Videos produced by Anthony Fowler.
With executive orders like “Ending Illegal Discrimination and Restoring Merit-Based Opportunity” and “Ending Radical Indoctrination in K-12 Schooling,” the Trump administration has already made many significant changes to the Department of Education.
Many of the changes that have been made fall in line with Project 2025’s Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise. This has worried students that other directives in the plan will soon be actualized.
In the Department of Education chapter, written by The Heritage Foundation’s Center for Education Policy director Lindsey Burke, outlines a plan slowly eliminate the federal-level Department of Education.
We talked to six WCU students who shared their opinions on the proposed changes for the Department of Education and how they may be impacted.
Personal impacts on students
Most students believe they will experience some level of personal impact if changes outlined in Project 2025 go into effect.
Federal Financial Aid
Many students shared frustration and fears of financial assistance being cut with the proposed changes.
At the moment, there have been no changes regarding federal funding for students.
“There is no change to the types of aid available to students,” WCU Financial Aid Assistant Director Spenser Sloan said. “Federal financial assistance is still in the form of loans, grants and work study.”
Federal financial aid is important for many students. During the 2023-2024 academic year, 54.1% of WCU students used some form of federal financial assistance to pay for college.
This is comparable to the national average. For the 2019-2020 academic year, the National Center for Educational Statistics reported that 55% of all undergraduate students used at least one type of federal financial aid. The report broke down the undergraduate student data to discover that 40% of students received the Pell Grant and 34% of students took out federal loans.
At WCU, 42.6% of undergraduate students took out a federal subsidized or unsubsidized loan for the 2023-2024 academic year.
While the premise of student loans remains unchanged, Project 2025 seeks to abolish loan forgiveness programs that many students rely on.
“This proposal urges the new Administration to end the abuse of FSA’s loan forgiveness programs, to manage the federal student loan portfolio in a professional way, and to work with Congress for a long-term overhaul of the program for the benefit of students and taxpayers,” Burke said on page 340.
Income-driven repayment plans are also targeted in this chapter.
“While income-driven repayment (IDR) of student loans is a superior approach relative to fixed payment plans, the number of IDR plans has proliferated beyond reason. And recent IDR plans are so generous that they require no or only token repayment from many students,” Burke said on page 337.
IDR plans are a federally-ran program for loan repayment. IDR plans are managed by Federal Student Aid, the same organization that oversees FAFSA. When an eligible student applies for an IDR plan, their monthly payment is calculated based on their income and family size. This often helps students manage repayments for large student loans without defaulting.
In the fall 2024 semester, 3916 (33.5%) WCU students received a Pell grant.
Lack of knowledge
With new executive orders, funding cuts and layoffs constantly happening, students find it hard to keep up with the changes being made to the Department of Education.
Four of the six students we interviewed said that they felt like they had little accurate information on the proposed and recent Department of Education changes.
Is change needed?
All students interviewed agreed that some change is needed for the Department of Education. However, they felt like this change should involve increased federal support and funding instead of less.
Related story: Repealing the Department of Education: what it means for public school funding and vulnerable students
