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The Insider’s Track
Do we have any dentists among us? I made the mistake of going to the dentist the other day for the first time since Covid and left with a laundry list of things I am supposed to go back for to get fixed. Somehow I am supposed to get all this dental work done during the 20 hours a week when the office is open. But my teeth seem fine, nothing hurts. Can’t I just continue to ignore until something does? I don’t want to be labeled an anti-Dentite, but it’s hard not to think the entire dentistry field is kind of a professional racket sometimes.
We haven’t addressed the Trump administration’s assault on Higher Education in a little while, which is what I wanted to touch on today. The president is waging a multi-front war on institutions like Harvard and the rest of the Ivy League. Harvard, unlike the spineless leaders of Columbia who immediately caved to the White House’s demands, has actually sued the White House—basically saying, no, we’re not going to allow ourselves to be put into a federal consent decree. Pretty open and shut First Amendment case, it would seem. So Trump is retaliating, as he tends to do when faced with even a modicum of pushback, now marking Harvard as ineligible for new research grants from the federal government.
This is petty and tyrannical behavior (though admittedly, Trump did have a pretty good Harvard zinger last week while giving the commencement address at Alabama: “The next chapter of the American story will not be written by The Harvard Crimson. It will be written by you, the Crimson Tide.”) I’m not a huge Harvard guy or anything, and I think these top schools are essentially tax-exempt hedge funds with universities attached to them, but I do support academic freedom and free speech so I am rooting for them.
But that’s neither here nor there, and I would argue that his fight with the Ivys is taking oxygen away from something else that his administration and Republicans in Congress are doing that is much more notable. The WSJ is reporting today that the Dept. of Education is planning to withhold federal student loans to colleges with high numbers of graduates who have lapsed on their loan payments. This comes as borrowers who are seriously delinquent are now being put into collections. And there’s a lot of them, up to 10 million by some estimates.
Meanwhile, as part of the GOP’s big reconciliation bill being negotiated in Congress, Republican lawmakers appear to be taking their own serious stab at student loan reform. All of this could change, but as of now the House is advancing legislation that would also seek to hold schools accountable for the outcomes of their graduates.
One way of doing that, per the language House Republicans are using, would be putting caps on how much you can borrow for graduate programs. As of now, there’s no cap on graduate loans. Meaning if you wanted to get a master’s in something called “Media Management,” as I did for some reason, you could hit up the government for the full six-figure freight of that degree—a degree that will go approximately nowhere toward your future career earnings but will saddle you with debt for the rest of your life.
One thing this will do is de-incentivize universities from adding or promoting useless, expensive graduate programs because they know the government is essentially backstopping them. The point of these reform measures is to force colleges and universities to have some skin in the game if their graduates can’t repay the loans they took out to go there. This, again in theory, will force them to rethink or make improvements to programs that do little to nothing for a student’s actual earnings potential.
The nearly $2T student loan morass is a serious problem that needs to be dealt with. Biden’s way of dealing with it was to just wipe out everyone’s debt, which—while I would have personally loved—was obviously a terrible political strategy and, per the Supreme Court, illegal. So I commend the Trump administration and Congressional Republicans for at least trying to fix the problem. But I am also open to other viewpoints on this, so don’t be shy if you have a good one.
The Rundown
US Leaves Europe Hanging With No Road Map for Defense Withdrawal
“You can’t make an assumption that America’s presence will last forever,” Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said to Europe during a press conference in the Polish capital in mid-February, just as Vice President JD Vance stood at the lectern in Munich to mount a scathing attack on the U.S.’ European allies. But months on, the U.S. has still not produced a road map sketching out which capabilities Washington plans on withdrawing from Europe, and what the continent will have to urgently replace, a central European official involved in defense planning, who spoke on condition of anonymity, told Newsweek. Read the story.
Also happening:
- Trump-Carney meeting: Canada’s new Prime Minister Mark Carney is preparing to meet with President Donald Trump at the White House on Tuesday. The meeting comes at a tense time for U.S.-Canadian relations after Trump’s tariffs and his repeated comments about making its northern neighbor its 51st state. “I am not pretending those discussions will be easy,” Carney said. Follow the latest.
- Democrats launch Musk probe: Elon Musk is the target of new conflict of interest questions from Democrats on the House Oversight Committee. Lawmakers have asked Trump administration officials whether Musk, who currently leads DOGE, has any potential conflicts or liabilities, including ties to hostile foreign powers. They also raised concerns about alleged drug use and his involvement in government contracts. Read more.
This is a preview of The 1600—Tap here to get this newsletter delivered straight to your inbox.
The post The 1600: Trump’s Long Game Against Higher Ed appeared first on Newsweek.
