A Big Broken Promise to America’s Students and Women

WASHINGTON, D.C. — Congress has passed a bill that will go down in history not as a beautiful promise fulfilled—but as a big broken promise to America’s students, working families, and especially to women. 

From early learning through graduate school, this bill deals a devastating blow to educational opportunities in America. It slashes financial aid, eliminates vital student loan programs, and channels public dollars into private voucher schemes — all while doing nothing to ensure that participating schools uphold civil rights protections. Instead of expanding access, it erects new barriers that will shut out millions of students, especially women, low-income families, and communities of color. This bill makes drastic cuts to Medicaid, it threatens reproductive freedom and the health and economic security of the very people who rely on education as a path to a better future. 

For AAUW, this is personal. We are the nation’s largest non-institutional funder of women’s graduate education. For more than 140 years, we’ve fought to open the doors of higher education to all women—not just those who can afford it. And we know the truth: when women lose access to education, they lose access to opportunity, economic security, and equity. 

This bill: 

• Undermines educational equity by using tax breaks to fund private school voucher programs without requiring participating schools to follow Title IX, Title VI, or disability laws — creating a loophole that permits legal discrimination against students. 

• Shuts women out of higher education by eliminating Graduate PLUS loans and creating borrowing caps that disproportionately harm women of color, single mothers, and first-generation students. 

• Attacks reproductive health and health care access by essentially defunding Planned Parenthood and making sweeping changes to Medicaid that will strip coverage from millions of women — leaving them without access to birth control, cancer screenings, and maternal care. 

This bill does not reflect the values of fairness, inclusion, or opportunity. It is a deliberate rollback of hard-won rights, passed at the expense of women’s futures and our nation’s progress. 

As the bill heads to the president’s desk, AAUW calls on the administration to reckon with what this legislation truly means — and to recognize the irreversible harm it will cause to students, families, and our economy now and in years to come. 

AAUW and our nationwide network of members and advocates will not stop fighting until every student — regardless of gender, race, income, or zip code — has full and equal access to education, civil rights, and opportunity. 

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AAUW (American Association of University Women) is the nation’s leading organization for equity in higher education and women’s economic empowerment.   

Founded in 1881 by women who defied society’s conventions by earning college degrees, AAUW has since worked to increase women’s access, opportunity, and equity in higher education through research, advocacy, and philanthropy of over $140 million, supporting thousands of women scholars. Learn more at aauw.org and follow us at @AAUW.