If there is any consistent theme that runs through the Trump administration’s “governance,” it is antipathy to science and education. RFK, Jr. presides over a truly horrifying assault on medical science; Trump’s torrent of Executive Orders has hobbled government’s ability to deal with climate change (which MAGA denies)…the list goes on.
And then there’s the Right’s persistent, vicious war on education. Theirs is a movement that is trying–with some terrifying successes–to take America back to the Dark Ages. That effort isn’t new–the now decades-old effort to privatize education, to evade the First Amendment’s Separation of Church and State and destroy public education by sending students and tax dollars to religious schools– has recently been joined by an all-out assault on the nation’s universities.
It isn’t just Trump’s assault on elite institutions like Columbia and Harvard. As a recent report from The New Republic documents, among the other obscenities in Trump’s “Big Beautiful Bill” are measures that amount to “an extinction-level event” for the nation’s universities. As the article warns, “If you think the last few months have been bad for Harvard, brace yourself—the “big, beautiful bill” is coming, and with it, a new dimension of destruction.”
While it’s mostly gone unremarked upon in the mainstream media, institutions of higher learning across the country are about to be pummeled by the looming reconciliation bill, which may portend an extinction event for higher education as we know it. The bill weaponizes working-class families’ reliance on debt to finance their college dreams with such intensity that not only will it push millions to the financial brink, it will push them out of higher education altogether.
As the report makes clear, the fallout from these provisions will be monumental. The effect will be to deprive the schools that manage to survive of working- and middle-class families. A college education will once again be within reach of only the wealthy.
As the article notes, millions of people already consider a university education “to be a costly endeavor that is irrelevant to their everyday life.” That reality would suggest that we should remake higher education into a much more accessible endeavor– that legislators should recognize that improving the educational level of a population translates directly into social and fiscal health. But–consistent with the rest of a bill that honest labelling would title “Protecting Plutocracy”–the legislation would do the opposite. “It will cement the stereotype of higher education as an elite institution into an ironclad reality.”
This existential assault on higher education is not inadvertent–not an unanticipated consequence of fiscal legislation. It is entirely consistent with the goals of Project 2025 and the far-Right anti-intellectual MAGA figures who have already decimated much of Florida’s higher education landscape. The article includes a quotation from influential conservative activist Christopher Rufo, confirming the desired results. “Reforming the student loan programs could put the whole university sector into a significant recession” and state of “existential terror.”
And just in case American voters return a sane occupant to the Oval Office, the bill removes the power of a future President to cancel federal student loans.
While details are still being negotiated between the obtuse and vicious GOP members of the House and Senate, if the measure passes in anything like its current form, eight million student debtors will see their monthly payments spike from $0 to over $400.
Dentists and doctors who choose to work in low-paying community health care centers will no longer be eligible for Public Service Loan Forgiveness programs, dramatically reducing the number of health care providers in communities that are already underserved. The bill even comes after the long-standing, Republican-approved federal student loan repayment plans, which allow borrowers to discharge their debts after a certain number of years of regular payments.
The House version cuts Pell Grants and increases the course load required for part-time students to access aid. People with jobs or family responsibilities will find it nearly impossible to comply. And House Republicans want colleges and universities to pay back unpaid federal loans extended to “high risk” students–a move designed to penalize institutions that serve low-income students who are more likely to default, turning “the working-class kid studying to become a social worker, artist, or a physician into a liability to her university.”
None of this is accidental.
A recent Heritage Foundation report recommends terminating higher education “subsidies” in order to “increase the married birthrate.” In plain English, it’s an effort to reduce women’s access to higher education–an access that has facilitated women’s growing civic and economic equality. MAGA wants more babies and fewer women in the workforce.
The “Big Beautiful Bill” is a MAGA wet dream.
Suicide by MAGA is appropriate. Their attack on Climate Change alone is an existential threat. Healthcare attacks threaten the health of one and all. Our ignorance in reading and critical thinking abilities has aided Trump in degrading our institutions is a threat to our entire system and way of life. I was out on the No KIng’s demonstrations with my walker and will be back out in two weeks. These are the first demonstrations I have taken part in in 52 years.
The financial situation for college is really not new. Now, however, with the fascists in charge, elitism is back in and egalitarian society is out. In my book, “Saving the Seed Corn …” I mention an interview with one of the “elite” universities. He said that they have to raise tuition to satisfy the egoism of the parents who want to brag about sending their kids to such an expensive school. Here’s how that worked:
I graduated from Ohio University in 1965 and NEVER paid more than $500 per semester in tuition. Today, that number is closer to $8,000 per semester. Housing and food, of course, also cost much more than what I paid. I worked a summer factory job each year and was able to save enough to cover my tuition and books. What summer jobs pay $16,000 + for three months? Oh. And that was at a state-supported school.
