Community Colleges Make Difficult Calls and Cuts Under Trump

The Virginia Community College System’s strategic plan now reads differently than when it was first ratified last year, thanks to the Trump administration’s attacks on diversity, equity and inclusion.

Goals to increase the diversity of the full-time faculty by 5 percent by 2030 have been crossed out. Words like “diverse” and “equity” have been painstakingly removed. An advisory council on “diversity, equity, inclusion and culture” has been replaced with an advisory council on “the culture of care and success.”

The changes come alongside a recent resolution, unanimously passed by the system’s State Board, that required all 23 community colleges to “fully comply” with anti-DEI directives, including the Trump administration’s anti-DEI executive order, the Education Department’s Dear Colleague letter calling for the elimination of race-conscious programming and the guidance document that followed more specifically outlining what kinds of activities would prompt Office for Civil Rights investigations.

Colleges were told to ensure their compliance across programs and policies, including “admissions, hiring, promotion, compensation, financial aid, scholarships, prizes, administrative support, discipline, housing, graduation ceremonies, and all other aspects of student, academic, and campus life,” the resolution reads. Colleges are also to “ensure there are no efforts to circumvent prohibitions on the use of race by relying on proxies or other indirect means to accomplish such ends.”

A lot can change in a year.

Terri Thompson, chair of the State Board, stressed in a March 21 news release that the resolution “does not change our values,” including “to give everyone the opportunity to learn and develop the right skills so lives and communities are strengthened.”

She added in a statement that changes to the strategic plan and system policies are “critical necessary actions to ensure federal funding for Virginia’s Community Colleges is not compromised.”

The system’s chancellor, David Doré, offered a similar reassurance, noting that a “fundamental component” of the system is “our open admission model in which anyone with a desire to learn is empowered to reach their full potential.”

“Diversity in all its forms, respect, and inclusivity are core values of Virginia’s Community Colleges and are honored through a unified culture of care, opportunity, and success for our students and employees,” Doré said in the release. “We will continue to be laser-focused on our students and their success. Our mission remains the same.”

Since President Donald Trump took office, much of the limelight has been on four-year colleges and universities as they reel from the administration’s multipronged onslaught on higher ed and threats to federal funds, but community colleges have been busy fighting battles of their own.

Known for some of the most diverse student bodies in the country, some community colleges are having to make difficult choices about what programming to keep or cut under pressure from state and federal anti-DEI directives and the possibility of funding losses. Community college leaders argue their institutions are, to some extent, protected by a history of bipartisan support and a heavier reliance on local funding, but they’re still not immune to the political quakes shaking higher ed.

Over all, “we’re not as threatened, budgetarily, as some of our four-year counterparts” because community colleges rely more on state and local funds, said Mike Gavin, president of Delta College in Michigan and a founder of Education for All, a grassroots group of community college leaders fighting anti-DEI legislation.

But he isn’t surprised to see community colleges, particularly in states with prominent conservative lawmakers or state DEI bans already on the books, bending to federal attempts to curb DEI.

Sometimes “people are obeying in advance, and it’s not necessary,” he said. But “some of this is an act of survival for community colleges in order to continue to do the work.”

DEI on the Chopping Block

Spooked by the specter of funding losses, Virginia’s community colleges aren’t the only ones making cuts to DEI programming.

Ivy Tech Community College, for example, announced the “sunsetting” of the offices of diversity, equity and belonging across its 19 campuses, which took effect last month. Twenty-one employees lost their jobs, and six applied for and were accepted to other roles within the college.

Mary Jane Michalak, senior vice president of legal and public affairs at Ivy Tech, told Inside Higher Ed in an email that the Indiana community college receives at least $100 million in federal financial support for students. College leaders didn’t want to put that aid funding at risk.

“Many students rely on this financial support for living expenses in addition to their tuition,” Michalak said. “While this was a difficult decision for the college, we felt like the continuity of services and certainty was of the upmost importance.”

The now-defunct offices were responsible for planning National Heritage Month events, supporting student cultural organizations and representing the college in partnerships with external organizations like Foster Success, which supports foster youth in Indiana. But Michalak emphasized that student services have always been housed in other offices and won’t be affected.

“Each campus is making the determination on what activities, if any, to keep and where those responsibilities will fall,” she said.

