President Trump’s first budget guts (sic) funding for higher education

President Donald Trump has submitted his first budget to Congress, an event many have been waiting for anxiously.  President Trump's Tweet about his budgetCandidate Trump, during the presidential campaign last fall, spoke frequently about reducing the size of the federal government and “draining the swamp” of Washington, so this budget was among his first emphatic statements in support of those pledges.

There is a lot to discuss about this FY18 budget, including the fact that virtually every Cabinet and other agency included in the budget – with the exception of Defense, Homeland Security, and Veterans Affairs – is seeing a decrease in funding from FY17 levels ranging from 1 percent (NASA) to 31 percent (EPA). There are my details still missing, however, as this is known as a “skinny budget,” typical of that submitted by first-term presidents who do not have much time to put the budget together.  My particular  and admittedly selfish interest is how this budget is likely to affect the nation’s roughly 4,600 degree-granting institutions of higher education.  Here’s the spoiler, for those who don’t want to bother reading this entire post: The news is not good.

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Higher education turmoil in Washington

It’s been almost seven weeks since President Trump was inaugurated, and it’s been quite tumultuous for those of us in colleges and universities around the country.  Regardless of one’s politics, I think that many of us were not sure what to expect with the new administration, largely because then-candidate Donald Trump said relatively little about higher education during the campaign.

Photo of President Trump taking the oath of office
Photo courtesy WhiteHouse.gov

I wrote about the little he had said about the topic, and wrote a similar piece about Hillary Clinton’s proposals, which were more fleshed out.  I also had written about the President-elect’s nomination of Betsy DeVos to the post of Secretary of Education.

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Bigoted actions across the nation and President-elect Trump

President-elect Donald Trump speaks at a campaign rally in Grand Rapids, Mich., on Nov. 8. (photo: San Francisco Chronicle)
President-elect Donald Trump speaks at a campaign rally in Grand Rapids, Mich., on Nov. 8. (photo: San Francisco Chronicle)

During the presidential campaign I wrote about the higher education proposals of Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump.  Since the election last week there has been so much that has happened in our country  that I almost wouldn’t know where to start to comment. However, one thing that has been very disturbing has been the outbreak of racist, nationalist, misogynist, anti-immigrant, and other bigoted actions across the nation. This morning’s San Francisco Chronicle has an op-ed I authored calling on President-elect Trump to take quick action to stop them.