Top Public Policy Issues Facing Governing Boards in 2025–2026:
Introduction

Published March 28, 2025

Death and taxes are not the only certainties. Another: When a new administration gains control of the White House, it immediately sets out to undo policies of the predecessor, especially those that can be reversed by the stroke of a presidential pen.

The breadth and pace of changes that occurred in January under a new president were unprecedented. As President Joseph Biden had done in 2021, the 47^th president immediately overturned dozens of the 46^th president’s executive orders and policies, especially those aimed at promoting diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) not only in the federal government but also at its contractors, including colleges and universities. Tens of thousands of federal workers were fired and a multitude of budgets cut as both Elon Musk and Cabinet secretaries carried out the new president’s orders to streamline government operations and remove personnel considered misaligned with his administration’s priorities.

DEI programs in higher education appeared in jeopardy. Ahead of the confirmation of the new secretary of education, Linda McMahon, the U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights (OCR) sent every college and university a “Dear Colleague” letter proscribing any “race-based decision making” that went beyond the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2023 ruling in Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard, which prohibited race-based admissions with an exception for the military academies.¹ It claimed that schools and colleges were “smuggling racial stereotypes and explicit race-consciousness into everyday training, programming, and discipline” and encouraged individuals who felt they experienced discrimination to report their concerns. Although the Department of Education was created by Congress in 1979, the new secretary embarked on what she called its “final mission”: shutting down or at least hollowing out and hobbling its programs without waiting for Congress to change the law. The department reduced by half its 4,100 staff. Elsewhere, the president dismissed the boards of visitors at all four military academies, citing concerns about the influence of diversity initiatives. West Point disbanded societies and clubs for women, Black engineers, and Asian and Latino cadets.²

Title IX protections extended to transgender individuals under former President Biden were rescinded, and those accused of sexual harassment were once again given the right to cross-examine accusers. In his first six weeks back in office, the president signed 83 executive orders, more than a third as many as the 220 in his earlier four years in office. After transgender rights became a significant topic in the 2024 campaign—including debates over bathroom access, participation in women’s sports, and military service—the new administration moved to cut references to gender identity on passports and U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention studies. The president broached the idea of barring any foreign transgender athletes from obtaining visas to compete in the 2028 Olympic Games in Los Angeles (none ever have). One immediate impact of the new administration’s transgender policy affecting higher education: The NCAA changed its policies to bar athletes assigned male at birth from participating in women’s sports.

A freeze on all federal grants and contracts—some freezes blocked by federal courts—generated concern on campuses that the drive to cut federal spending in the name of efficiency would hobble scientific research. Those concerns were realized when the administration announced it was reducing by $4 billion the amount research institutions can charge for indirect costs to carry out the $35 billion in awards from the National Institutes of Health for medical research on campuses. Among the hardest hit is Johns Hopkins University, which also lost $800 million in funding for health projects it carried out for the now-dismembered U.S. Agency for International Development.³ It announced the layoff of 2,200 workers, mostly overseas.⁴

The Departments of Justice (DOJ), Health and Human Services (HHS), Education (ED), and the General Services Administration (GSA) announced the cancellation of $400 million in federal grants and contracts to Columbia University “due to the school’s continued inaction in the face of persistent harassment of Jewish students.” That action, too, faced immediate challenge in court. The Washington Post reported that the new administration froze $175 million in funding for the University of Pennsylvania for allowing a transgender swimmer to compete on its women’s team before graduating in 2022.⁵

Thus, the second quarter of the 21^st century began with significant shifts in public policies and priorities in Washington, alongside ongoing partisan and ideological debates in many state capitals. With the GOP in control of 27 governorships and an equal number of state legislatures, many states were cutting off support for DEI offices and programs, and some were seeking to limit academic freedom.

It remains to be seen how far the president can advance his goal of dramatically shrinking government and the federal workforce, but one thing is certain: Republicans control both houses of Congress and 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue until the 2026 midterm elections and possibly until the next presidential election. The Senate confirmed all of the president’s Cabinet appointees (his initial choice for Attorney General withdrew), and congressional Republicans showed no inclination to challenge the new administration’s initiatives. But the narrow Republican majorities will be tested as Congress wrestles with how to keep the government funded through a continuing resolution, as well as how to pass tax cuts, and cement the executive branch’s cuts in federal spending for fiscal year 2026.

