Why It’s Time To Abolish The Department Of Education

By Jane L. Johnson, Mises Wire | December 02, 2024

Ryan McMaken makes a convincing case on Mises Wire for abolishing the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). But DHS is not the only executive branch cabinet department that has been occasionally mentioned as a candidate for elimination.

Aside from the US cabinet departments of State, Treasury, and Defense that date back to the earliest years of the nation, the names of other departments—Agriculture, Commerce, Education, Energy, Health and Human Services, Homeland Security, Housing and Urban Development, Interior, Labor, Transportation, and Veterans Affairs—do not typically roll off the tips of Americans’ tongues. Many of these departments and agencies could easily be considered candidates for elimination or consolidation.

One embarrassingly unforgettable example of a proposed cabinet department abolition was former Texas governor (and Secretary of Energy in the Trump administration) Rick Perry’s fiasco during a Republican primary presidential debate in 2012. Asked which cabinet departments he would eliminate if he were elected president, he spent 53 seconds (a lifetime in a debate) trying to remember the third of three federal agencies that he would abolish, before admitting failure and saying “Sorry, oops.” One of the other Republican candidates in the debate—Mitt Romney—helpfully suggested that perhaps Perry was thinking of the Energy Department, but the point had been lost and Perry soon withdrew from the primary race.

Education’s Checkered Past and Current Critics

The US Department of Education (ED) was created in late 1979 during the Carter administration. He had run for president in 1976, advocating a stand-alone education department after the National Education Association (NEA) had offered to endorse a candidate who would support a new department. NEA by that time had transformed from a professional association to a labor union, and was flexing its political muscles.

Until 1979, federal education functions were either independent agencies or housed in the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare (HEW), which itself had been created in the early years of Dwight Eisenhower’s first presidential term. These various educational functions included the Office of Education, National Center for Education Statistics, and several other entities. But the federal government’s involvement in education was at that time minor and benign compared to its expansion in more recent years.

There are plenty of critics who advocate eliminating ED. Many Americans have long believed that education should not be a federal responsibility, and that it was always left to the states for funding, administrative, and curricular choices. The US Constitution nowhere refers to any federal activity in either K-12 or postsecondary education. Even Franklin Delano Roosevelt—well known as a governmental interventionist president—is not remembered as ever having advocated any federal role in education.

The December 2024 edition of Reason Magazine, published by the libertarian Reason Foundation, in its cover story entitled “Abolish Everything” includes a short article entitled “Abolish the Department of Education,” asserting that, not only must the entire department be eliminated, but all of its unconstitutional programs as well.

Douglas Holtz-Eakin, former Director of the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) and currently president of the non-profit think tank American Action Forum, states in his recent November 15 column that ED’s “...$250 billion budget is essentially a large financial funnel passing dollars to states for activities such as...financial assistance to schools with a high percentage of low-income students and special education programs for children and youth with disabilities. Oh, yes, and federal student loans.”

The Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025—with which Donald Trump disavowed any affiliation during the 2024 presidential campaign—has stated that neither the Department of Education nor its constituent programs have any constitutional business existing.

ED’s Recent Scandals: FAFSA, Title IX, and Student Loans

During the Biden administration, ED has been a high-profile cabinet department under its inept Secretary Miguel Cardona since early 2021, with three newsworthy scandals under his leadership having received much headline coverage.

The FAFSA Scandal: 

The “Free Application for Federal Student Aid” (FAFSA) mess leads this list of ED’s dirty laundry because of the large number of college students, their parents, and institutions adversely affected by ED’s efforts to revamp the online application form after Congress required this in 2020.

Richard Cordray—controversial former director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and then chief operating officer for ED’s Office of Federal Student Aid—left ED in June 2024 after many problems with the 2023-24 FAFSA form’s financial aid calculations that left students with delayed college admissions and without financial aid (grants, scholarships, work-study programs, and loans) for which they otherwise would have been eligible. Collegiate institutions have blamed the FAFSA fiasco for reduced student matriculation levels in the 2024-25 academic year.

