6 higher education trends to watch in 2025

0
6 higher education trends to watch in 2025

This audio is auto-generated. Please let us know if you have feedback.

This year stands to bring about major changes to the higher education sector.

Later this month, President-elect Donald Trump will begin his second term in the White House, after promising to bring major shifts to federal higher education policy. Republicans also have control over both the Senate and the House, and with that power they may enact legislation overhauling everything from federal student lending to accreditation. 

Meanwhile, many colleges continue to grapple with enrollment and budgetary challenges. Those could worsen in 2025 as colleges face heavy costs and competition over a shrinking pool of students. 

To help higher education officials prepare for the year ahead, we’re rounding up six trends that we expect to shape the sector in 2025.

1. Lawmakers could pass major higher education policies

With Republicans set to hold the presidency, Senate and House, they have indicated they plan to enact Trump’s policy priorities through a process called reconciliation. Reconciliation only requires the Senate to have a simple majority to pass bills because it avoids the filibuster, which requires 60 votes to overcome. 

Republican’s priority legislation is primarily focused on noneducation measures like tax and immigration. But lawmakers may seek to offset the costs of their agenda through elements of the College Cost Reduction Act, a GOP-led higher education package proposed last year, said Jon Fansmith, senior vice president of government relations and national engagement at the American Council on Education.

The original CCRA’s proposals, which will have to be reintroduced to be considered in the new Congress, are wide-ranging. The legislative package included a risk-sharing policy that would put colleges on the hook for loans their students don’t pay off, limits on how much students could borrow, and rollbacks of a handful of Biden-era regulations. 

The nonpartisan Congressional Research Service estimated in October that the CCRA would shave $185.5 billion from the federal budget over the next decade. Much of the savings would come from the loss of certain federal lending programs and lower student borrowing. 

Those potential offsets are likely attractive to lawmakers, Fansmith said. 

“There’s a real risk of higher ed being pulled into a much bigger package as part of much bigger debates but in ways that are substantial and significant and really have some very harmful consequences for students and their families,” Fansmith said.

Fansmith laid out concerns with the risk-sharing proposal, arguing that it would disproportionately harm colleges that “are least capable of dealing with a negative financial penalty.” 

An ACE analysis last year found that colleges that enroll higher shares of Pell Grant-eligible students would be more likely to face financial penalties under the risk-sharing policy. In turn, those institutions would have less funding to devote to student services. 

“It’s a really, really problematic, really backwards way of trying to get better supports and services to students,” Fansmith said.

2. The fight over DEI could be waged at the federal level

Diversity, equity and inclusion underwent an onslaught of attacks from state lawmakers and institutional leaders last year, resulting in staffing cuts, bans on required diversity statements, and the closure of DEI offices. This year, colleges are likely to see further incursions against DEI programming at the federal level as well.

Project 2025 lays out one influential think tank’s conservative blueprint for the federal government under Republican leadership. It has labeled DEI as divisive and “anti-American propaganda.” It also suggests that DEI trainings “that promote critical race theory” should be a violation of Title VII, a federal law prohibiting employment discrimination. 

Project 2025 originated from The Heritage Foundation, one of 11 think tanks the American Association of University Professors found to be behind the wave of anti-DEI legislation sweeping through statehouses. 

While Trump sought to distance himself from Project 2025 pre-election, many of his closest allies and supporters helped create the framework and continued to back it publicly. 

Project 2025 also calls for prohibiting accreditors from mandating colleges to adopt DEI policies. 

link

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *