Biden Leaves Behind a Graveyard of Higher Ed Policies

Inside Higher Ed

Jessica Blake

January 9, 2025

Nearly four years ago, President Biden took office with ambitious plans to relieve millions of borrowers from student debt, protect trans students from discrimination and crack down on for-profit institutions. Getting that done required the president to use executive power to issue new rules and regulations and rewrite those put in place by the Trump administration.

But now, with Trump set to take office again in less than two weeks, many of the current Education Department’s most pressing agenda items, particularly those aimed at bolstering consumer protections for students, remain dead in the water.

Even rules that survived the gantlet of public comment and legal challenges—such as ones that hold institutions accountable and increase scrutiny over college mergers—could quickly be rolled back under Trump, landing in the graveyard alongside the rules that the Biden administration proposed or plan to pursue over the last four years.

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