ED was late in posting its academic year 2024-25 FAFSA, then recently announced that the 2025-26 FAFSA form will be released in December 2024, but that multiple beta tests are being made to identify and resolve system errors that could derail the FAFSA process for students and institutions. ED further announces that participation in the beta release is by invitation only.

New Title IX Regulations and Lawsuits:

Title IX of the 1972 amendments to the 1965 Higher Education Act prohibits sex-based discrimination in any school or educational program that receives federal funding. Violations include gender discrimination, sexual harassment, sexual violence, retaliation, and a hostile environment. Title IX has also been implicated in denying students (typically male) due process when accused of such violations.

In 2020 Betsy DeVos—ED Secretary in Trump’s first administration—announced new Title IX due process regulatory protections for those accused of campus sexual harassment or assault, ending Obama-era guidance that had denied due process to the accused.

Then, in 2024, the Biden administration announced another new era for higher ed institutions’ handling of sexual harassment and assault cases, in particular expanding protections for LGBTQ+ and pregnant students. Before these new regulations could take effect, however, 26 states objected to expanded LGBTQ+ rights, and challenged the regulations in court, leading to temporary injunctions that prevent ED from enforcing those regulations. In Congress, House Republicans argued that the regulatory changes undermine Title IX’s protections for “cisgender” women and girls.

Injunctions against the new Title IX regulations remain in place, leaving the Biden administration to make its case before the Supreme Court to allow parts of the new rule to take effect while litigation continues, portending that the Court will ultimately have to settle the questions raised in the states’ lawsuits.

ED has quite obviously entered the cultural wars in its efforts to regulate the administration of Title IX on campuses. Most likely, these regulations will ebb and flow with every succeeding presidential administration, as they have from Obama through Trump, Biden, and now Trump again.

Last But Not Least—Student Loan “Forgiveness”:

Federal student loan repayments were suspended during the pandemic, then officially resumed in September 2023. Following that, the Biden administration loan forgiveness project has taken so many twists and turns that it’s difficult to keep up with the billions of loans already written off, number of students affected, those still promised loan relief, and the ultimate costs to the federal budget deficit.

Hoping to gain votes from student borrowers, the administration first attempted to forgive loans under the Higher Education Relief Opportunities for Students Act (HEROES Act), which, in July 2023, the Supreme Court struck down in Biden v. Nebraska. But some subsequent attempts at forgiveness have succeeded for certain groups of students. The Biden administration has now approved nearly $138 billion in student debt cancellation for almost 3.9 million borrowers through more than twenty executive orders. And some further cancellation promises remain pending.

ED’s Questionable, Murky Future

Given ED’s inept management and the three headline-grabbing scandals, what is likely to become of the Department? Though Trump clearly wishes to abolish ED—and his supporters would surely approve—it’s unlikely that he will be able to shut it down. Doing so would require a Senate supermajority of 60 votes to repeal the original 1979 legislation that established ED. Republicans will control the upper chamber of Congress but only hold 53 seats, while Democrats and Independents make up the other 47. Senate Republicans are also highly unlikely to abolish the filibuster, which would be required to pass legislation with fewer than 60 votes.

Eliminating ED could also send shock waves throughout the nation by impacting student loan plans and impounding funds that were congressionally appropriated for K-12 school districts that depend most on federal grants. It could also hurt students in low-income schools and those in special education programs.

One can be sure that the proposed Musk-Ramaswamy Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) will discuss the possibility of abolishing ED, but one can also make an educated guess that any proposal will fail to take effect within Trump’s upcoming administration. Yet, if enough scandals continue to plague this benighted department, perhaps over the longer run some downsizing—and ultimately elimination—may be possible.

Jane Johnson is a retired college economics instructor who currently teaches economics at the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute in southern California. She is a graduate of Vassar College, and has graduate degrees from UC-Berkeley, and the University of Washington.

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