Harvard University entered 2025 with an unusual form of uncertainty, not about its own operations, but about the federal system that oversees them. The University has been subject to at least four investigations led by the United States Department of Education since President Donald Trump returned to office in January. Now, as the administration moves to dismantle that department piece by piece, the future of those investigations has become unclear.The issue is not whether oversight disappears overnight. It is that the structure responsible for carrying it out is being taken apart and dispersed. In November, the Trump administration announced that the Office of Elementary and Secondary Education and the Office of Postsecondary Education would move under the US Department of Labor. This shift is part of a broader effort — long signalled, now operational — to weaken and eventually shutter the US Department of Education.
A long-running clash, and a shrinking centre of authority
Historically, Harvard University’s points of tension with the Education Department have ranged from bond-sale monitoring to demands for detailed admissions information. Its Office for Civil Rights, the body that initiated the four investigations reported by The Harvard Crimson, is now operating with less than half of the staff it had in March. The weakening of that office narrows both expertise and capacity at a moment when scrutiny of elite universities has intensified.The risk now is fragmentation. As responsibilities move to departments whose core missions sit far from education, Harvard University may find itself answering to multiple agencies, each with different priorities and limited historical understanding of higher-education oversight.Kenneth K. Wong, a senior fellow at The Brookings Institution, told the Crimson that dispersing oversight “multiplies the number of players that Harvard would have to deal with”. His comment points to a central challenge: a university accustomed to a single federal interlocutor may now face interpretations shaped by labour policy, administrative law, or budget disciplines rather than education-specific reasoning.
Will oversight weaken or simply migrate?
The Trump administration argues that shifting responsibilities out of the Education Department will increase efficiency and reduce federal duplication. But as the Crimson notes, agencies such as the Department of Labor would need to hire and train staff to replicate work previously done by a dedicated education workforce. That transition period will almost certainly slow down existing processes.Former Massachusetts Secretary of Education Paul Reville told the Crimson that the restructuring forms part of a wider pattern: creating an environment in which Harvard University and higher education more broadly feel under pressure. He also questioned the efficiency narrative, noting that the promised gains have not materialised.The deeper issue is not whether another agency can enforce federal rules — many can. It is whether they will prioritise the work. Within the Department of Labor, education programmes will sit beside employment regulation, workforce development and economic-policy initiatives. Within such a hierarchy, investigations into a single university may not be urgent.
A slow reconfiguration with long-term implications
If oversight becomes slower, less consistent, or more dispersed, Harvard University’s regulatory landscape may shift from predictable to variable. Investigations may not be abandoned, but they may be delayed, rerouted or reframed through the mission of whichever department inherits them.This is why observers view the restructuring as more than administrative movement. It is a symbolic weakening of the Education Department itself. As the Crimson reports, staff reductions and functional transfers amount to a gradual erosion rather than an outright abolition — a long process rather than 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 is not yet visible. What is clear is that the centre of federal education oversight — once concentrated, coherent and recognisable — is being dismantled. What comes next will depend on how well the receiving departments, most of which lack education-specific frameworks, absorb responsibilities they were never designed to hold.The investigations may continue, stall, or scatter. The uncertainty itself is the first sign of the new order.
