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Close the Education Department? Not so fast.



Trump has said he wants to close the Education Department, but he just gave the agency a long to-do list

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WASHINGTON – When President Donald Trump signed a megabill with his spending and policy priorities into law on July 4, he distanced himself from another one of his goals: dismantling the U.S. Department of Education.

Congressional Democrats have already tried to stand in the way of that effort – sometimes literally. So have the federal courts, which continue to debate the legality of the president’s attempts to weaken the agency, whose work impacts students and schools across the country.

But there’s one obstacle that’s less evident: the so-called “One Big, Beautiful Bill Act.”

Starting next year, the law will create two brand-new federal student loan repayment plans. It also expands Pell Grants, a staple of college financial aid, to include weekslong post-high school training programs. And it binds colleges to a fresh set of rules meant to protect students and save taxpayers money.

Under the law, there’s one person ultimately responsible for carrying out those directives: Education Secretary Linda McMahon.

Her entire department will be required to mobilize its depleting resources to execute the wishes of Congress and the president.

That dynamic puts Trump in an awkward position.

In February, he said he wanted McMahon to “put herself out of a job.” (In order to legally do that, he’d need the support of Senate Democrats, which he doesn’t have.) But by signing his signature spending law, Trump gave McMahon a laundry list of important things to do.

And those asks won’t be simple or easy to turn into a reality, experts and former Education Department employees have said, without the right people to make them work. Trump has already cut the agency’s workforce in half this year, and the Supreme Court on July 14 allowed more than 1,000 workers to stay fired while their layoffs are challenged in court.

“I do have significant concerns that the speed of the cuts will have left us with a department that is unable to effectively implement this legislation,” Beth Akers, a senior fellow at the right-leaning think tank the American Enterprise Institute, told USA TODAY during a recent webinar.

Those worries were echoed by Jon Fansmith, senior vice president for government relations and national engagement at the American Council on Education, the country’s main higher education association.

“You can definitely anticipate a lot of problems,” he said.

College financial aid administrators are warning of “significant disruption” for students who rely on help to pay for school.

In spite of that unease, top officials at the Education Department have stressed that the agency is well-positioned to enact the law. On July 18, the agency published some guidance for implementation, and more information would be provided “in the weeks and months ahead,” said Jeffrey Andrade, a top agency official.

“Just within President Trump’s first six months, the Department has responsibly managed and streamlined key federal student aid features,” deputy press secretary Ellen Keast said in a statement to USA TODAY. “We will continue to deliver meaningful and on time results while implementing the President’s OBBB (‘One Big Beautiful Bill’) to better serve students, families, and administrators.”

New student loan repayment plans, Pell Grant expansion

For anyone who takes out new federal student loans after July 1, 2026, the law eliminates all current repayment programs and replaces them with only two: a standard plan and a plan based on borrowers’ incomes.

The more than 40 million Americans who already have federal student loan debt will still have access to some old repayment plans. But the 8 million borrowers enrolled in President Joe Biden‘s signature repayment plan will have to be switched to a different one by 2028.

All of that work will be carried out by the Federal Student Aid office, a branch of the Education Department.

The “One Big, Beautiful Bill Act” also creates a special type of Pell Grant. It will be made available to students enrolled in short-term programs between eight and 15 weeks long in fields like cosmetology and welding.

The Education Department has to start vetting and allowing schools to receive that money by July 2026.

Different college oversight rules

Trump’s new legislation additionally tasks the Education Department with enforcing a framework for holding colleges and universities accountable for getting students well-paying jobs after graduation.

Republicans call the measure a “do no harm” test. Put simply, it takes away the ability of some college programs to let students take out federal loans if those schools aren’t providing a good return on investment.

To fully implement the program, staffers at the Education Department have a lot of number-crunching to do.

They’ll likely need data from colleges, the Internal Revenue Service, the Bureau of Labor Statistics and states, Fansmith said. All of that information will need to be aggregated and calculated across tens of thousands of programs, and thousands of schools, over a yearslong period.

Robert Jason Cottrell, who was a data coordinator in the Office of Postsecondary Education before he was laid off in March, said he fears the Education Department may rely too heavily on contractors to get it all done.

“I don’t know if that’s going to work,” he said.

Echoes of FAFSA challenges

It’s not the first time in recent years that the Education Department has been tasked with implementing big changes for students.

The last time, it didn’t go very well.

In December 2020, Congress passed a law to simplify the Free Application for Federal Student Aid, or FAFSA, a form that most students must fill out each year to get financial aid.

But the rollout went haywire, jeopardizing the college dreams of millions. There were many reasons the agency bungled the law’s implementation. Some federal officials blamed outside contractors, who were doing the bulk of the work because the Education Department was short-staffed. Other critics said former President Joe Biden spent too much time prioritizing student loan forgiveness.

Regardless of the cause, the effects were devastating: Some students decided to delay college or forgo it altogether. Parents made important decisions without enough information. And universities lost trust in the federal financial aid system.

Things turned around, though. After Biden’s Education Department brought in a special team to focus on the FAFSA, the form got better. Now, it’s easier than ever to fill out.

In many college financial aid offices, the wounds from the FAFSA crisis are still fresh. And since the Education Department layoffs, schools have struggled to get in touch with the government for routine requests. Those issues are already affecting their ability to help students.

In a statement on July 14, Melanie Storey, the president of the National Association of Student Financial Aid Administrators, emphasized that students and schools need more clarity about what comes next.

“With significantly more work on the horizon to implement the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, we reiterate our concerns that the Trump administration has not shared the details of a plan to redistribute the Department’s work in a way that does not cause significant disruption for America’s college students,” she said.

Zachary Schermele is an education reporter for USA TODAY. You can reach him by email at zschermele@usatoday.com. Follow him on X at @ZachSchermele and Bluesky at @zachschermele.bsky.social.

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