Over the past few months, many of us have watched in disbelief as pieces of the ominous Project 2025 plan have started to take shape. Some of the “trending” news include the attack on free speech seen through the suspension of Jimmy Kimmel, the assault on public media through the defunding of PBS, the erosion of basic human rights through healthcare rollbacks and mass detention and deportation of innocent people, including Indigenous communities. I wish I were being dramatic. I wish I could say this is fear-mongering. But it’s not. The truth is that democracy is under attack.

Project 2025 is a coordinated initiative led by the Heritage Foundation and more than 100 far-right organizations. At its center is a 900-page policy playbook called Mandate for Leadership, which outlines how a future administration could dismantle public institutions, including the Department of Education, with or without Congress. According to Democracy Forward, the plan proposes to gut social services, eliminate overtime protections, weaken civil rights laws, restrict reproductive and LGBTQ+ freedoms, and slash access to education, healthcare, and food assistance.

Among these alarming developments, one especially devastating blow is the systematic defunding and restructuring of the Department of Education. A functioning democracy relies on a well-informed, critically thinking public. Education is a public service because it is the foundation of a free society.

Now, we face the new threat of an official list labeling certain degrees as “unprofessional.” Many of the degrees being targeted are women-dominated fields that require emotional intelligence, academic rigor, and relentless dedication.

Here’s the part no one seems to say plainly: people have student loans. Not just people who mismanaged money, and not just people scraping by. Most Americans carry student debt. In fact, over 42.5 million people hold federal student loans, and the average balance is nearly $40,000 (Education Data). Even with my scholarships and family’s support, I still had to take out loans. If you come from a low-income background, loans are often times your only way to access higher education. If you come from a middle or even upper-middle class family, you still don’t qualify for enough aid. Either way, you borrow. No income bracket is fully protected from the cost of higher education.

This is where the “unprofessional degree” label becomes dangerous. Degrees that once led to stable, respected, and essential careers are now being politically downgraded. When the government questions the legitimacy of a degree, employers feel justified slashing wages, shrinking programs, and cutting funding. Your credentials lose value, but your debt stays the same and continues to grow with interest. You are left with fewer options and the same financial burden. That’s how entire workforces get trapped in lifelong debt cycles. I only took a handful of economics classes, but I can tell you this is a calculated strategy. When people are buried in loans and underpaid, they don’t have the capacity to resist. And the people in power stay in power, hiring cheap labor while others work themselves into exhaustion just to get by.

This burden is especially heavy on women, because the degrees being targeted are the ones women most often earn. Let’s talk about that and the patriarchal root of this entire issue. These so-called “unprofessional” degrees are in the fields that treat people like human beings. The ones that bring dignity, compassion, and care in the hardest moments of life. And these jobs are hard. Really hard.

One of my close friends and current roommate earned her nursing degree. I watched her push through early morning clinicals after late nights celebrating birthdays, and then stay up until 2 a.m. to study. She graduated with honors and not just because she cared about grades, but because she showed up for the people she was caring for. Even at parties, she was the one people looked for if someone got hurt. She always stepped in, gracefully and without judgment. She cared and she had the knowledge to act because nursing demands both brains and heart. Now she works as an emergency trauma nurse. I see her come home after 12-hour shifts, often covered in blood or bodily fluids and completely exhausted. She stabilizes patients in crisis while they wait for their next phase of care. Nurses are often the first to know what’s really going on. They spend the most time with patients. They catch what doctors might miss. They advocate for what patients actually need. And they’re not alone. Therapists, physician assistants, lab techs, speech pathologists are all of the professionals now being pushed to the margins. They hold society together while their degrees are being written off.

Another close friend studied political science and is planning on going to law school. She works at a nonprofit as an eviction prevention caseworker, helping people stay in their homes. Her clients carry heavy trauma and often distrust the systems that failed them. Still, she shows up, she listens, and she advocates. She helps people stay housed. Her work is essential but for the people at the top, it’s terrifying and dangerous because it doesn’t serve billionaires or big corporations. It serves people directly from the ground up.

And then there are teachers. Everyone has had them. And let’s be honest, most of them were women. Are you really going to tell me that from kindergarten to senior year, not one teacher changed your life? I know I wouldn’t be who I am without mine. I remember my first-grade teacher who protected my imagination. My fourth-grade teacher who made me fall in love with writing. My sixth-grade teacher who reminded me that learning could be joyful. My eighth-grade teacher who believed in me when I couldn’t believe in myself. My tenth-grade history teacher who taught me how to think critically. My American Studies teachers, who taught our AP U.S. History and AP Lang courses together, showed me how to research, analyze, connect ideas, and express them with clarity. These skills still shape who I am. Teachers are not just instructors. They are builders of belief. They don’t teach you what to think, they teach you how to believe in yourself and in something bigger. And somehow, even architecture is now being labeled an “unprofessional” degree. Maybe that’s because those in power are afraid of people who know how to build things that last like structures, communities, and minds. Nonetheless, teachers are already underpaid and overworked. Now they’re being told their work doesn’t even count. If we decide that teachers don’t matter, then we’re saying that children don’t matter either. That their future doesn’t matter. Kids are brilliant. They still have imagination, empathy, and curiosity because the weight of the adult world hasn’t crushed it out of them yet. They are the ones who will inherit what we leave behind. If we strip away the people who guide, support, and inspire them, we’re not just attacking a profession. We are risking the future.

All of these careers like teaching, nursing, social work, mental health , and more have been labeled “unprofessional” because they challenge power. They don’t serve profits, they serve people. They create hope. The hope to walk again, to breathe freely, to think critically, to feel safe and loved in your own home. These degrees aren’t dangerous ideologies. They are the embodiment of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. The people in power are counting on us being too tired, too broke, and too disillusioned to fight back. We cannot give them that satisfaction.

Call your representatives. Vote in every election. Talk to the people in your life who haven’t heard about this yet. Defend the professions that keep this country alive. Because without teachers, nurses, social workers, therapists, and all those who support them, this democracy cannot survive.

As the Declaration of Independence reminds us:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all people are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.
That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government.