Katelyn Wilburn, Campus Carrier staff writer
President Trump has recently promised to close the Department of Education and begin taxing university endowments by twenty-one percent. A widespread debate has started over whether these are the correct moves and if he has the power to enact these statements.
Over the past couple of weeks, President Trump has been determined “to achieve his goal of turning education over to the states,” according to the Los Angeles Times. This would mean the break-up of the Educational Department, along with redistributing their responsibilities.
The website Best Colleges says that, “republican rhetoric supports the notion of politicians ‘punishing’ universities for political gain, under the impression that Universities are filled with ‘Marxists’ and ‘wokeness.’”
This has led to people’s uncertainty for where their tax dollars will go to. Tax dollars go towards the General Fund of the Treasury, which records loans receivable from the Department of Treasury to be borrowed out to the rest of the government’s functions. This money will possibly go towards the national deficit, as well. There has been a proposal from Trump to create a free online ‘American Academy’ that is free of perceived indoctrination.
“We have enough in endowments per student that we would be in the list considered,” College President Steve Briggs said.
This puts Berry College in a situation of uncertainty and need for clarity.
In Trump’s campaigns, he heavily spoke of reducing taxes.
“This is important to note that if he raises taxes, he’s raising taxes,” said Associate Professor of Political Sciences Michael Bailey. “And so you might be in favor of reducing taxes elsewhere, but you can’t simply say that you’re in favor of cutting taxes across the board. He is definitely in favor of some tax increases.”
Trump pushing against the Department of Education puts into question how much power he truly has to complete the tasks he said he will. The Constitution allows for the Department of Education, but the abolition of it would need to be approved through Congress.
“The president himself can’t abolish it, and if he tries to and Congress lets him do it, well, we’ve had this massive corruption of the Constitution, with no crisis until the American people push back,” Bailey said.
Financial aid could be impacted by the
endowment tax.
Although there is a lot of discussion as to what Trump will do next, it is hard to tell, as executive orders are not always necessarily open and available to the public before being issued.
“Some of these ideas we think would be detrimental to the institutions and our students, so we are trying to figure out what the likelihood that they will move forward,” Briggs said. “There’s a lot of noise and not much clarity necessarily about what’s gonna end up.”
Although we don’t know much, Briggs was able to explain some of the extent this would impact student loans.
“The loans they are talking about are for graduate students, it’s the Graduate PLUS loans that they are talking about ending,” said Briggs.
Currently, it is unclear who could be in charge of loans in the future, especially if the Department of Education is dismantled.
“His feeling is that all these universities don’t like him, so he’s just gonna go ahead and punish them,” Bailey said. “That seems to be his motive for the operation. It’s the idea that ‘I will do something good for you if you do something good for me, and if you aren’t doing something good for me, I am going to go against you.’”
Trump’s recent policies continue to be a source of debate in the community, with the motives behind dismantling the Department of Education coming into question. The balance between constitutional principles and the president’s power is at the head of this debate, as these policies continue to be discussed.