bill Cassidy (R-La.) said he would introduce a bill in Congress to eliminate the Department. However, Senate Republicans almost certainly lack the 60 votes needed for such legislation.
Established in 1979 under President Jimmy Carter, the Department of Education awards federal Pell Grants to undergraduate students “who display exceptional financial need.” Fifteen percent of UChicago students and more than 30 percent nationwide receive Pell Grants.
The agency is also responsible for administering the federal student loan program and the Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA), which UChicago’s financial aid office uses to determine eligibility for University grants and Federal Work-Study.
Along with providing financial support for students, the Department of Education enforces civil rights protections by withholding federal assistance from programs or institutions not in compliance. This enforcement also applies to private institutions, like UChicago, which receive federal funding for research and other activities.
The agency does not, as is often suggested by its opponents, control school policies and curricula or set minimum standards for graduation or enrollment.
Project 2025, the Heritage Foundation’s sweeping policy framework aimed at expanding executive power under the Trump administration, called for moving many of the Department’s key functions to other agencies. Per the plan, the Treasury Department would administer student loans and the Department of Justice would enforce civil rights laws in schools.
Stuart Eizenstat, chief domestic policy advisor to Carter, told the Maroon in February that such a reorganization would prove disastrous. “Those responsibilities would then be fulfilled by people without an education background,” Eizenstat said.
Whether an agency could refrain from acting on its congressional authority or shift its responsibilities to another agency, Speta told the Maroon, depended on the specifics of the legislation that created the agency and on unresolved legal questions concerning separation of powers.
Since taking office, Trump has repeatedly used the agency to target universities nationwide for perceived discrimination.
UChicago is currently one of 45 universities under investigation by the Department for alleged violations of Title VI of the Civil Rights Act, which prohibits racial discrimination by institutions that receive federal funding. In announcing the investigation, the Department cited the schools’ partnerships with the PhD Project, an organization that works to expand diversity in business school Ph.D. programs.
On March 19, the Trump administration froze $175 million in funding to the University of Pennsylvania for its policies regarding transgender athletes, which the administration referred to as “forcing women to compete with men in sports.”
Last week, the administration canceled $400 million in grants to Columbia University “due to the school’s continued inaction in the face of persistent harassment of Jewish students” and demanded, among other actions, that the school alter its procedures for handling protests.
These moves follow a February 14 letter sent by Acting Assistant Secretary for Civil Rights Craig Trainor, which informed educational institutions and agencies that they had two weeks to eliminate DEI programs or “face potential loss of federal funding.”
Although the current push to eliminate the Department is the most concerted effort in recent years, Republicans have long campaigned against the Department and attempted to abolish the agency as recently as 2023.
In his 1982 State of the Union address, President Ronald Reagan called for “dismantling the Departments of Energy and Education.”
Reagan’s push lacked sufficient congressional support and ultimately fell through. It is unclear to what extent congressional Republicans will work with Trump to dismantle the Department. The 2023 attempt to abolish the Department, attached as an amendment to a parents’ rights bill, similarly lacked enough Republican support to pass.
In its 2024 platform, the Republican Party pledged to “close the Department of Education in Washington, D.C. and send it back to the States, where it belongs, and let the States run our educational system as it should be run.”
On the campaign trail in 2024, Trump complained that the Department of Education had been infiltrated by “radicals, zealots, and Marxists.”
McMahon, who was confirmed as Secretary of Education by the Senate on March 3, wrote in a memo that day that she viewed her and her staff’s role as “accomplishing the elimination of bureaucratic bloat here at the Department of Education—a momentous final mission—quickly and responsibly.”
Eight days later, McMahon fired more than 1,300 Department employees, though she was later ordered to reinstate many of them after a federal judge determined that the mass layoff was likely illegal.
Asked for comment on the executive order and the firings, the Department of Education referred the Maroon to a Thursday statement by McMahon.
“Today’s Executive Order is a history-making action by President Trump to free future generations of American students and forge opportunities for their success,” McMahon’s statement reads in part. “We are sending education back to the states where it so rightly belongs.”
Critics of the Department typically point to low National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) scores, a benchmark assessment administered by the Department that tracks student performance in subjects like math, reading, and science, which have continued to decrease for many students since the pandemic.
In a March 19 comment to Fox News, the Trump administration provided additional ways in which it claimed the Department is failing.
“Over the past four years, Democrats have allowed millions of illegal minors into the country, straining school resources and diverting focus from American students,” White House spokesperson Harrison Fields told Fox. “Coupled with the rise of anti-American CRT and DEI indoctrination, this is harming our most vulnerable [students].”
“Closing the Department of Education would provide children and their families the opportunity to escape a system that is failing them,” Trump’s executive order said.
The White House did not respond to a request for comment.
Nathaniel Rodwell-Simon contributed reporting.
