What is eclipsed by the Epstein files saga is the fact that the Department of Education is quietly being dismantled. While the public doom-scrolls through billionaire gossip, the Trump administration has rolled out a sweeping plan to sidestep Congress and outsource major functions of the Department of Education.
The proposal includes shifting the management of Title I funds—the pot that supports over 26 million low-income and disabled students nationwide—to the Department of Labor. Because nothing says “we value children” like making education even more elusive. Haven’t you heard? This administration would much rather you be a cog in the machine than an educated citizen.
In a USA Today op-ed, Education Secretary Linda McMahon triumphantly declared that the shutdown proved a conservative argument “45 years in the making”: the Department of Education is just a bureaucratic pass-through better handled by the states. Her solution? Eliminate the centralized function of education, “empower” states and local leaders, and—presumably—hope the ghosts of Jim Crow don’t answer the call.
Chris Hedges warned us about this. In Empire of Illusion, he argues that universities no longer cultivate wisdom but manufacture the appearance of intelligence—credentialing, branding, and corporate curricula dressed up as enlightenment. Students are graduating with degrees and debt but without critical thinking, moral reasoning, or the ability to identify when democracy is being dismantled under their noses. “Efficiency” may sound sexy in the age of AI, but when education becomes an assembly line, the first casualties are the humanities, and the second are the humans.
President Biden once warned us, “Any country that out-educates us will out-compete us,” a reminder that education is not a luxury—it’s a national survival strategy. Yet the Trump administration’s One Big Beautiful Bill, signed in July, imposes a lifetime borrowing cap of $100,000 for graduate students and $200,000 for professional students, with generous exceptions for “professional degrees.” The lucky programs considered professional degrees are limited to 11 primary programs, including: pharmacy, dentistry, veterinary medicine, chiropractic, law, medicine, optometry, osteopathic medicine, podiatry, theology, and, newly added, clinical psychology. Yet degrees dominated by women—like social work, psychology, the humanities, and education—didn’t cut. It’s almost as if the administration looked at the gender pay gap and said, “Let’s make it structural.”
This so-called empowerment of states echoes an old political playbook. After the Civil War, when the 14th Amendment guaranteed equal protection, states’ rights were invoked to stop school integration and impede Black advancement. Today, under Trump 2.0, states’ rights are being trotted out once again—not to resist busing, but to restrict loans, slash oversight, and cement the racial wealth gap, which already sits at a staggering 10-to-1 disparity between white and Black families. Limiting educational access is just the modern version of literacy tests: new tactic, same intention.
“Students are graduating with degrees and debt but without critical thinking, moral reasoning, or the ability to identify when democracy is being dismantled under their noses. “Efficiency” may sound sexy in the age of AI, but when education becomes an assembly line, the first casualties are the humanities, and the second are the humans.”
If the Trump administration were genuinely interested in educating the populace, these major overhauls in the education system would be televised rather than eclipsed. Additionally, if the goal were truly to create an educated populace, education would be free. Highly industrialized democratic societies in Europe, such as Germany, Finland, Denmark, Sweden, and France, have made education accessible to their citizens by keeping costs low, despite the high sticker prices of what is considered “quality education.” Even the government that dismembered journalist Jamal Khashoggi ensures its citizens free access to higher education, and if Trump’s administration could welcome him with open arms, what is going on in the country that claims to be the bastion of democracy?
But fear not, for the poster child of capitalism, Elon Musk, was recently reported by the New York Times as right on schedule to become the world’s first trillionaire. At the same time, millions of working-class Americans are saddled with 1.81 trillion dollars in collective student loan debt that the U.S. government refuses to forgive. True to its role as the architect of poverty on American soil, the Trump administration has fooled us into scanning the salacious emails of millionaires as opposed to truly fighting for the primary instrument that makes democracy accessible to the many: education.
Since the pandemic gutted academic progress—U.S. students lost the equivalent of half a year to a year of learning in math and reading—neither Republicans nor Democrats have produced meaningful, sustained education reform. Instead, we’ve been fed a spectacle of scandals carefully engineered to keep us from noticing the methodical dismantling of the Department of Education.
And as Israel continues its near-daily attacks in Gaza—despite the declared ceasefire on October 10, 2025—American consciousness has risen in global solidarity. We’ve filled the streets demanding justice abroad. The question now is: Will we ever march for the human right to education here at home?
Because when a nation stops fighting for its schools, it’s not just betraying its children—it’s forfeiting its future.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Elaine Joy Edaya Degale is a Black-Filipina writer and lecturer at community colleges within the City University of New York (CUNY) and has an Ed.M. and M.A. from Teachers College, Columbia University.
She graduated cum laude from Mount Holyoke College, where she studied International Relations and Development, and continues to support literacy and food programming efforts in Indigenous communities through her Community-Based organization, OperationMerienda.org
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