For Black families in America, education has long served as a gateway to upward mobility. Recent changes within the Department of Education (DOE) could close doors that so many of us spent generations walking through. The DOE is currently undergoing one of the most significant reorganizations in its 158-year history. The changes are already reshaping what education access will look like.
President Trump has often stated his desire to eliminate the DOE. In March, he signed an executive order directing Education Secretary Linda McMahon to dismantle the agency, and in July, the One Big Beautiful Bill Act (OBBBA) was passed. The bill includes several provisions that severely impact education.
In November, the Reimagining and Improving Student Education (RISE) Committee released its final recommendations to implement the changes from the OBBBA, and six new interagency agreements are moving core programs to the departments of Labor, Interior, Health and Human Services, and State.
Here are 7 ways these actions to dismantle the DOE could negatively affect Black families.
1. Graduate Borrowing Gets Harder For Financially Disadvantaged Students
The RISE Committee finalized the following new rules, which will take effect in July 2026:
- The borrowing limits are now $20,500 per year, with a cap of $100,000 for graduate students.
- $50,000 per year with a cap of $200,000 for professional students.
- Parent PLUS Loans are capped at $20,000 per year, with a total cap of $65,000 per student.
- The new repayment plan, RAP, forces borrowers to immediately enter repayment on Direct Loans when leaving school.
For Black students, who are more likely to borrow for graduate and professional degrees, these decisions could shut the door on obtaining advanced credentials.
2. New Borrowing Caps Only Apply to “Professional” Programs
Public discussion on how the OBBBA has defined a “professional degree” has taken social media platforms by storm. Based on the initial recommendations, only select programs including Law (L.L.B. or J.D.) and Medicine (M.D.), would be considered for the $200,000 borrowing limit.
The U.S. currently faces a severe shortage of health care workers. Black workers, who account for 26.9 percent of health service jobs but only 13.3 percent of health care practitioner roles, already face financial barriers to advanced training.
Without higher loan limits for health professions, counseling or education graduate programs, the shortage is likely to worsen in the coming years. This could lead to a decline in Black representation in those fields.
3. PK-12 Gets a New Landlord
The first significant shift in the Education Department’s core responsibilities is the transfer of federal PK–12 programs to the Department of Labor (DOL). These programs include Title I-V programs, Education for Homeless Children and Youths and Statewide Family Engagement Centers.
“This will undoubtedly create confusion and duplicity,” Washington State’s superintendent told the Associated Press. Other state officials agree the shifts make little to no sense.
For Black communities, disruption to the programs listed in the agreement could be hit the hardest. Head Start, for example, already faced massive staff terminations and dispersion of services earlier this year. And with 1 in 4 Black children under 18 facing poverty last year, instability in early childhood services risks deepening long-standing educational and health inequities.
4. Higher Education Access Programs Moved To DOL
Postsecondary access programs—TRIO, the Higher Education Emergency Relief Fund, and programs supporting students with intellectual disabilities—are also being moved to the DOL.
A recent POLITICO investigation into this year’s earlier workforce-education pilot found widespread bureaucratic dysfunction and difficulty distributing federal funds. Those challenges could directly affect Black first-generation and low-income students who rely on programs like TRIO to persist through college.
5. New Responsibilities, Old Risks
The Department of the Interior (DOI) will take over several higher education programs serving American Indian, Alaska Native and Native Hawaiian students. Many Tribal leaders have said they were not consulted, despite federal law requiring it. The prevailing consensus is that the DOI is not structured to oversee complex educational grants, partnerships and programs.
This development will lead to ripple effects for all marginalized communities fighting for educational sovereignty and access.
6. Double Jeopardy With HHS
The National Committee on Foreign Medical Education and Accreditation (NCFMEA) will move to the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) at a time when 25 percent of U.S. physicians graduate from foreign medical schools. With HHS already carrying a healthy public health workload, slower accreditation reviews could constrict the flow of foreign-trained doctors who help fill shortages in underserved areas, including predominantly Black communities.
HHS will also take over the Child Care Access Means Parents in School (CCAMPIS), the only federal program dedicated to helping low-income student-parents cover campus childcare. Black parents face many barriers to childcare and rely heavily on programs like CCAMPIS.
7. International Academic Research Now National Security Interest
The final agreement moves programs under the Fulbright-Hays Act—international research centers, language and area studies grants, and undergraduate international education programs—to the State Department.
The Fulbright-Hays program is designed to strengthen U.S. academic capacity, not diplomacy. This raises concerns about whether specific fields or identities could be deprioritized under State Department control, including global Black identities.
What’s at Stake
Education policy experts like American Progress’s Jared Bass warn that these moves are “yet another example of the Trump administration attempting to circumvent the law to advance an agenda that will hurt students and the quality of their education,” he told Inside Higher Ed.
The real question isn’t just what happens to Black graduate students, Black nurses or Black school-aged children today. The ripple effects of these recent moves could negatively impact generations to come in all our families.
Education is not solely another government service for Black people. It has been the backbone of social mobility, professional opportunity and civic life in America. And in less than a year, that foundation is being pulled apart by an administration that refuses to look before it leaps.