The U.S. Under Secretary of Ed Is Clear About the Plan. Are We?

This morning at #ACEx2026, I was in the audience when U.S. Under Secretary of Education Nicholas Kent delivered, in plain and bluntly assured tones, the Trump Administration's plans for higher education. As a policymaker whose every decision shapes our industry, he made clear he was giving higher education a stark warning, and I hope anyone present will share what they heard too.

First, though, I want to cite the related remarks yesterday to this same ACE audience from former U.S. Ambassador to Hungary David Pressman. He witnessed up close the ascent of Viktor Orban, who of course for years has been a frequent visitor to Mar-a-Lago. Pressman spoke bluntly at ACE. He advised that we are all suffering from a failure of imagination, the same failure he saw unfold for years in Hungary: the failure to believe what our own government is showing us. He argued, “If you delude yourself into thinking you’re in a dialogue with the federal government, you have lost before you started.” Because, he said, “This is not a negotiation. It is a subjugation.”

Then this morning, Kent began by saying, ‘If you think there was a lot of change for higher education from this administration in 2025,’: “Buckle up.”

President Trump’s views of higher ed, which we all heard professed across 2025, have now moved from the executive to the policy level. That makes the under secretary’s arguments vital information, as they underscore how fully committed the policy leaders are. The reasoning he shared also seems far removed from the standards and mores on which American government, and therefore its national enterprise of higher education, has long relied.

By way of sharing that logic, here are some of the under secretary’s statements:

• He said that the president and this department are convinced that radical change in this industry is necessary because polls show that only 36% of Americans believe in the value of higher education. Change in higher ed IS necessary. And, Kent did not pause to reflect on the fact that this figure is higher than the percentage of support Americans have for the president and his policies, according to numerous polls. But Kent made clear that, regardless, this administration will not change its plans for higher education.

• He said that President Trump’s election was “a mandate” and “an overwhelming referendum” on changing higher education. He did not explain how that logic squares with the fact that the president was elected with less than 50% of the popular vote.

• He warned that higher ed “does not get to take public dollars and then refuse accountability.” He did not back this up with any details about colleges and universities that are doing so. He also did not share how the Administration measures accountability or why it has eschewed accountability for cabinet members, its law enforcement actions, and in numerous policy areas.

• He said that “the average campus resembles an echo chamber.” He did not provide the facts that he uses to reach this judgment. The behavior we have witnessed at live-streamed cabinet meetings, including from the secretary he directly serves, can’t help but underscore how deeply the conviction goes into policy-making teams.

• He said “the growing interest of foreign interests on America’s campuses” justifies his department’s policies. He did not note that those policies have reduced the enrollment of foreign students by 19% this year, costing lost revenue to local economies and driving foreign scholars to other nations.

Then came the conclusion, which left me wondering what former Ambassador Pressman would have advised to this audience of higher education leaders and policymakers. For the under secretary then argued that higher education ‘should finish moving through the five stages of grief’ “to acceptance.”

Most importantly, this sense of conviction set up what the Department of Education plans for higher ed in 2026: to use accreditation to enforce its ideology, to use agreements on federal funding to enforce executive orders even though the latter do not have the force of law, to implement loan policies that will drive millions of low- and middle-come students out of higher education, and more.

As if to make sure the industry he was addressing truly understood, the under secretary closed by saying, “Let us all be believers….”

Thanks to ACE for ensuring we got to hear what we are being asked to believe. It seems plain enough that if we continue to suffer from a failure of recognition, or imagination, we will have lost before we started.