Counting the ways Trump poses a threat to North Carolina universities | Opinion
North Carolina’s colleges and universities are watching through a fog of uncertainty as President Donald Trump begins his second term.
There’s cause to worry about how the returning president will approach higher education. Although he is a graduate of an Ivy League school, the University of Pennsylvania, Trump is dismissive of intellectuals and tends to have a transactional view of higher education’s value.
He is, after all, founder of Trump University, a for-profit real estate school that closed with Trump agreeing to pay $25 million to resolve fraud charges. And his nominee to head the Department of Education – which many of his conservative followers want to eliminate completely – is Linda McMahon, a former pro-wrestling executive.
The Trump administration approach to higher education will be especially important to North Carolina. The University of North Carolina System of 16 universities is among the best in the nation. The state’s private universities, led by Duke and Wake Forest, are key contributors to the state’s workforce and economy.
The first worry for universities, whether public or private, will be whether Trump’s hard line on immigration will affect international students. Nearly 25,000 international students attend North Carolina colleges and universities, according to NAFSA: Association of International Educators. Those students enrich campus culture, but are also good for the bottom line, as many pay full tuition.
Early in his first term, Trump sparked chaos by trying to impose a Muslim travel ban, but it’s unclear whether he will take aggressive actions affecting international students in his second term. Nonetheless, many schools encouraged international students to return to campus before Trump second term.
Another area of uncertainty is federal financial aid for students. Trump opposed President Joe Biden’s efforts to forgive student loan debt and may cut back federal work-study and loan programs. Some of his supporters want to privatize all student loans.
Federal funding for university research also will be a sensitive issue for North Carolina, particularly in the Triangle. Duke, UNC-Chapel Hill and NC State University collectively receive more than $2 billion in federal research funding annually. The Trump administration may cut grants related to climate change and other areas where conservatives are skeptical of the value.
While Trump’s decision on funding is a concern, the more prominent changes may be about campus culture. Conservatives have already ended affirmative action through a Supreme Court ruling, and diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) programs are being rolled back or dismantled.
The right-wing Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025, widely seen as a guide to the priorities of Trump’s second term, supports changing the character and priorities of universities by changing the standards and the organizations that accredit them. Trump agrees. He said in 2023, “When I return to the White House I will fire the radical left accreditors that have allowed our colleges to become dominated by Marxist maniacs and lunatics.”
Replacing accrediting groups with others in line with Trump’s agenda could lead to the erosion of academic freedom, a diminished faculty role in university governance and the loss of tenure for professors.
“This is a moment of enormity for American higher education,” Lynn Pasquerella, president of the American Association of Colleges and Universities, recently told The New York Times. “Many of President Trump’s top advisers are the architects of Project 2025, which seeks to dismantle higher education, not reform it, and to replace what they perceive as woke Marxist ideology with their own conservative ideology.”
In Florida and Texas, such a transition is well underway and is likely to accelerate in North Carolina. The state’s Republican lawmakers have stocked the UNC Board of Governors and campus trustees with conservatives. Their goal is to stamp out DEI programs and refocus the curriculum on studies that will provide students immediate career opportunities rather than a broader education.
Defenders of academic freedom and shared university governance may be wary of what may come to campus in Trump’s second term. One consolation, though, is that Trump is not especially interested in higher education. His preoccupation with immigration, tariffs and even Greenland may keep, at least for a while, the worst proposals for changing higher education from becoming reality.