The U.S. Department of Education remains a hydra-headed monster after the passage of more than 45 years since its creation in October 1979 and grand opening on May 4, 1980.
Not including one-time funding of more than $70 billion for the student loan forgiveness disasters of the Biden Administration, the ED will spend nearly $80 billion in fiscal year 2024, much of it without measurable results. Student aid funding has captured control of higher education, based on the modern “Golden Rule” that “those who have the gold make the rules.”
Even in elementary and secondary education, where the lion’s share of funding remains at the state or local levels, the more extensive federal programs have become a necessary revenue line item for most school districts. The question posed to most of us who advocate the abolition of the ED is how to do away with these programs in the quickest, most politically feasible fashion. Notwithstanding the adage that the closest thing to immortality is a government program, I believe this can be done.
The Trump Administration has stated it will task the new Secretary of Education, presumably WWE executive Linda McMahon, with downsizing ED as much as possible within her authority and coming up with a plan for legislation to accomplish a complete abolition of the department. President Trump has challenged McMahon to work to eliminate her job.
I believe a successful effort must harness the current sentiment to reduce the size of government and the budget deficit. It needs to focus on amending legislation setting forth the organization, role, and programs of the ED. Specifically, the Administration needs to look carefully at the Department of Education Organization Act (as amended by P.L. 117-286), the General Education Provisions Act (as amended by P.L. 116-260), and various program authorization laws, such as the Higher Education Act of 1965, as amended.
The Organization Act and GEPA give the Secretary of Education some leeway to reform from within. Section 410 of GEPA gives the Secretary broad authority to amend and rescind regulations promulgated by the ED. While such authority could not extend to the point where Congressionally authorized programs are eliminated, the Secretary’s authority could be used, for example, to amend funding priorities for categorical grant programs. Additionally, Section 430 of GEPA allows the Secretary to enter into joint funding agreements with other federal agencies.
As to program restructuring that would facilitate the abolition of ED, I propose new DEPORT legislation, “Department of Education Programs and Operations Reassignment and Termination.”
Let us start with higher education student aid. At $29.3 billion in fiscal year 2024 appropriations, as reported by the ED, the Pell Grant program is by far the largest grant program in the ED, $10 billion more than the Title I program for elementary and secondary education. Add to that the 2024 appropriation of $99.4 billion for direct student loans, which includes a whopping one-time adjustment of more than $70 billion for re-estimates of costs related to Biden’s controversial student loan forgiveness initiatives. As of late January 2025, outstanding student loan debt is $1.77 trillion, owed by 42.7 million borrowers. .
Bill Bennett’s axiom that federal student aid programs drive up the cost of college was disputed when he first proposed it in the 1980s, but time has provided more objective evidence that it is true. Moreover, a number of federal student aid programs have been constructed to allow many middle-income students to access these benefits, thus ensuring a broader base of political support for the status quo. The key questions are how to devise a replacement strategy and how to manage the transition.
I have reflected on these questions and come up with a four-part plan, which could be enacted as part of the DEPORT legislation.
Higher Education, Abolish and Transfer
- Transfer the Federal Student Aid (FSA) office from the ED to the Treasury. This is part of deconstructing the ED, but it also equips FSA with economists and financially savvy staff who can help them improve forecasting and financial modeling, areas where FSA has been weak. It could bring fresh eyes to the maladministration that created last year’s FAFSA debacle.
- Enact a plan first proposed in 2019 by former Senator Lamar Alexander to allow previous recipients of student loans to repay them through federal IRS withholding.
- Merge the Pell Grant program and the $910 million Federal Supplemental Educational Opportunity Grant program into the American Opportunity Credit tax benefit administered by the IRS. The new program would have a maximum benefit equal to the $7,345 maximum Pell Grant for the 2025-26 award Congress could establish minimum and maximum amounts as they do now for Pell Grants. Using existing tax brackets or special Adjusted Gross Income brackets for this credit, the maximum benefit could be phased out as income rises. Existing American Opportunity Credit restrictions would be retained that limit credits to the first four years of undergraduate education for students enrolled at least half-time, requiring a 1098T form from an eligible institution.
- Abolish the Title IV student loan programs, along with similar loan programs authorized in other parts of the federal government, such as the Health Professions Loan program administered by the Department of Health and Human Services. Also abolish the Lifetime Learning Credit that is now part of the U.S. Income Tax. For all these programs, set up a new Lifetime Learning Account (LLA) through the IRS. Each individual would be able to draw up to a fixed amount of money to pay for postsecondary education. Like the current Lifetime Learning Credit program, coursework could include undergraduate, graduate, and professional education, and it could be taken in short increments of individual courses to help with job skills or academic periods of full-time enrollment. Repayment would take place through a tax withholding system.
The new system described above would radically reduce the size of the bureaucracy and amount of red tape involved in managing the current system. There would no longer be such bureaucratic artifacts as defaulted student loans, complex loan servicing costs, Office of Inspector General audits of colleges and universities, regulations imposed on accreditors requiring them to monitor federal compliance, etc. Control over how one pays for college would shift to individuals.
