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Harvard has faced at least four investigations spearheaded by the Department of Education since President Donald Trump took office for the second time in January — but as his administration moves to dismantle the department, the investigations may shift to other agencies or fall apart.
As part of the federal government’s ongoing fight to shutter the Education Department entirely, the Trump administration announced in November that it would be shifting the Office of Elementary, Secondary Education, and Postsecondary Education to instead be overseen by the Labor Department.
The Education Department has clashed with Harvard frequently, from monitoring Harvard’s bond sales to demanding the school disclose admissions data. Its Office for Civil Rights helmed four separate investigations into Harvard. The OCR has been a target in the Trump administration’s dismantling, with its staff cut down to less than half since March, according to the left-leaning think tank Center for American Progress.
Now, as the Trump administration moves to dismantle the department, that work may be fractured across the federal government, leaving Harvard with more agencies to answer to.
“It multiplies the number of players that Harvard would have to deal with when the administration challenges the University’s autonomy,” Kenneth K. Wong, a senior fellow at The Brookings Institution, said.
“Every Cabinet Secretary might come up with their own list of justifications why they want to take away Harvard's autonomy,” Wong added.
But other experts said the diffusion of power might not immediately impact Harvard. Former Massachusetts Secretary of Education Paul Reville said he sees the restructuring as the next installment of the ongoing “effort of creating an atmosphere in Harvard and in higher education generally being under siege.”
“It’s distracting, and it doesn’t seem to contribute to any sort of positive education agenda,” said Reville, a professor of practice at the Harvard Graduate School of Education.
Department of Education officials have argued that dispersing its responsibilities will increase efficiency, but Reville says it will do the opposite.
“Their supposed goal is, ‘We’re going to get more efficient at the federal level, and thereby we’re going to be able to give more money to the states,’” Reville said. “That hasn’t happened.”
Reville said other agencies will now need to allocate more resources toward the work previously overseen by the Education Department if they want to continue it.
“What was once being done by a whole staff that existed at the Department of Education now gets moved to Labor. Labor is going to have to hire people to do this, and those people won’t have the expertise,” Reville said. “They’ll have to be trained to do it when we already had people in the Department of Education doing it.”
And other departments may not prioritize these programs in the same way that the Department of Education was able to, according to Wong.
“The major challenge would be whether the other agencies and departments are giving the priority that it needs to run the good programs,” Wong said. “The probability is low that they are going to give high priority, because they have others competing within the department’s mission.”
Reville said the reconfiguration is yet another push to “symbolically abolish” the Department of Education.
“They’re just fighting a sort of slow war of attrition and bleeding the department to death,” Reville added.
—Staff writer Megan L. Blonigen can be reached at megan.blonigen@thecrimson.com. Follow her on X at @MeganBlonigen.
—Staff writer Frances Y. Yong can be reached at frances.yong@thecrimson.com. Follow her on X at @frances_yong_.
