Biden Leaves Behind a Graveyard of Higher Ed Policies
Jessica Blake
January 9, 2025
An Inside Higher Ed analysis found that of nearly 40 higher ed policy topics on the Biden administration’s rule-making agenda, 42 percent have taken effect. But that’s still more than the first Trump term.
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.
