Community Colleges and Trump II

It’s axiomatic that elections have policy consequences. The shift in emphases and priorities for taxpayer funding is central to many such policy changes. Thus, it should come as no surprise that the second Trump administration has taken steps, in line with the longstanding preference of many conservatives, to reduce the federal government’s financial footprint across American higher education and, in many cases, to revisit the administrative regulations that underpin the relationship between Washington and the 6,000 colleges and universities dotting the country.

The administration’s hard look at federal research funding is unlikely to affect the operations of community colleges. Three higher-education policy thrusts stand out so far in this administration, and each of them appears to be focused overwhelmingly on universities and private colleges rather than community colleges: (1) the rolling back of extensive basic- and applied-research grants at major institutions, (2) skepticism of overtly race-based programming, and (3) frustration with anti-Israel/pro-Hamas agitation on campuses. While it is foolhardy to predict the exact contours of the higher-education policy of an administration barely 100 days into office, this unfolding picture brings into focus for community colleges—a sector that educates a plurality of all post-secondary students in America—both challenges and opportunities in the Trump II era.

Support-personnel churn at major universities could make community colleges into inadvertent recipients of experienced staff members. Almost all of the basic- and applied-research funds that go into higher-education institutions from the federal government are directed toward activities in major universities with significant graduate-level footprints. This not only allows for seed funding of research in the sciences, technology, and engineering but also frees some overhead from internal sources to be used for other administrative activities.

In contrast, almost no such funding is directed at community colleges, which are principally geared towards undergraduate teaching and workforce training. Such paucity of research funding, though sometimes bemoaned by community-college advocates, suggests that the current administration’s hard look at several federal research-funding streams is unlikely to affect the operations of community colleges in any tangible manner. Additionally, any support-personnel churn at major universities due to the suspension of funding could make nearby community colleges into inadvertent recipients of experienced and qualified staff members looking to continue their careers in higher education.

An analogous situation exists—for now—with the administration’s focus on possible race-based discrimination at colleges and universities whose students benefit from federal student aid (which is about 99 percent of all colleges and universities). Though community colleges, too, have delved into this space, the diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) initiatives of major universities have been in a class of their own, with expansive programming, robust staffing, graduation requirements, and, thus, the serious spending of dollars and cents amounting to hundreds of millions. Not surprisingly, the most recent list of institutions under the Department of Education’s investigative scanner contains approximately 50 colleges and universities across the length and breadth of the country, including several Ivies, more than a few major private universities, several flagships, many land-grant institutions, but no community colleges, at least so far. Simply put, the financial strains that most community colleges operate under leave little room for the spending of public funds—already under scrutiny by governance boards that are often publicly elected—on many ancillary programs. When I chaired the institutional-research council of Kansas’s community-and-technical-college sector earlier in the decade, I didn’t notice any of the almost two dozen institutions having full-time staff members devoted to “DEI” programming.

Like major investments in “DEI” programming and massive research facilities, international students and mass protests about global issues are relatively few and far between at community colleges, which tend to be commuter schools anyway. For many students at such exclusively undergraduate institutions, the focus is on finishing coursework and getting to the next step in the educational or career journey, rather than ardent activism borne of deep policy consciousness.

That strong workforce focus at community colleges may benefit in one additional area, as well: Having in power a party that has increasingly been open to expanding Pell grants to learners pursuing short-term credentials may advance a good idea generally frowned upon by the higher-education establishment.

None of this is to suggest that the community-college sector will not have some uncomfortable choices to make. None of this is to suggest that the community-college sector will not have some uncomfortable choices to make as the broad contours of the second Trump administration come into view. Belt tightening across several federal programs is likely to impact some taxpayer-funding streams going into community colleges. Those funding mechanisms that are primarily or predominantly reliant on considerations of race, ethnicity, and gender—such as certain Title III grants—are very likely to come under the microscope for every higher-education institution, regardless of the sector. Workarounds, such as attempts to use hastily put together proxies for such demographic considerations, are already strongly discouraged by the new leadership at the U.S. Department of Education.

Belt tightening is likely to impact some taxpayer-funding streams going into community colleges. Additionally, there is likely to be a greater expectation in Washington that these institutions spend more of their operational dollars in the bread and butter of student success rather than on more tangential things that are often put under the header of “student life.” It is not beyond reason to suspect that, at some point, federal agencies will wonder why some taxpayer funds cannot be clawed back to provide an opportunity for community colleges to repurpose internal resources towards pedagogy and workforce training. The alternative is continuing to subsidize programs that can be criticized as efforts to infantilize adults in college.

That said, three principal hallmarks of most community colleges—nimbleness, focus on teaching, and local democratic control—could together be a differentiating toolset as the entire higher-education system reorganizes to accommodate the expectations, legal interpretations, and policy approaches of the new administration.

Governing boards accountable to the local citizenry, and leadership directly responsible to these boards, could ensure that these institutions pivot quickly to realign resources—financial and otherwise—towards operational areas that directly impact outcomes on student success and workforce development, while also staying clear of activities that are bound to draw deep scrutiny by regulators and funding agencies in Washington. For many large universities, public or private, the absence of a similarly accountable governance structure, coupled with an already top-heavy bureaucracy, hampers quick turnarounds in response to rapidly changing operating environments.

Lower-cost institutions focusing on teaching, skills development, and community impact have a great opportunity in the “new” higher-education federal regulatory landscape to compete well with much bigger and costlier entities, where focuses on nebulous co-curricular and extra-curricular activities continue to draw plenty of resources, fiscal and otherwise.

An opportunity is not, however, a guarantee. Those community colleges whose boards and executive leaderships seize this chance affirmatively by making the pivot to a new reality will come out bigger winners than those whose leaders do not.

Dr. Esam Sohail Mohammad is the executive director of institutional effectiveness and planning at Rogue Community College in southern Oregon and is a past chairman of the Kansas Council of Institutional Researchers of Two-Year Organizations (CIRTO). The views expressed are the author’s own and do not reflect those of any organization with which he is affiliated.