Former President Donald Trump has released more details about his ambitious plan to reform education throughout the country, should he take back the White House following the 2024 election.
Trump recently laid out his second policy agenda item about education recently, saying he would like to leverage accreditation at colleges and universities so that the country can take back these schools “from the radical left and Marxist maniacs.”
On Monday night, Trump posted a new video to Rumble that outlined another aspect of his Agenda47 policy. The video was published only a few days after he held a speaking arrangement to voters who are of college age at the Turning Point Action Conference.
In the video, Trump says:
“For many years, tuition costs at colleges and universities have been exploding, and I mean absolutely exploding, while academics have been obsessed with indoctrinating America’s youth. The time has come to reclaim our once great educational institutions from the radical left, and we will do that.”
The key point of leverage of the plan Trump has put forth is doing away with all the accreditors who lean heavily to the left. He’d also force the accrediting boards to hold the institutions of higher education accountable by threatening to hold back accreditation and all federal funding.
As Trump explained:
“Our secret weapon will be the college accreditation system. It’s called accreditation for a reason.
“The accreditors are supposed to ensure that schools are not ripping off students and taxpayers, but they have failed totally. When I return to the White House, I will fire the radical left accreditors that have allowed our colleges to become dominated by Marxist maniacs and lunatics.”
Trump said the plan would then be to accept applications from people who wanted to become the new accreditors under his administration, all of whom “will impose real standards on colleges once again, and once and for all.”
Trump certainly isn’t wrong about how the cost of tuition at colleges and universities in the United States has exploded out of control in recent years.
A report released this year from the Georgetown University Center on Education and the Workforce found that from 1980 to 2020, the average cost of tuition, room and board, and fees required to get an undergraduate degree had increased by 169%.
The National Center for Education Statistics also reported that in 1980, the cost to attend full-time a four-year college was $10,231 per year, adjusted for inflation. That number reached $28,775 by the 2019-2020 school year, which represents an increase of 180%.
Trump plans to instill a number of different standards on institutions of higher education under his administration. That includes protecting free speech, defending Western civilization and American traditions, offering options for degrees that are accelerated and at lower costs, providing meaningful career services and job placement, and implementing entrance exams as well as exit exams that would prove students are learning and, as a result, getting their money’s worth at the schools.
