page_title: Presidency of Donald Trump
section_title: Education
hierarchical_section_title: Presidency of Donald Trump / Domestic policy / Education
caption_attribution_description: President Donald Trump and U.S. Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos participate in a tour of Saint Andrew's Catholic School on Friday, March 3, 2017, Orlando, Florida. (Official White House Photo by Shealah Craighead)
context_page_description: The presidency of Donald Trump began at noon EST on January 20, 2017, when he was inaugurated as the 45th president of the United States, succeeding Barack Obama. A Republican, Trump was a businessman and reality television personality from New York City at the time of his 2016 presidential election victory over Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton. While Trump lost the popular vote, he won the Electoral College vote, 304 to 227, in a presidential contest that American intelligence agencies concluded was targeted by a Russian interference campaign. Trump has made many false or misleading statements during his campaign and presidency. The statements have been documented by fact-checkers, with political scientists and historians widely describing the phenomenon as unprecedented in modern American politics. Trump's approval rating has been stable, hovering at high-30 to mid-40 percent throughout his presidency.
  Trump rolled back numerous environmental protections, as well as reducing enforcement of existing regulations.
context_section_description: Trump appointed Betsy DeVos as his Secretary of Education. Her nomination was confirmed on a 50–50 Senate vote with Vice President Pence called upon to break the tie (the first time a vice president had cast a tie-breaking vote on a Cabinet nomination). Democrats opposed DeVos as underqualified, while Republicans supported DeVos because of her strong support of school choice. DeVos became one of the more polarizing Trump Cabinet members.
  In 2017, Trump revoked an Obama administration memo which provided protections for people in default on student loans. The Education Department cancelled agreements with the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) to police student loan fraud. Seth Frotman, the CFPB student loan ombudsman, resigned, accusing the Trump administration of undermining the CFPB's work on protecting student borrowers.
  In 2017 DeVos said the Obama administration's guidance for how campuses address sexual assault "failed too many students" and she announced that she intended to replace the current approach "with a workable, effective and fair system". Consequently, the administration scrapped an Obama administration guidance on how schools and universities should combat sexual harassment and sexual violence. DeVos criticized the guidance for undermining the rights of those accused of sexual harassment.
  DeVos marginalized an investigative unit within the Department of Education which under Obama investigated predatory activities by for-profit colleges. The unit had been scaled down from a dozen employees to three, and had been repurposed to process student loan forgiveness applications and focus on smaller compliance cases. An investigation started under Obama into the practices of DeVry Education Group, which operates for-profit colleges, was halted in early 2017, and the former dean at DeVry was made into the supervisor for the investigative unit later that summer. DeVry paid a $100 million fine in 2016 for defrauding students. The administration rescinded a regulation restricting federal funding to for-profit colleges unable to demonstrate that college graduates had a reasonable debt-to-earnings ratio after entering the job market.
caption: Trump and Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos visit Saint Andrew's Catholic School in Orlando, Florida, March 3, 2017.
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