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Throughout his campaign ahead of the 2024 election, President Donald Trump promised to disband the United States Department of Education. Though he hasn’t done so yet, he has made strides to restrict American education.

Trump wasted no time as he signed a staggering number of executive orders in his first three weeks in office, slashing down years of precedent and federal resources. Among the orders was a freeze on federal grants and international student visa changes, which would significantly hinder accessible education for the Syracuse University student body if implemented.

Quickly after Trump signed to stop federal spending on education, people questioned which specific endowments were gutted under the order and a sense of uncertainty was founded. When prompted at a press briefing following its release, White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt couldn’t clearly state what funding would be halted.

Courts swiftly moved against the bill, with multiple judges ruling to block it. Even with this obstruction, the Trump administration still declares the executive order in full effect and is fighting the judges’ orders.

In spite of the presidential directive’s obscure details, it’s clear educational grants will not be protected.

For my fellow college students, this means our time in college may become alarmingly more expensive and risks exposing students to major financial obstacles when aiming for higher education.

SU’s tuition without aid is priced at $63,710 as of 2024. When you add in room and board, fees and other miscellaneous costs, the expected price reaches $91,034.

Nationally, 85.4% of full-time students receive financial aid, with 51.2% receiving the federal grants that Trump hopes to discontinue. At SU, over 80% of the student body receives some kind of federal aid, with 24% — 3,778 students, roughly an entire grade level — receiving federal grants. This illustrates how college students are directly impacted by Trump’s executive actions.

Access to financial aid is SU’s way of making its resources accessible at a cost tens of thousands of dollars less than standard. While still significantly expensive, this aid subsidizes the price of a bachelor’s degree and effectively allows greater access to quality education for marginalized students.

Blocking federal grants for undergraduates adds barriers to an American education experience already littered with obstacles, hurting accessible education and the SU student body as a whole. Systemic racism and socioeconomic differences in college application resources will only worsen and the lack of opportunities for underrepresented young students will grow. On top of this, if Trump gets his way, our classrooms would be stripped of the valuable and varied lived experiences and perspectives of international students and those depending on aid.

Trump also signed an executive order implementing an extreme vetting process for people waiting for U.S. visas. The president simply refuses to stop putting roadblocks in students’ rights to education.

Ilana Zahavy | Design Editor

This bill would require universities to restrict admissions from certain countries deemed “public safety threats” by the federal government. It would also lengthen the time frame for international students to receive their U.S. visas.

Although this act purports itself to protect American citizens from crime, the order is inherently racist and a direct attack on international students. It denies access to some of the globe’s most renowned higher-education institutions.

The Trump administration continues to steamroll all efforts toward accessible schooling with its threat to dismantle the Department of Education. Doing so would remove access to free school meals, plus the rest of the federal financial aid programs that include Pell Grants and student loans.

This is a direct attack on lower-income families and students as the resources being stripped away help to alleviate the emotional and financial burdens that schooling brings.

Title 1 schools serve a large number of impoverished students, and are also targeted by this shift in policy. They rely heavily on federal funding to provide adequate resources like reading specialists to their students. This changing care and supervision of education subsidies is estimated to negatively impact 2.8 million students in low-income communities, per the National Education Association.

Further, this order fuels larger future class sizes. Schools will struggle to obtain the money needed to supply adequate teaching salaries and rosters. Disability program resources may suffer under less agency oversight, increasing the amount of students with disabilities whose needs aren’t met in the first place.

Added discrimination in the classroom is bound to lead to lower motivation and academic achievement, which I predict will cause higher dropout rates as students would feel targeted and unsafe.

This leering dynamic exacerbates disparities in a system already weakening students’ enrichment that hail from diminished communities. But, we must collectively choose to not be submissive and sit idly by as our international peers and those reliant on federal aid disappear from our classes without a word.

SU’s leadership must denounce this destructive policy. It’s on us, though, to hold the administration accountable for finding methods of lowering tuition and attendance costs, continuing to subsidize education and being proud to dedicate the school toward being an environment of diversity and inclusion.

Ally Price is a freshman majoring in political science. Her column appears bi-weekly. She can be reached at dadisant@syr.edu.

Published on February 11, 2025 at 10:05 pm