On the campaign trail, President Donald Trump railed against elite universities that he said were “paying more to hedge funds and private equity managers than they are spending on tuition assistance.” He vowed to “push colleges to cut the skyrocketing cost of tuition.”

But in the year since, his administration has done little to help low- and middle-income Americans afford the nation’s best schools, even as data released this year show just how pervasive economic inequality is on American college campuses. Many of the nation’s top schools serve more students from the top 1 percent of earners than the bottom 60 percent combined, according to a study by the Equality of Opportunity Project.


The Trump administration, instead, has largely sent the message that those four-year universities aren’t for everyone — a talking point that groups working to expand college access, especially for low-income students, say threatens to exacerbate the problem.

“I tend to wonder who is the ‘everyone’ — who is in that category and who is not,” said Michelle Asha Cooper, president of the Institute for Higher Education Policy, a nonpartisan group focused on promoting access to higher education. “It’s very important we do not create policies that will further marginalize students of color and low-income students.”

The administration has built a narrative that four-year degrees have been overemphasized. Trump has called for more career and technical training. He has said vocational education is the way of the future. Apprenticeships, he’s said, “can be a positive alternative to a four-year degree.”

“So many people go to college, four years, they don’t like it, they’re not necessarily good at it, but they’re good at other things, like fixing engines and building things,” Trump said in March, referencing his own experience at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. “When I went to school, I saw it. I sat next to people that weren’t necessarily good students but they could take an engine apart blindfolded.”

Education Secretary Betsy DeVos hit that point again this month during a commencement address at the University of Baltimore.

“We must stop suggesting there is only one, conventional path to success,” she said. “In fact, there are many avenues to gain what individual students need or want: industry-recognized certificates, stackable credits, credentials and licensures, badges, micro-degrees, apprenticeships, two-year degrees, four-year degrees, advanced degrees … ”

While the administration has thrown its support behind allowing students to keep collecting Pell Grants — federal aid for low-income students — all year, and has worked to make applying for federal student aid easier, it is also rewriting Obama-era regulations that advocates say are key to protecting borrowers. In addition, Trump’s tax reform package would tax some university endowments, which schools argue will take money they otherwise might have spent on financial aid and send it to the federal government.

White House deputy press secretary Hogan Gidley said in a statement: “The Trump Administration’s higher education principles promote reforms that provide students access to more postsecondary options. The President believes students deserve the opportunity to choose an education tailored to their needs. This policy framework will better prepare students to compete in a globally competitive economy, modernize an antiquated federal student aid system, and hold higher education institutions more accountable to students and taxpayers."

Few argue against the assertion that there should be multiple options for students. Nearly half of today’s college students attend community colleges and demand is high for workers to fill so-called middle-skills jobs, which require more education than a high school diploma, but less than a four-year degree. Former President Barack Obama stressed the importance of community colleges, but with a different goal than Trump’s: While Obama acknowledged that four-year colleges weren’t for everyone, he suggested that community college was an important stepping-stone to additional education. Trump’s narrative is harsher, suggesting that many students shouldn’t go to school for four years, which critics complain would further restrict social mobility.

“Who are we talking about? What students are we talking about when we talk about career and technical education?” said Wil Del Pilar, vice president of higher education policy and practice at the Education Trust, a nonprofit advocacy group led by John King, who served as education secretary during the Obama administration. “Do we expect that for all students, or only certain types of students? We would argue we should provide access broadly.”

According to College Board data, the median income for individuals with a four-year degree working full time was 33 percent higher than those with two-year degrees in 2015. Individuals with master’s degrees, meanwhile, earned 22 percent more than those with only a bachelor’s degree. Those with doctoral degrees earned 63 percent more. Department of Labor statistics show the same trend: The higher the degree an individual holds, the more they make and the less likely they are to be unemployed.

