President Donald Trump released his proposed budget for fiscal year 2021 earlier this week. The budget proposes steep funding cuts for the U.S. Department of Education, the National Endowment for the Humanities, and the National Endowment for the Arts. However, the budget contains proposals for funding increases for career education and technical education. From Inside Higher Education: "In proposing education cuts, as he has every year of his presidency, Trump reproposed several ideas that have been rejected by Congress, including eliminating the Public Service Loan Forgiveness and Supplemental Educational Opportunity Grant programs, and giving campus financial aid administrators greater latitude to limit loan borrowing by individual students... The administration's budget proposed giving the National Endowments of the Humanities and of the Arts just enough money ($33 million and $30 million, respectively) to begin winding the agencies down."
Importantly, the federal budget must be passed by Congress, and it is unlikely that the final budget will very closely resemble the one Trump has proposed. As Inside Higher Education notes, "Congress has ignored those requests [to cut the budgets of the national endowments] in recent years and actually gave the agencies increases last year."
Read the full budget proposal here.
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