When I entered the University of Minnesota for my freshman year in 2022, I didn’t expect to be running toward the finish line three years later as the future of our education system crumbles behind me with one year still left to go. For students across the country and around the world, the future of the U.S. education system does not seem promising.
The fate of what is often regarded as a stable stepping stone to a successful career is now changing by the day. Academia is under attack.
President Donald Trump’s administration is investigating more than 50 universities as a part of Trump’s efforts to eliminate diversity, equity and inclusion programs. The administration also launched an investigation into 60 colleges over allegations of antisemitism and issued numerous cuts to funding and grants for health science research.
Federal immigration authorities detained Mahmoud Khalil, a permanent resident of the U.S. who helped lead pro-Palestinian protests at Columbia University in 2024. Book bans and attempts to reframe history continue to undermine the quality and integrity of education across the country.
Trump is particularly hostile toward universities because they tend to support much of what he is against — critical thinking, scientific innovation, acknowledgment of history and questioning leadership with a critical eye.
But these attacks run deeper.
Education is the key to change, whether that change moves a society forward or backward. Investment in education builds a future with an educated populace that can think for itself and make advancements. Restricting education leaves people vulnerable to deception and lies.
If Trump and his supporters want to stay in power, attacking education is an important piece of the puzzle.
These attacks also make education and career opportunities unstable for students looking to build a promising future, especially for students looking to go into fields currently under pressure from the administration.
Larry Jacobs, founder and director of the Center for the Study of Politics and Governance at the University, said these attacks jeopardize the stable education students count on.
“It is a deliberate attack on the higher education system,” Jacobs said. “It’s meant to discourage, deflate, dismantle, higher education and the reliance that so many students have on it for advancement, pursuing their dreams and their futures. A lot of that has been put on hold.”
This paired with the current hostility of our politics could deter some students from getting involved, but it can also be a motivator for students to be the change they want to see. Activists and changemakers came out of pivotal points in history like the civil rights movement, Jacobs said.
“There are certainly groups of students who are taking the challenge, feel mobilized and energized by this,” Jacobs said. “Fighting back is really the only recourse at this point.”
As students, we face an important decision about what we’re willing to do to fight for the future we want to build. This is not an easy place to be, but educational institutions aren’t facing anything less challenging.
Daniel Myers, an associate professor of political science at the University, said the Trump administration’s use of funding to leverage universities puts them in a difficult position to deal with current challenges but also to anticipate future ones.
“We’ve certainly seen controversy about how the U has regulated protests on campus,” Myers said. “But having that directive come down to the federal government and having the federal government say, ‘If you don’t shut down certain kinds of protests, we’re gonna cut off the funding for your cancer research,’ puts universities in an incredibly difficult position.”
Even if universities comply with Trump’s orders now, there’s no guarantee the administration won’t go after the same institutions later on.
“The real concern is not just that a particular kind of protest will be disallowed,” Myers said. “It’s that, then, universities are going to have to anticipate if other protests happen on campus that the Trump administration doesn’t like, are they going to come along and take away the funding for all of the vast array of things that happen on the university campus.”
What makes attacks on education so significant is that they don’t just destabilize education today. Cutting funding for cancer research, restricting dialogue about history and social issues, banning books and reducing opportunities for underrepresented groups will have consequences that play out for decades to come.
“This is a perilous moment and how students respond to it is going to be important for today, but also for moving forward,” Jacobs said. “Perilous moments are both disappointing, but they’re also opportunities.”
Trump and his administration have shown they don’t respect precedent or boundaries set by previous administrations. He will go after any and all institutions who challenge him if he has the power to do so, and it remains to be seen how effective any checks on his power will be.
Defending academic freedom isn’t just about addressing today’s chaos. What we do or don’t do now will determine the trajectory of our country and our ability to be educated participants in society.
So, what can we do?
First and foremost, we must educate ourselves through reliable sources of information, support credible journalism and talk with others in our communities about what we know. From there, communities can organize and fight back to protect education and academic freedom.
In a society where leaders want you to be uneducated, educating yourself is an act of protest.
For the sake of today and tomorrow, let’s do everything we can to make sure education is used to move us forward, not backward in time.