The Maricopa Community Colleges in Arizona also cut back on some initiatives and programs after the district underwent an internal audit to ensure compliance with “all local, state, and federal laws.” While no student clubs or organizations were affected and no full-time jobs were lost, the district got rid of cultural convocation ceremonies and events for employee affinity groups.

“We recognize that these required changes may be disappointing to some of our students and employees,” Lindsey Wilson, chief marketing and communications officer for the district, said in a statement to Inside Higher Ed. “For more than 100 years, we have served as a vital access point to opportunity across the Valley, and we will continue to champion the role of community colleges in supporting student success and economic mobility—especially in this moment."

Threats to Funds

Other community colleges have already suffered financial losses because of the current political moment.

Community College of Aurora, for example, had to end classes that train green card holders for their citizenship tests after losing Department of Homeland Security funds, Chalkbeat Colorado first reported.

The college was a sub-awardee of a Homeland Security grant to Lutheran Family Services Rocky Mountains that had covered the costs of the citizenship courses since 2013. The courses have served roughly 1,000 students over that period. The college received a little over $101,000 to offer the classes in the last grant cycle.

But in a letter to Lutheran Family Services in March, the department informed the organization the grant had been terminated because it no longer aligned with DHS’s “priorities.”

Mordecai Brownlee, president of the college, said these citizenship classes were “part of the core fabric of our institutional mission.” Immigrant families are a “strong presence” in the surrounding area, and the college’s student body is 70 percent students of color and 57 percent first-generation students.

“One of my personal concerns now is, how do we ensure that these individuals are receiving the proper preparation for the exam?” he said, especially as the Trump administration takes a hard line on immigration policy. The college is now looking into other ways it could fund the courses, including local donors.

This is the second federal funding hit to Community College of Aurora. The college was also a sub-awardee on a $10.9 million grant to the University of Colorado Boulder from the Department of Defense’s Office of Naval Research. The project was intended to develop a pathway for underrepresented students from five Denver-area community colleges to four-year universities to earn bachelor’s degrees in engineering and embark on STEM careers. But this year the grant was cut, seemingly without explanation.

Brownlee believes it’s still possible to make “a continued commitment amongst our institutions to find opportunities to work together to ensure that … our diverse communities are exposed to these transfer pathways,” he said, “but making up the millions of dollars associated with that program, that’s just not something we can afford.”

The Bigger Picture

Community colleges are arguably in a better position relative to four-year institutions.

Some leaders argue that their colleges are more insulated from government spending cuts and federal interference because they’re historically celebrated on both sides of the aisle as workforce engines. But leaders of these institutions also say how secure community colleges feel in this moment depends heavily on where they’re located.

Gavin, of Delta College, said federal anti-DEI directives offer a “playbook” to state lawmakers interested in enacting similar legislation, amping up community colleges’ fears about potential threats to state dollars, especially in red states.

He highlighted that state-level anti-DEI bills proliferated after Trump’s first-term executive order on “divisive concepts,” and he believes new federal anti-DEI policies are bolstering a new wave of bans. Multiple bills making their way through state legislatures, including in North Carolina and South Carolina, explicitly reference Trump’s recent anti-DEI directives.

“The executive orders have laid the blueprint for states to follow, and that’s where community colleges are really at risk,” Gavin said. “That will impact community colleges just as much, if not more, in the long run, than four-year schools, in my opinion."

Steve Robinson, president of Lansing Community College, also in Michigan, and a member of Education for All, said the “hyperlocal” nature of community colleges means these institutions live at least “50 different realities."

“Even within those states, we see a real heterogeneous response to federal executive orders, to the Dear Colleague letter,” depending on state, county and board politics, Robinson said.

Despite these concerns and funding hits to his own institution, Brownlee, the president at Community College of Aurora, is optimistic for community colleges under a second Trump administration and expects they could even secure some policy wins, like Pell Grants for shorter programs, which he described as a game-changer “for diverse communities.”

But he stressed that community colleges need to “lean into our moral obligation as educators to continue to provide equitable access and ensure economic mobility,” even amid federal “friction points” over DEI.

“We could only hope that … whatever the political headwinds … whether it be this administration or the next, that our work still be honored and it still be supported,” he said, “because we can’t stop serving those who we seek to serve. We just can’t.”