I earned a master’s degree from San Diego State in 1974. My highest tuition for a semester there was $121.00. Then Ronald Reagan entered the scene and shot state-supported tuitions all to hell. Republicans have been trying to screw the middle class for decades.
The logic? Elites vote for Republicans and the un-educated don’t vote. It’s a self-fulfilling apostasy on the once greatness of our nation. But, as Marx wrote, un-fettered capitalism will destroy itself from within. The Great Depression was a warning. The Great Recession was a warning. The financial collapse of 2008 was a warning.
And yet … Republicans continue to promote the very things that destroy democracies and economies. Why? Greed of Todd’s oligarchs directs their every decision. And here we are.
Everybody hates the Big Ugly Bill, but Republicans fear Orange Jesus (OJ) so much that it will very likely pass. The dumbing down of America will be on its final leg. What I’m wondering now is: When will they bring back debtor’s prisons? They will have to do something about those who don’t pay what they owe. I’m certain that E Jean Carroll and the state of New York will be dealt with in the near future. Meanwhile, OJ continues to enrich himself and his family and still has three years to continue to suck at the public teat.
Red states are already betting on child labor. How many kids will even finish high school, let alone go to college.. They aren’t taking us back to the 1950s. We’re going all the way back to the 1890s.
The fact that they’re doing this through the normal process makes it much harder to reverse. Executive Orders can easily be reversed by the next President.
Every day since the Big Shitty Bill has been introduced in the Senate, I’ve received news alerts about Senators who are turning their backs on the reconciliation package. The Parliamentarian who cancelled several of the clauses has inflamed Trump and his sycophantic minions, who are demanding that this person be fired. I just received another one while reading Sheila’s post.
Even though Republicans are hiding from their constituents, they are getting a lot of feedback from their district. They are having to ramp up their security because of the threats. It would seem that some people are already on the edge and this shitty bill will push them over the edge. What do they say about desperate people?
Venture over to Todd Young’s page and look at the comments under his post. He’s feeling the heat. However, there are way too many Republicans who feel confident that if they approve of the shitty bill, they will still get elected, or there will be no future elections.
The Republican assholes that post hate and venom on Twitter, have diehard loyalists who support every word. They are slobbering over themselves about killing Arabs and mistreating immigrants. They see nothing wrong with the proposed “Alligator Alcatraz” in the middle of a swamp in South Florida. Any idea of the atmosphere of living in a tent with no A/C, smack dab in the middle of the Everglades, with hurricane season on the way?
It’s hard to believe that my fellow humans harbor this much hatred for one another. They are so ignorant that they believe every word uttered by Trump. Vern believes it’s 25% of Americans, but I think it’s much higher. There are so many silent Americans who are closet racists and only want to be surrounded by white people. And yes, they want women to stay at home and be obedient wives. They’re not Christians; they just resent having to compete with women for jobs.
The oligarchy has done such an excellent job selling unfettered capitalism to the masses and to reject socialism, it’s unbelievable. The ignorance of the working class tells me that higher education has failed the masses, along with the media. They need serious reform, but not the one proposed by the president of his own failed institution. 😉
Mamdani is exposing the Democratic Party as just another key organ of the oligarchy. And, as I mentioned earlier, the level of ignorance portrayed by Americans is remarkable. Look at global rankings in every category, like education and democracy, even quality of life metrics, and guess who occupies the top five consistently and has for decades? Yep, that would be the Nordic countries that are democratic socialists. The USA is now ranked 28th on the Global Democracy Index, yet everybody, including the media, is clamoring that Trump is killing democracy. LOL
If you look at Canada’s new leader in the room with Trump, Rubio, and Vance, it’s like watching something out of the Twilight Zone. If anyone thinks Trump’s crew is going to do great things for the USA, start tracking global rankings between Canada and the USA for the next four years.
Todd, you nailed it…again.
Time for another email to Young. We all must keep up our protests less he is allowed to say, “My constituents never told me not to vote for it.”
Don’t help MAGA tell their lies.
The value of a college education accompanied by $200k-$300k of student loan indebtedness is of debatable value. Students will go to their graves without extinguishing that crushing level of debt.
When the Congress excluded student debt from obligations that may be dismissed in bankruptcy, were they primarily doing the bidding of the students, the universities or the banks?
Two intersecting curves could be plotted, one starting high on the left and decreasing on the right, and the other a mirror image. One I would choose to label “knowledge”, the other “belief”, two of the many labels language provides for us to better understand the universe. We have many ways to measure “knowledge” but few to measure “belief”.