College and university leaders must grapple with this new political reality, which will impact governance decisions on a host of matters, from how institutions can sustain progress they have made in promoting student and faculty diversity to how they handle protests to how they can keep attracting international students. While public institutions will bear the immediate brunt of policy switches ending diversity programs, private colleges and universities also will be affected given that they run the risk of losing eligibility for federal student aid if they fail to comply with the administration’s orders.

Republicans had already signaled in 2024 that they would cut off federal funding for institutions that failed to come down hard on pro-Palestinian protest encampments and anti-Semitic activities on campuses. Although the boards of private colleges and universities historically and legally have had more autonomy and independence, they are not immune from changes in laws and regulations. Private institutions as well as public ones had to adjust admissions policies to come into line with Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard. And private institutions are financially vulnerable to changing conditions on financial aid funds as well as federally funded research grants.

Trump has stated his administration’s intention to overhaul higher education’s accreditation system, now handled by dozens of non-governmental entities recognized by the U.S. Department of Education to carry out peer review of colleges’ credentials and performance every five to ten years. The president proposed replacing accreditors he argued were promoting diversity initiatives and advancing ideological perspectives he opposed. In dismantling the Department of Education, the administration could turn over to the states responsibility for overseeing higher education accreditation within their borders, which could subject colleges and universities to more political pressures at home.

The new administration’s efforts to carry out mass deportations of those who entered the United States without legal authorization poses challenges for colleges and universities. Undocumented college students number nearly a half million or almost 2 percent of college enrollment. Fewer than half enjoy the protection of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) status that President Barack Obama created by executive order in 2012. Up in the air is the fate of these individuals known as “Dreamers”—those born outside the United States but brought here as children—and currently authorized to finish their education and get jobs.

Changes in Washington could also impact international-student enrollments, particularly enrollments from China, which once accounted for a third of the 1.1 million students from other countries enrolled in U.S. institutions. (India overtook China in 2023–2024 as the leading “exporter,” sending 331,000 students compared with China’s 277,000.) Political tensions between Beijing and Washington could further reduce enrollments. Before stepping down as U.S. ambassador to China at the end of the Biden Administration, diplomat Nicholas Burns stressed the importance of continuing exchanges with China. Burns told an American Council on Education webinar, “Understanding one another is essential, and international exchanges are the biggest key to that. It’s in our national interest—we need to understand China.”⁶

Tightened immigration and visa rules could complicate and curtail travel to the United States by international students and scholars. Some 1.1 million of all undergraduate and graduate students—6 percent—are citizens of other countries, and they contributed more than $50 billion to the U.S. economy in 2023, according to the Institute of International Education.⁷ While graduate students often receive stipends and reduced tuition or waivers, many of the 342,000 undergraduates from other countries pay full, out-of-state tuition at public colleges and universities as well as the full cost at private ones. International students now flock not only to four-year schools but also to community colleges.

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security overturned a policy that dated back to the 1990s that restricted immigration agents from carrying out raids in schools, places of worship, primary and secondary schools, universities and colleges, and other “sensitive” places. Raids on campuses could turbocharge campus protests. While many institutions have tightened time, place, and manner restrictions on protests, more campus unrest is likely. The independence of public governing boards is under strain in some states where legislatures and governors want to influence curriculum and where faculty feel academic freedom is impacted. Some of the largest issues governing boards face in 2025 and 2026 lie outside the political realm, including addressing the need to regain public support for and trust in higher education and sustaining enrollments as the demographic tide of young, prospective students has finally turned. Institutions small and large also are grappling with changes in intercollegiate athletics that have shifted the student-athlete model.

This report examines the policy challenges facing higher education governing boards through six lenses: Accountability and Regulation; Judicial Outcomes; Political Intrusion; Federal and State Funding; Federal Tax Legislation; and Intercollegiate Athletics.