Who Could Lead the Department Trump Plans to Abolish?

As President-elect Donald Trump begins to announce the individuals who will—and will not—work in his new administration, few details have emerged about the prospects of an education secretary. But that’s not stopping rampant speculation in D.C. policy circles.

Will Trump pick someone with a background in K-12 or higher ed? Will he pick someone with experience in education at any level? Or will he opt for someone who has a track record of waging culture wars?

Last time around, Trump appointed Betsy DeVos, a billionaire philanthropist known for her support of school choice, voucher programs and charter schools. She was a controversial candidate whose confirmation required then–vice president Mike Pence to cast a tie-breaking vote in her favor.

Numerous policy experts and lobbyists aren’t sure which direction Trump will take. But some expect a secretary with expertise in higher education, given that colleges and universities are losing the public’s confidence and high-profile issues from campus protests to a student debt crisis have put a greater focus on higher education.

Again, while those interviewed don’t know who will be nominated, they expect higher education issues like accreditation, campus free speech, accountability for student outcomes and student loans to rank higher on the priority list compared to Trump’s first term. Trump has also said he wants to eliminate the Education Department altogether.

“In any presidential transition, those who know won’t say and those of us who are speculating don’t know. That’s ramped up tenfold here, given Team Trump’s tempestuous relationship with the media,” said Frederick Hess, senior fellow and director of education policy studies at the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative think tank.

Candidates considered likely to be on the short list include: Ryan Walters and Cade Brumley, the state superintendents of Oklahoma and Louisiana, respectively; Tiffany Justice, the co-founder of Moms for Liberty; and Christopher Rufo, a board member at New College of Florida and senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute for Policy Research.

Other candidates that policy experts named include: DeVos, who resigned following the Jan. 6 insurrection; Representative Virginia Foxx, a North Carolina Republican and chair of the House Committee on Education and the Workforce; Mitch Daniels, president emeritus of Purdue University and former governor of Indiana; and Florida and Virginia governors Ron DeSantis and Glenn Youngkin, respectively.

DeVos told Education Week after the election that an ideal secretary would be a current or former governor who has led in their state on education reform issues, though she declined to name names.

“The federal Department of Education is a labyrinth, a maze, and I think someone who has accomplished real reforms on a state level would be really fit and suitable for that position,” she said.

The Trump transition team did not respond to a request for comment by press time.

Culture Wars

For the analysts and higher ed lobbyists, an ideal education secretary would be someone who knows and understands the ins and outs of the federal policies and regulations that govern colleges and universities.

But Trump is likely to be more interested in topics that are more political than technical and relate to so-called wokeness in education—issues such as transgender students’ participation in sports and the dismantling of diversity, equity and inclusion programs, experts said. “The issues in higher education that appear to be of most interest to President Trump are generally outside the scope of the issues that we advocate for in our sector,” said Jason Altmire, president of Career Education Colleges and Universities, a national trade association representing for-profit technical institutions. “They’re probably evaluating a number of different candidates based upon their positions on some of those hot-button social issues.”

Neal McCluskey, director of the Center for Education Freedom at the Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank, said he believes the push against DEI could be a large part of why Walters from Oklahoma is a real contender.

The superintendent has said that critical race theory is “a dangerous and racist philosophy” and that DEI programs “should be known as discrimination, exclusion and indoctrination”—stances that resonate with Trump, McCluskey said.

“He put out a memo on Thursday after the election discussing ending the U.S. Department of Education, which seemed kind of like asking for the job,” McCluskey added. The memo cites five areas in which eliminating the department would benefit states and help restore a “hijacked” education system.

But if Trump does double down on the culture wars, a candidate like Daniels from Indiana may be a less likely selection, he added. In addition to his direct ties to higher ed, the former governor worked in the George W. Bush administration. And though multiple policy experts told Inside Higher Ed that Daniels’s breadth of experience make him a strong conventional pick, it may not be enough for the president-elect.

“I don’t know where he might stand on Trump,” McCluskey said, “but I think he would be respected by many people on both sides of the political aisle.”

Michelle Dimino, education program director at Third Way, a left-of-center think tank, agrees Trump will be looking for someone who has “conservative clout.” But added that whoever assumes the position also has to be willing to shut down the very office they’ll be working in.

“Whoever takes the job as secretary of education may have to be committed enough to that cause to be willing to burn the house down even while they’re inside it,” she said. “‘Are you on board to eliminate your own job?’ is a very bizarre hiring question, but that’s what we could be looking at.”

K-12 vs. Higher Ed

Riding the momentum of a botched rollout of the new federal aid application, the Capitol Hill hearings and investigations over campus protests, and the legal challenges to President Biden’s student loan forgiveness plans, now is a prime time to make advancements in higher education policy, said Michael Brickman, an adjunct fellow at the American Enterprise Institute.

“There are going to have to be a lot of things that just need to be fixed [from] day one,” he said. “So whoever the education secretary is will have to fix the problems they’re inheriting.”

Brickman said that he expects the next administration to focus on “holistic accountability.”

“The job of the school should be to prepare their students for success after graduation and not simply to just cash the federal checks,” he said.

The transition also comes at a time when the public perception of colleges and universities is declining, so shifting the department’s focus from K-12 schools to higher ed may be a “necessary correction,” Brickman said, noting that “the federal government is a much bigger player in higher education” compared to K-12.

However, Jon Fansmith, senior vice president for government relations and national engagement at the American Council on Education, believes K-12 policy will remain the department’s primary focus.

Despite the fact that the federal government spends more per pupil on higher education institutions than K-12 schools, most Americans see federal education policy as most directly impacting elementary, middle and high schools, he said.

“The higher education policy landscape is more diverse, and the federal role is more multifaceted,” he said. “Even as higher ed has become more prominent as a policy issue in recent election cycles, it still tends to lag the K-12 space in both the public’s and the administration’s minds.”

Fansmith added that ACE wants to see an education secretary with deep knowledge of higher ed and one who respects “the historically limited federal role that leaves those closest to students the authority to make decisions about how best to help them.”

Altmire from CECU wants a secretary who won’t just roll back the Biden administration’s policies, particularly those targeting the for-profit sector and certificate programs.

What he hopes to see instead is the repeal of Biden’s current regulations and the development of new metrics that ensure a “fair measurement of quality” that apply to all schools in all sectors. Currently the gainful-employment rule, ensuring students are able to find jobs that allow them to pay off their debt, only applies to for-profits and nondegree programs, which CECU has taken issue with.

“We want to solve the problem and address the issue to the benefit of students across all of higher education so we can put this issue to bed,” he said. “We don’t want to continue to play this game of Ping-Pong. What we want to see is a thoughtful discussion across all of higher education.”