As for the rest of the federal postsecondary education programs, nearly all of them should be abolished or phased out. The billion-dollar-plus TRIO and Federal Work Study programs supplant State, local and institutional funds for the lucky grant and work-study recipients, creating dislocations in many communities and schools. I am not saying that these programs do harmful things, though there is some evidence that work-study funds disproportionately fill in student aid packages for middle- and upper-income students. These programs are fairly sizable categorical grant programs, funding activities that should not be part of the federal government’s Constitutional role. The same logic applies to the Title III aid for institutional development and the graduate scholarship and fellowship programs.
Other Postsecondary Education Programs
Is there anything that should remain part of the postsecondary education role now played by the ED? I can see a rationale for procuring expertise in uncommon foreign languages as part of the federal role in providing for the national defense. Accordingly, these Title VI programs should be transferred to the Office of Partnership and Engagement in the Department of Homeland Security. This transfer should not include the international business program, which is not needed in the global economy of this day and age.
The Title III assistance to Tribal Colleges and Universities should be governed by treaties with recognized nations of U.S. indigenous people and administered by the Department of the Interior. The federal charters for Howard University and Gallaudet University should be renegotiated to provide for full autonomy and self-sufficiency over a period of a decade or two. In the meantime, funding can be administered by the unit in the Department of Agriculture that oversees funding for land-grant colleges.
The two largest programs in elementary and secondary education are the Title I grants to school districts with high proportions of low-income students authorized under the Elementary and Secondary Education Act and the Special Education grants. In fiscal year 2024, appropriations for Title I were $19.1 billion and for Special Education $15.5 billion. Together, these programs amounted to over a third of the ED’s budget.
The Title I program should be phased out over three years, to allow time for states and school districts to make appropriate adjustments. Over more than 50 years, this program has become a revenue line item for local and state education agencies, and it has hindered funding reforms that would equalize per pupil expenditures within each state.
Most school districts get most of their funding from local property taxes, a system harkening back to the nineteenth century that rewards wealthier communities, with their higher home values, and punishes poor communities, with lower home values. The federal government should not be in the business of filling in these funding gaps because doing so perpetuates unfair state tax schemes. As to disparity in wealth among the several states, that has always been the case, and it will never be solved by federal redistribution schemes, but rather by free market competition. One can only think about the economic progress made by States like Georgia and Florida to see proof of this assertion.
Special Education
Special education is essentially a health program, not an educational one. There have been studies about whether the existence of such funding has led to an increase in the diagnosis of learning disabilities and behavioral conditions such as Attention Deficit Disorder, but rather than engage in such a debate on a topic with which I am not an expert, I would simply state that this area of funding is part of a larger issue of whether medical treatment insurance funding is a federal or state role.
In the meantime, strong consideration should be given toward funding individuals with disabilities rather than school districts providing educational services. Expanded eligibility for disabled children under the Social Security disability program would allow the families of students to better control resources to help their children.
In terms of abolishing the ED, the best short-term solution is to transfer the special education and rehabilitative services program (which had a $4.4 billion budget in fiscal year 2019) to the Department of Health and Human Services.
Military Impact and Vocational Training
The $1.6 billion Impact Aid program provides funds to localities where property taxes are affected by the presence of military bases or other extensive federal government facilities, federal installations not subject to paying local taxes. The costs of this offset can be seen as part of the expense that comes with a federal presence in local communities, but the ED need not administer it. It could easily be transferred back to its original home in the Department of Defense, which is responsible for the majority of Impact Aid funding.
Career and Technical Education programs, which totaled $2.2 billion in fiscal year 2024, should be transferred to the Department of Labor and legislatively reauthorized to merge with separate Department of Labor (DOL) programs serving similar objectives. The proliferation of many overlapping career and job training programs in various federal agencies has been a problem for many years, one that Congress has never really fixed. At least having the ED programs housed by DOL would be a step toward streamlining such programs and reducing outlays.
Statistics and Civil Rights
Education statistics can be compiled by the Census Bureau. Education research can be adequately performed by major universities or private foundations. The ERIC repository of key education research can be privatized and administered by a private organization such as the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. All other programs authorized for the ED should be abolished. They perform functions better left to the States or just not done at all.
The Office of Civil Rights can be merged into the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division. Obviously, without a Cabinet-level Department or even a successor agency of lesser status, such as the foundation proposed by former Education Secretary Ted Bell in 1982, there will be no need for an Inspector General’s office or various administrative offices now in ED, including planning and budgeting, administration, human resources, the general counsel, legislative and public affairs, and the offices of the Secretary and other Presidential appointees. A limited number of such staff may go along with large programs transferred to other agencies, but the net savings in administrative overhead would be substantial.
The plan I have outlined in this article represents my best hopes for a workable reduction of the federal role in education that can be accomplished within the time left in the current Administration. It could be done in parts or all at once, but the job needs to start. The era of smaller government must start soon, and the public understanding of this necessity is greater than the media and administrative state realize. Such a return to the concepts embodied by the Constitution awaits its political champions. Who will be among them?
