Trump, Biden, and the Fate of the Department of Education

Young voters may very well decide the 2024 presidential election—as of now, between current President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump. It’s important we know what’s at stake.

At the first presidential debate this June, the candidates challenged each other to a game of golf and argued about former President Trump’s sexual encounter with Stormy Daniels. President Biden shocked the country with his inability to finish a sentence, and Former President Trump lied more than 30 times. Not once did they mention their respective plans for education.

It has long been clear that President Biden has passed the retirement age. He needs to drop out. Trump plans to shut down the Department of Education, and the stakes are too high for Democrats to keep a candidate on the ticket whose chances of victory are slim. In a compilation of campaign statements titled Agenda47, Trump promises to “fire the radical Left accreditors that have allowed our colleges to become dominated by Marxist maniacs and lunatics.” He vows to restore prayer in schools and, most significantly, to leave education decisions to the states.

Trump’s Plans in More Detail

Paramount to Trump’s plans to “reclaim our once great educational institutions from the radical Left” is accreditation, or the recognition from an accrediting agency that a university maintains educational standards. This process, which has remained unchanged for decades, is necessary for institutions to secure federal funding and is notably designed to be nonpartisan.

Also at risk are Biden’s student loan forgiveness proposals. At a rally in Racine, Wisconsin, in June, Trump called the President’s recent efforts to provide relief “vile and not even legal.” After the Supreme Court shot down Biden’s first attempt at broad student loan forgiveness last summer, his administration used the Higher Education Act of 1965 to try and provide debt relief differently, later coined the SAVE Plan. More than 400,000 borrowers have seen their debt canceled thus far. Yet a Trump presidency would likely cease these measures for good.

Student Debt in the United States

Nearly 1 in 6 Americans carry student loans—around 43 million people. Yet in 2023, the United States recorded the first-ever decline in student debt. The Biden administration has approved $167 billion in relief since 2020, and these efforts are clearly impacting real Americans. Yet efforts from Trump allies have plagued the money’s continued rollout. Florida, Arkansas, Kansas, Missouri, Alaska, South Carolina, and Texas have filed suit against the SAVE Plan, which in full is set to benefit more than 30 million people this fall. On Tuesday, South Carolina, Texas, and Alaska even asked the Supreme Court to get involved. “It hurts that my home state doesn’t want to help it’s own citizens,” said Cody Gude, a social media consultant from Tampa, Florida, to CNBC.

According to a May poll from the University of Chicago, just 15% of Republicans find student loan forgiveness important compared to 58% of Democrats. However, according to Jane Fox, chapter chair of the Legal Aid Society Attorney’s Union, in a statement to CNBC, “Student debt forgiveness is a working-class issue. Those in the 1% who went to elite institutions and then worked in private equity rarely need debt relief.” Trump turns policies meant to benefit the working class into racial and ideological battles. Yet it should not be considered outrageous for those systematically economically disadvantaged to finally receive some relief.

The GOP’s Education Culture War

Research shows that student debt continues to disproportionally affect women and people of color. Advocates like Jaylon Herbin, director of federal campaigns at the Center for Responsible Lending, argue that “student loan debt is both a product of the racial wealth gap and a tool that exacerbates racial inequality.” It is not surprising that Republican Trump allies are rejecting a plan meant to support women and communities of color. In June, Trump’s running-mate, Ohio Senator JD Vance, tweeted, “DEI [diversity, equity, and inclusion] is racism, plain and simple. It’s time to outlaw it nationwide, starting with the federal government.”

Trump’s Agenda47 weaves together anti-DEI and anti-LGBTQ+ narratives to paint a worrisome picture. Trump declares he will end DEI programs in the federal government through mass firings. He promises to remove “all DEI bureaucrats” at universities across the country and “cut federal funding for any school or program pushing critical race theory and gender ideology on our children.” Such rhetoric is contingent on recent decisions in states like Louisiana, where the governor recently signed a law requiring the display of the Ten Commandments in every public school classroom in the state, or Florida, where a law was passed in 2022 prohibiting the instruction of sexual orientation and gender ideology in early grades.

Trump and TikTok

Clearly, young Americans will feel the effects of this election. Young voters aged 18 to 29 were imperative to Biden’s 2020 victory, supporting him over Trump by a margin of 25 points. However, youth turnout in 2020 hit 54%, breaking recent records. In 2024, Biden should be considering young voters as far from guaranteed—a huge obstacle in his path to reelection.

This week, the Republican National Convention in Wisconsin is hosting more than 70 social media influencers to make inroads with younger voters. Between January 2023 and the end of April 2024, there were twice as many pro-Trump posts than pro-Biden posts on TikTok, according to a TikTok official who spoke with The Washington Post. The PEW Research Center reports that around a third of adults aged 18 to 29 say they regularly get news on TikTok— these are revealing statistics as we approach the election.

A Call to Young Voters

We deserve a Democratic candidate we confidently feel can defeat Trump and his plans to dismantle the U.S. education system as we know it. Yet even if Biden makes the seemingly wrong choice and fails to drop out, we must remind ourselves of the hypocrisy of the former president and his running-mate.

JD Vance, now well-known for his critiques of higher education, credits his time at Ohio State and Yale Law School for lifting him out of poverty in his 2016 memoir. The New York Supreme Court charged Trump with 34 felony counts of falsifying business records, so why should we believe he has the financial best interests of America’s youth at heart? When voting in November, let us think of Kelly Lambers, a social media strategist from Cincinnati, Ohio, who told CNBC her monthly federal student loan bill dropped from $100 to $31 under the Biden administration. In a political world riddled with lies, let us focus on the facts.