The Republican Plot to Un-Educate America

New Republic -   While it’s mostly gone unremarked upon in the mainstream media, institutions of higher learning across the country are about to be pummeled by the looming reconciliation bill, which may portend an extinction event for higher education as we know it. The bill weaponizes working-class families’ reliance on debt to finance their college dreams with such intensity that not only will it push millions to the financial brink, it will push them out of higher education altogether. 

For colleges and universities, the potential fallout is hard to overstate. Whatever schools survive are likely to be drained of working- and middle-class families, instead populated only by society’s most wealthy. As it is, millions of people rightly consider universities to be a costly endeavor that is irrelevant to their everyday life. But rather than remaking higher ed into a vibrant and more democratic institution, this bill threatens to do the opposite. It will cement the stereotype of higher education as an elite institution into an ironclad reality. On June 25, student debtors and their allies will be protesting these devastating cuts in Washington, D.C. But so far, very few elected officials are sounding the alarm on these issues with the fever pitch they deserve, let alone doing the work required to slow down and obstruct their passage into law.  

The overhaul of the student lending system championed by Republican legislators has nothing to do with fiscal responsibility or balancing the budget. Instead, it provides an ominous articulation of the Republican Party’s authoritarian ambitions, one that is chillingly consistent with the bill’s massive increases for immigration and border security. This is not a budget bill, it is a debt and deportation bill—and one built on the fascist foundation laid by the Heritage Foundation’s now-notorious Project 2025.

As of this month, Lindsey Burke, formerly the Heritage Foundation’s top education policy official, serves as the Education Department’s deputy chief of staff for policy and programs. As the author of Project 2025’s chapter on education policy, Burke recommended gutting student loan relief (along with diversity, equity, and inclusion programs and scientific research funding) to bring universities to heel and reorient American society toward the far right. 

In the words of influential conservative activist Christopher Rufo, “Reforming the student loan programs could put the whole university sector into a significant recession” and state of “existential terror.” The goal is to use economic policy to impose an unpopular and stifling ideological agenda, exacted by punitive student debt.