Harvard University has stepped into 2025 facing a unique kind of uncertainty. The uncertainty does not stem from its own operations but from the very federal system that oversees them. Since President Donald Trump returned to office in January, the prestigious institution has been the subject of at least four investigations led by the United States Department of Education. Now, as the administration systematically takes apart that department, the fate of these probes has been thrown into doubt.
A Department in Disarray: Oversight Scattered Across Agencies
The core issue is not an immediate disappearance of oversight. Instead, the established structure responsible for executing it is being deliberately dismantled and its parts dispersed. In a significant move last November, the Trump administration announced that key offices—including the Office of Elementary and Secondary Education and the Office of Postsecondary Education—would be moved under the umbrella of the US Department of Labor. This action is a concrete step in a broader, long-signalled effort to weaken and ultimately close down the US Department of Education.
This represents a pivotal moment in a long-running clash. Historically, Harvard University has had various points of tension with the Education Department, ranging from bond-sale monitoring to demands for detailed admissions data. The specific body that initiated the four current investigations, the Department's Office for Civil Rights (OCR), is now a shadow of its former self. It is operating with less than half the staff it had in March, a severe reduction that narrows both its expertise and capacity precisely when scrutiny of elite universities is intense.
Fragmentation Risk: Harvard May Answer to Multiple Masters
The immediate risk is one of fragmentation. As education oversight responsibilities migrate to departments whose core missions are far removed from academia, Harvard University may find itself answering to multiple agencies. Each agency would have different priorities and a limited historical understanding of higher-education regulation.
Kenneth K. Wong, a senior fellow at The Brookings Institution, highlighted this challenge, noting that dispersing oversight "multiplies the number of players that Harvard would have to deal with." For a university accustomed to a single, dedicated federal interlocutor, this new reality could mean facing interpretations shaped by labour policy, administrative law, or budget disciplines instead of education-specific reasoning.
Will Oversight Weaken or Simply Migrate?
The Trump administration argues that shifting responsibilities out of the Education Department will boost efficiency and reduce federal duplication. However, as critics point out, agencies like the Department of Labor would need to hire and train new staff to replicate work previously handled by a dedicated education workforce. This transition period is almost certain to slow down existing processes, including ongoing investigations.
Former Massachusetts Secretary of Education Paul Reville suggested the restructuring is part of a wider pattern to create an environment where Harvard and higher education broadly feel under pressure. He also questioned the efficiency argument, stating that the promised administrative gains have not materialised.
The deeper concern is not whether another agency can technically enforce federal rules—many can. The question is whether they will prioritise the work. Within the Department of Labor, education programmes will compete for attention with employment regulation, workforce development, and economic-policy initiatives. In such a hierarchy, investigations into a single university may not rank as urgent.
A Slow Reconfiguration with Long-Term Implications for Elite Universities
If federal oversight becomes slower, less consistent, or more dispersed, Harvard's regulatory landscape could shift from predictable to highly variable. Investigations may not be abandoned outright, but they could be delayed, rerouted, or reframed through the mission of whichever department inherits them.
This is why observers view the restructuring as more than mere bureaucratic reshuffling. It symbolizes the weakening of the Education Department itself. The process involves staff reductions and functional transfers, amounting to a gradual erosion rather than an outright abolition—a long process, not a single decision.
For Harvard University, the practical question is straightforward: which agency will handle its ongoing and future cases, and with what degree of clarity? The answer remains unclear. What is evident is that the centre of federal education oversight—once concentrated, coherent, and recognisable—is being taken apart. The future will depend on how well receiving departments, most lacking education-specific frameworks, absorb responsibilities they were never designed to hold.
The four investigations may continue, stall, or scatter. For now, the pervasive uncertainty itself is the clearest sign of this new administrative order.
