If the agency were to close, Title IX enforcement, and the staff responsible for that work, would likely be moved to the Department of Justice, Fansmith said. There are concerns, however, about whether Title IX enforcement would be prioritized in the same way given the Justice Department’s many other responsibilities, he said.
In Trump’s official reelection agenda, he vowed to reinstate certain protections put in place during his first term for those accused of Title IX violations. Trump had required that campuses hold live hearings for sexual harassment complaints and allow for the cross-examination of students involved. President Joe Biden made live hearings optional, with certain restrictions.
Trump’s agenda also makes clear a plan to cut federal funding for schools that “push” what he called “radical gender ideology.” That likely means that he and his education secretary would work to undo Title IX protections established under Biden to prevent discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity.
What happens to proposed rules about transgender athletes participating in sports?
These are unlikely to ever take effect — and instead there could be a total ban. The Biden administration proposed a rule that would have prohibited states from categorically banning transgender students from participating in sports, but it has not been finalized, and Fansmith said “it’s widely expected that the Trump administration would simply abandon that effort.” Trump said he would ask Congress to pass a bill making clear that “the only genders recognized by the U.S. government are male and female and they are assigned at birth. The bill will also make clear that Title IX prohibits men from participating in women’s sports.”
Many states already have passed bills that ban transgender athletes from participating in sports at the K-12 level, but if Congress were to rewrite Title IX to exclude trans athletes from sports, it would also apply to college athletics.
Right now, the National Collegiate Athletic Association, or NCAA, allows the national governing body of each sport to determine whether transgender athletes are allowed to participate. If a sport’s governing body allows transgender athletes to participate, the individual athletes are still required to go through the NCAA eligibility review process, which requires athletes to submit documentation about their hormone levels.
Would there be a change in how for-profit colleges operate?
The Education Department provides some oversight of colleges, including for-profits, although states play a role as well. If the Department disappeared, it could allow for-profit companies to create colleges with less quality-control oversight, although the same would be true for nonprofits.
With or without an Education Department, Trump could still rescind regulations that have tempered the growth of for-profit colleges.
For example, one of Trump’s most consequential moves in higher education during his first term was rescinding the Obama-era gainful employment rule, and he didn’t need the Education Department to do it. That rule set a debt-to-earnings ratio that essentially required career-oriented programs to ensure their graduates could make enough money to repay their loans, or lose federal funding; 99 percent of the institutions that failed to meet that standard were for-profits. The Biden administration was trying to strengthen that rule, but ran into legal challenges. There’s a chance it could come back in some form in Trump’s second term, but it would likely be far less onerous on for-profit colleges.
Another Obama-era rule that curbed some of the more harmful practices by certain for-profit colleges is known as borrower defense, which allows for loan forgiveness for students who attended colleges that defrauded them. Student debt advocates expect the incoming administration to move slowly on existing and future cases, either by challenging claims or by understaffing the agency responsible for reviewing them.
This story about the Education Department was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for the Hechinger newsletter.
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