Distinguishing the two is relatively easy, though, because “knowledge” is based on measurable, verifiable, certifiable, repeatable facts; the other is ethereal, and we all are free to choose among many alternative realities.
Trump and those who choose to give him power by voting for him are belief-centric and knowledge-light, and that makes them electable and appointable politicians, and politics is a fashion. We have given power to a fashion of these times.
They in DC are as happy as pigs in slop, but governing as opposed to politicking does not lend itself to beliefs; it demands knowledge, which is in very short supply now in the District. We have a fashionable government now, not an informed one, and that ought to terrify all of us, but it does only an increasing few of us, but in the recent past, we were not enough to have avoided inflicting it on all of us.
If you believe in our country throughout all times, as opposed to only in times of fashion-forwardness, you have confidence in the temporal nature of these fashions.
Neither of my parents went to college. My mother (valedictorian of her class in HS) was told by her father that women should marry and have a family, no need for college. All of her brother had access to higher education. My dad was an orphan and eventually got a GED. Their six children include 2 teachers with Masters + degrees and one a law degree. Their grandchildren include teachers/professors, lawyers and entrepreneurs, all of whom have attended institutions of higher learning. At least one of them paid student loans, despite scholarships, for decades, all while working in the public education sector.
What is being done to public education, not only in Indiana, but throughout the country, will eventually lead to a theocracy (Beckwith is a classic example of what that would mean) or an Orban-like autocracy of white Christian men.
Purdue, Ball State and now, IU have been/are going to be job training institutions, driven by corporations needing workers trained to their specific needs, all on the taxpayers’ and students’ dimes.
Liberal arts and fine arts are being pushed out of those schools even as we speak. Bopp and company, at the behest of Braun and the super-majority, gerrymandered General Assembly, have already started cutting degree programs in the Jordan School of Music. Is anyone surprised?
Educating the people will be seen as an act of sedition sooner than we ever thought possible. It is already happening.
Rand Paul has been aiming for the end of the Dep’t of Education for many years.
“The dumbest student I ever had” knows of no use for education, loved how “dumb” the Republican populace, as whole , was, and the Heritage Foundation, and its minions want nothing but a great proliferation of uneducated pawns.
And those who swore an oath before their god-thing to uphold the Constitution, are all about “Democracy be damned, if I can hold onto my power position.
To me the long lines at the financial aid office in college look like the naive clams walking towards the open mouth of the walrus who has just salted them to eat. I saw it in a cartoon. Perhaps it was Alice in Wonderland.
Yes indeed it was Alice in Wonderland.
https://youtu.be/ju1tC148PRg?si=JdDkb203SDjs4BqL
I’ve been increasingly despairing watching events unfold since November 2024. Just in the past day or two, I’ve been feeling more hopeful. If passed, the GOP’s disgraceful, conscience-less bill is going to do so much damage to so many people, there’s going to be hell for them to pay at the ballot box and perhaps in their everyday lives as they become targeted by their own backstabbed constituents and supporters. What they’re attempting to do will not stand. They will do a lot of irreparable damage to countless people, but they will pay for it. They’ll try to pass that damage off as coming from the dastardly Democrats/Biden, but even zealots have breaking points. They’re going down, and I will cheer their downfall.
I am so disgusted with Lisa Murkowski!!!!
She voted for it last night. Now going back to House for reconciliation but if House blesses Senate version, it’s all over!!
I called her office and left a message. They probably won’t accept it.
Online it says she only responds to Alaska voters.
THAT MAKES ME SO ANGRY! HER FRIGGIN VOTE AFFECTS ALL AMERICANS!!!! They put in a lot of special stuff for Alaska and she caved.
This is a late-to-the-show comment, and thus slightly off-topic, but on June 4th, Prof. Kennedy mentioned a screening of Greg Palast’s documentary “Vigilantes, Inc.” So I want to let you all know that it is available at no cost on YouTube with an introduction by Martin Sheen. https://youtu.be/P_XdtAQXnGE?si=U-41k6qwtdwUTTNn
Senate Parliamentarian has disallowed special benefits for Alaska and Hawaii, so maybe Lisa Murkowski won’t comply. How is it that a woman, a mother can trade for health care and SNAP benefits for millions just to protect her seat???
Nancy
Last night’s vote was to move the bill forward, not to pass it. What happens next is the debate and proposals for amendments to the bill. Procedural votes don’t make any bill a done deal. Now the Dems need to step up and propose Amendments that will help bring five Republicans to come over to the light and vote no.