“The bachelor’s degree is the most reliable path to the middle class and, of course, is a jumping-off point to graduate degrees that society critically needs to thrive,” said Debbie Cochrane, vice president at The Institute for College Access and Success, a frequent critic of Trump’s education policies. “High quality certificates, associate’s degrees and bachelor’s degrees are all very much needed, and I don’t think pitting them against each other is wise.”

“We cannot set up a system where students from low-income backgrounds have limited choices … and students from high-income families can pick any pathway,” said Carrie Warick, director of policy and advocacy for the nonpartisan National College Access Network. “They continually pick the four-year degree, if they’re from high-income families. Low-income students should have the same opportunity.”

Data make clear that socio-economic background already dictates too much for too many students. In 2015, according to College Board data, 58 percent of high school seniors in the bottom 20 percent of family incomes went on to some form of college. Their peers from the top 20 percent went on to college at 82 percent.

“There is a concern that this could exacerbate the problem,” Warick said.

The Trump administration has done some things that encourage advocates. Its willingness to have students collect Pell Grants all year, a policy change that Congress included in its budget deal earlier this year, gives students more financial flexibility. The administration is also creating a mobile app for students to fill out the application for federal student aid, which they say will make it easier for students to apply. And it has worked to scrap education regulations, which Trump said on the campaign trail would be part of his effort to “drive down college costs by reducing the unnecessary costs of compliance with federal regulations so that colleges can pass on the savings to students in the form of lower tuition.”

DeVos said she has an overriding goal of “really helping all students pursue their dreams.” When asked earlier this month about the problem of economic inequality on campus, she said she has “thoughts” on the issue, but did not elaborate on what she plans to do. She said she is currently working on “a framework of principles as we advance the conversation.”

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But much of the administration’s work on higher education so far has been focused on rewriting Obama-era rules, including those aimed at providing debt relief for defrauded students and cutting off federal aid to career college programs that produce graduates with high amounts of debt relative to their income.

Trump is also fulfilling another campaign pledge: “Reconsidering whether those [colleges] with huge endowments deserve to keep those endowments tax-exempt.” The GOP’s sweeping rewrite of the tax code will, for the first time, tax endowments of the nation’s richest private colleges and universities. But the plan isn’t aimed at forcing those schools to spend more from their endowments on financial aid, as Trump suggested on the campaign trail. It would simply charge a tax on the endowment earnings at the richest schools, which those schools argue will divert money they might otherwise have spent on financial aid to the federal government.

The White House earlier this month released a list of principles moving forward as Congress prepares to rewrite the federal law governing higher education for the first time in nearly a decade. The list includes encouraging colleges and universities to “deliver more affordable and accessible education to traditional and non-traditional students,” among other things, such as helping students and parents make “informed financial decisions when making educational choices,” protecting taxpayers from the “Federal Government’s substantial exposure for student loans,” and protecting “academic freedom and ... the exercise of free speech on college campuses for faculty and students.”

The principles specifically call for allowing students to use Pell Grants on “short-term” programs.

“Students face many educational options in paving their way to a successful career,” the document said. “Federal law should facilitate, not impede, students exploring and accessing those options. Congress should therefore expand Pell Grant recipients’ eligibility to include high-quality short-term, summer, and certificate programs.”

While advocates for students have applauded the administration’s support for extending Pell Grants for the full year, they worry that expanding them for shorter-term programs will funnel low-income students to those programs, which they say may be less likely to help those students climb the economic ladder.

Many of those programs are also run by for-profit companies that the Obama administration sought to police more aggressively through gainful employment rules, which stripped federal funding from programs that left students with significantly more debt than income. The Trump administration, which has had a much friendlier relationship with for-profits, is rewriting those rules.

Warick noted there is “no similar investment in increasing the maximum Pell award for students seek four-year degrees,” despite the fact that the maximum Pell grant covers only about 29 percent of a four-year education on average.

“We’re concerned that offering these short-term pathways and focus on workforce development will allow the federal government, and maybe state governments, to say — ‘Well, low-income students have that option, we don’t need to address the rising cost of four-year education,’” she said.