By Maya Thiruselvam and Ryan Lowy

A promise made on President Donald Trump’s campaign trail to eliminate the Department of Education (DofEd) now looks as though it may become a reality.

Trump lost Centre County — 41,119 to 38,328 votes — in the 2024 United States presidential election. However, the former real estate mogul turned second-time-president won Pennsylvania with 50.4% of the vote — roughly 3.5 million votes to Kamala Harris’ 3.4 million votes. 

With this victory, he also carried the other six swing states on the map, winning both the Electoral College and the popular vote for the first time in his political career. A main point he made on the campaign trail was his promise to close the DofEd as he deems the department to be filled with “radicals, zealots, and Marxists.”

The DoEd, originally founded in 1979 under President Jimmy Carter, controls the funding of public schools across the country, administers federal student aid programs, and essentially promotes student achievement. Specifically in Pennsylvania, the Pennsylvania Department of Education (PDE) “oversees 500 public school districts, more than 170 public charter schools, public cyber charter schools, career and technology centers, technical schools, public intermediate units, the education of youth in state juvenile correctional institutions, Head Starts and publicly funded preschools, and community colleges,” per its website.

But looking deeper, the DoEd affects a great deal of college students, specifically those who attend public universities, such as Penn State. At the beginning of 2025, the DoEd was given $102.24 billion to disperse throughout its 10 subdivisions. Of those subdivisions, the Office of Federal Student Aid was given the largest budget of over $68 billion, with $20 billion promised to be given out during 2025.

Between the Federal Direct Student Loan Program and Student Financial Assistance departments, they allocate over $18 billion dollars directly toward helping students and families in need of financial aid to afford higher education.

A study conducted by the State Higher Education Finance (SHEF) in 2023 found that $2.4 billion came from state and local funding to support higher education with Pennsylvania’s full-time enrollment reaching 293,801.

Of that $2.4 billion, $908 million was allocated to roughly 181,200 college students, per a study conducted by Education Data.

“There’s a tremendous impact. We’re talking about the affordability of school,” Josh Portney, a Councilman for State College Borough and graduate student of Penn State Law School, said.

“Tuition is rising because the cost of living is rising. And students’ paychecks and families’ money are not rising with it. So people have to rely on things like federal loans, scholarships, federal aid. If that goes away, we will literally see a crisis in our classrooms and on campus. I’m worried also because of what it means for things like Title IX and other student protections,” Portney continued.

Over the past few weeks, discussions of dissolving the DofEd have been met with backlash and extreme scrutiny. Recently, news broke about more than 1,300 department employees being fired with an added 600 employees accepting voluntary resignation opportunities. In the first two months of Trump’s second term, the DofEd’s workforce has gone from 4,133 to 2,183.

The recent layoffs caused panic among educators and students across the nation, as Trump’s decision to dismantle the DoEd seems to be looming in the near future. Although the DofEd can’t be dissolved solely by an executive order by Trump and would need to be passed through Congress, since Republicans currently maintain control of both the House of Representatives and Senate, it would be easier for Trump to get his order passed since many of his constituents share his belief in needing to dissolve the department.

So, this begs the question, if this promise were to come into effect, how would Penn State students and college students be affected?

Well, it would mean a lot of things. Most notably on the minds of those in college comes the financial aid component, as the department is heavily responsible for managing federal student loans. With President Trump’s layoffs within the DoEd, over 300 employees part of the Federal Student Aid Office, who oversee and facilitate the dispersal of federal student loans and Pell Grants, were let go.

The day following the layoffs, the Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA) encountered an extreme outage, but the department claimed the error was not related to the layoffs.

While Pell Grants, federal education grants that are given to undergraduate students who showcase extreme financial need, are not expected to be impacted, this still leaves upper-lower- and middle-class families ineligible for these grants dependent on FAFSA to cover costs.

With mounting work now being split between the staff left, the department is working to outsource its work to private contractors. This poses issues for those who rely on FAFSA, as well as colleges, as reliance on private contractors can result in delays in students receiving their aid. A similar situation was seen last year under President Joe Biden as financial aid was delayed for months while the DofEd was trying to fix glitches in their FAFSA forms.

If the department were to be cut entirely, then Congress would be forced to pass new laws to hand off the responsibility of dispersing Pell Grants and Financial aid to another agency. The delay in finding another agency to handle such tasks will likely take some time and lead to longer delays in the distribution of federal aid. The destruction will also force the department to delay funding to universities and colleges.

Delays in funds are simply unavoidable if the department is to be dismantled, but aid is vital to low-income and middle-class students. Janelle Tucker, a first-year undergraduate student at Penn State, sees this becoming an issue for students who want to go to college, but simply don’t have the funds.

“It kind of hinders a lot of us from wanting to attend college because it’s already hard to put ourselves through college with little to no aid,” Tucker said.

While Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro’s new 2025-26 budget proposal outlines an increase in funding for education, the majority of the funds are geared towards helping fund underprivileged K-12 schools.

Last month, Penn State released a statement showcasing Shapiro’s commitment to investing in higher education and state-related schools such as Penn State.

“The governor also proposed flat funding for Penn State’s general support appropriation of $242.1 million, a number that would serve as a funding baseline, with any increase to come from the pool of funds earmarked by the governor for performance-based funding,” the release read.

Penn State also stated how the additional funds will help reduce the burden of educational costs for Pennsylvania students who rely on state and federal funding.

“Each year, Penn State uses general support funding to offset educational costs for Pennsylvania-resident students, which allows the university to offer a significantly discounted in-state tuition rate,” the university said. “Penn State reaffirms its promise and commitment as the state’s sole land-grant institution by amplifying the state’s investment on a per-student basis to save Pennsylvania undergraduates across all campuses an average of $15,000 annually on tuition costs.”

However, the new funding does not include non-Pennsylvania students who may rely on federal and state funding.

Aside from financial aid, the DoEd oversees a variety of education-related issues, protecting students from discrimination, helping with disability protection, managing student loan repayment plans, supervising college accreditation, and administering grants for research and grants, to name a few.

Under the Individuals with Disability Education Act (IDEA) students with disabilities are guaranteed equal access to education. The recent call to destroy the department leaves this unknown for students with disabilities.

The National Disability Rights Network executive director, Marlene Sallo, recently released a statement saying, “Without the Department of Education’s enforcement of IDEA, students could face discrimination, inadequate accommodations and services, and a rollback of the hard-fought rights that have been in place for decades.”

Penn State’s Educational Equity department states on its website its commitment to “providing a welcoming, encouraging, and empowering environment for students with disabilities to ensure equal access, full participation, and reasonable accommodations for their academic pursuits.”

But without the presence of a federal system to oversee that states comply with the allocation of these accommodations, disability requests are vulnerable.

The same can be said for the Office for Civil Rights (OCR) in the DofEd. Per OCR’s website, the office’s main function to provide equal access to education and promote academic success through the enforcement of civil rights is also at stake.

In the recent layoffs, the OCR saw the second largest amount of firings with the department cutting 243 of its employees. While the Trump administration is assuring the public the functions of the DofEd will be shifted to various different departments, current employees in the OCR have essentially been told to halt their work.

Above all, the change in the DofEd will affect future generations of students. Whether that be current high school students who are planning on attending college or young adults, the department’s closure will surely have lasting effects. If the department continues to lay off its employees or shut down altogether, this will have a profound effect, especially on marginalized and poverty-stricken areas, creating a wealth disparity in colleges across the nation.

As of Wednesday afternoon, two senior Trump Administration officials confirmed to CNN that the 47th president plans on signing an executive order on Thursday, March 20, to start the long-awaited promise of dismantling the department.