Is Higher Ed Ready to Be Bodyslammed?

As President-elect Donald Trump’s nominee, Linda McMahon is likely to be the next secretary of education. With her background building the World Wrestling Entertainment business with her disgraced husband, Vince McMahon—now separated—Linda McMahon was a competent leader of the Small Business Administration during Trump’s first term and is widely viewed as a strong manager.

No one knows for certain what the next four years will bring under Secretary McMahon. But if colleges and universities think they’ll be a continuation of the last four, they’re living in fantasyland. American higher education finds itself almost completely exposed with few defenders in the governing party. To wit:

• The Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 postulated that “nearly every top-tier U.S. university president or Wall Street hedge-fund manager has more in common with a socialist, European head of state than with the parents at a high-school football game in Waco, Texas.”
• The Cato Institute concluded “Washington should withdraw from higher education” and eliminate all federal financial aid.
• McMahon’s own America First Policy Institute, where she serves as board chair, stated that universities are “failing to live up to their important public responsibilities.”

In an era of anti-institutionalism—in language McMahon would understand from her wrestling background—have colleges and universities turned heel? Is higher education about to get hit over the head with a folding chair? With McMahon in the ring, here’s how the bout(s) might play out.

Taking on Accreditors

Republicans won in 2024 in part by taking on universities that had gone too far with DEI. And as six of seven regional accreditors mandate that higher education institutions demonstrate a commitment to DEI, Republicans have zeroed in on accreditation as a root cause. Project 2025 proposes to “prohibit accreditation agencies from leveraging their Title IV gatekeeper role to mandate that educational institutions adopt diversity, equity, and inclusion policies.” DEI appears to be the chosen provocation for a frontal assault on accreditation, and accreditors are already running scared. The most likely tactic is the introduction of new competition through newly recognizing accreditors like the Postsecondary Commission or delegating recognition to states, thereby placing public colleges and universities in red states under strict Republican control and at risk of a WWE-style beating.

Focus on Employment

Perhaps the single biggest change in higher education over the past decade is that decision-makers everywhere are now on notice of the employment imperative. It’s conceivable we’ll see something like gainful employment across the board, i.e., a new economic test for Title IV eligibility: Are students getting good jobs and generating a sufficient return on their investment in degree programs? In lieu of adding to the federal bureaucracy, accreditors (or states) would be charged with implementing and policing this change. While it would mean amending the Higher Education Act, keep in mind budget reconciliation bills only require 50 votes in the Senate. And even if McMahon and Congress aren’t prepared to go this far, as everyone’s also now aware that the best predictor of a positive employment outcome is a paid internship, watch for a new mandate that Title IV–eligible institutions deliver in-field work experience as a component of degree programs. At a minimum, any HEA reauthorization is likely to mandate that accreditors provide more flexibility to institutions to grant credit for work and work-based learning, allowing Title IV to pay for it.

The End of College for All

In the WWE, the term “kayfabe” is used to mandate that every wrestler act in character all the time. Adopted from carnivals, kayfabe reflects that wrestlers can never break the fourth wall unless they want to end their careers. In higher education, the kayfabe of college for all has been broken. McMahon will be the first secretary of education to openly break it, having recently written in The Hill that “pretending college is the path for everyone is incredibly outdated.” So it’s likely we’ll see both fewer federal resources for universities and more forks in a smaller pie.

Fewer Resources

The first Trump administration’s final proposed budget included an 8 percent ($5.6 billion) cut to the Department of Education’s budget, ending Public Service Loan Forgiveness and cutting other aid programs. Meanwhile, House Committee on Education and the Workforce chairwoman Virginia Foxx’s College Cost Reduction Act would cap federal loans at $50,000 for undergraduates and $100,000 for graduate students in addition to requiring colleges to pay up when students don’t pay back their loans: Preston Cooper has calculated that the University of Southern California could be on the hook for an annual penalty of nearly $170 million. The most likely change, however, is elimination of Grad PLUS and Parent PLUS loans, tarred by critics as predatory government loans with rates of over 9 percent. PLUS loans are targeted in Project 2025 and—as private loans wouldn’t come close to filling the gap—subtracting PLUS could sink unnecessary master’s programs and drive holes in the budgets of hundreds of institutions.

More Competition

As McMahon’s one definitive higher education policy statement is a September 2024 op-ed in support of short-term Pell, it’s likely we’ll see some version of allowing Pell Grants to be used for short work-related programs. And since she recently posted on X about apprenticeships, look for those and other “earn and learn” models to gain their first access to Department of Education dollars. It all means less federal funding for each accredited postsecondary institution.

International Students

Compounding the issue of fewer resources, while another travel ban remains possible, what’s more likely are Florida- or Texas-style executive actions conveying xenophobic messages to Chinese students, along with more stringent visa processing for students from Asia, Africa and Latin America, resulting in higher reject rates and delays. It all adds up to another drop in international enrollment, lost revenue and fiscal challenges for U.S. colleges and universities.

A Punitive Endowment Tax?

One of the most infamous events in WWE history was the “Montreal Screwjob,” when McMahon’s husband, Vince, double-crossed a wrestler at ringside, ordering the referee to count the popular champion out and hand the title to an unworthy challenger. Immediately thereafter, the champion spat in Vince McMahon’s face and knocked him out cold. Vince McMahon’s double-cross might only be exceeded by our next president, who loves touting his Wharton degree and proudly announced his choice for vice president’s Yale Law School pedigree. Given that the first Trump administration established the first-ever tax on endowment income—1.4 percent on colleges with 500-plus students and endowments of more than $500,000 per student—the next screwjob could be to raise the rate from nuisance level to punitive. Last year Senator JD Vance introduced a bill to raise the rate to 35 percent for colleges with endowments of at least $10 billion. Making the double-cross even sweeter, the tax on the $10 billion–plus institutions—the University of Pennsylvania and Yale among them—that have been hesitant to launch degree programs online would fund a new tuition-free national online college. Only one thing’s for certain: Assuming the Secret Service does its job, Penn and Yale won’t get the WWE champion’s chance to spit in the faces of their double-crossing alumni.

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At the merciful conclusion of the worst drama in higher education history—i.e., student loan forgiveness theater—the curtain is rising on a new show. But whichever match is on offer, as in the WWE, it’s unlikely to be a fair fight. As last year’s congressional hearing on antisemitism demonstrated, and as Steven Brint noted in The Chronicle of Higher Education,

Those who advance to top positions in universities are generally expert managers. Many also have the capacity to charm donors. They are less likely to be practiced politicians … Most of the time this managerial approach works. But when it comes to combating a well-organized political party determined to degrade academic institutions, managerialism invites disaster.”

One change we’re unlikely to see: the ballyhooed elimination of the Department of Education. Recall the proposal to combine the Education and Labor Departments in President Trump’s first term. And in his announcement of McMahon’s nomination, President Trump didn’t mention it, focusing instead on his goal of sending education “BACK TO THE STATES.” Even if there is a reorganizational effort at ED—perhaps led by the tag team of Elon and Vivek—no one seems to think it will have a material impact on colleges and universities. The functions and funding will remain. And the people managing them will remain at 400 Maryland Avenue even if the building has a different sign on the door.

But job security for Department of Education employees is cold comfort for the colleges and universities they oversee. The next few years will be a steel cage match against a federal government seeking a screwjob in every college town. As McMahon enters the ring—strange as it seems—we now live in a world where higher education leaders who wish to avoid getting bodyslammed would do well to familiarize themselves with professional wrestling.