As the fall semester of 2025 gets underway, college campuses across Ohio are brimming with new energy—yet this year, there’s an unmistakable undercurrent of anxiety, uncertainty, and change. For the state’s Gen Z students, the 2025–2026 academic year marks the beginning of a college journey that will unfold almost entirely under the second term of President Donald Trump. With sweeping policy shifts at both the federal and state levels, students are finding that the very landscape of higher education is being redrawn beneath their feet.
According to reporting by cleveland.com and The Plain Dealer, the impact is already visible. For incoming freshmen at The Ohio State University (OSU) and Kent State University, Trump’s presidency is not just background noise—it’s shaping everything from campus culture to the cost of a graduate degree. Laura Hancock and Mary Frances McGowan, writing for cleveland.com, captured the mood as students voiced their concerns about what the future holds.
One of the most immediate and visible changes has been the closure of diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) offices at OSU. In February 2025, the university shuttered its Office of Diversity and Inclusion and the Center for Belonging and Social Change, moves made in direct response to executive orders from the Trump administration and the passage of Ohio Senate Bill 1 (SB 1). The Office of Institutional Equity was also renamed the Office of Civil Rights Compliance, with some DEI-related programs transferred to other departments in a modified form to comply with new mandates.
Zen Bowers, an OSU sophomore majoring in ecological engineering, described the effect: “All the safe spaces created for people of color are now being more inclusive to people who are not as oppressed, like white students and men.” Fellow sophomore Cadence Linn recalled, “Students were notified of the DEI closures in an email, just a day before they closed. It’s a little bit scary to me. There shouldn’t be so much political control over education. The whole thing about education is that it’s not supposed to be touched.”
The changes aren’t limited to OSU. Across Ohio’s public universities, SB 1 bans the promotion of DEI initiatives and prohibits institutions from taking official positions on controversial topics—ranging from climate change and foreign policy to abortion and immigration. The law also requires post-tenure reviews for professors, with the potential for dismissal if performance expectations aren’t met, all under the banner of promoting “intellectual diversity.”
For some students, these changes have a deeply personal resonance. Jaxon Stevens, an OSU freshman who identifies as bisexual, said, “I haven’t experienced anything directly, especially since I present as a straight white guy. I am bi, though. That kind of puts a little bit of hazard in the back of my mind.” Stevens admitted he considered leaving Ohio to escape SB 1’s reach, but ultimately stayed due to financial constraints. “It was something that was in the back of my mind a little bit and I did apply to a couple out of state. But I decided in the end, I think I can deal with people being idiots for it being a couple thousand dollars cheaper.”
International students, too, are rethinking their place in America’s higher education system. Deepan Wagle, a sophomore from Nepal studying mechatronics engineering at Kent State, said, “I feel like I came to the U.S. just as its downfall has begun.” Wagle cited the consolidation of Trump’s power, a Republican majority in Congress, and a Supreme Court shaped by Trump’s appointments as reasons for his disillusionment. He now plans to move to Europe after graduating in 2027, seeing few options to push back against federal policies he finds troubling. Previous attempts by the administration to revoke the legal status of thousands of international students have only added to the sense of instability.
Financial pressures are also mounting, particularly for those aspiring to graduate degrees. The “One Big, Beautiful Bill Act,” signed into law by President Trump, eliminates the Direct PLUS loan for graduate students, replacing it with a capped loan structure—$20,500 per year and a lifetime limit of $100,000. This change is expected to make graduate education less accessible for middle- and low-income students, unless they can secure generous scholarships or take on private loans, which often come with higher interest rates and fewer protections.
First-generation student Fouvia Ahmed, who dreams of attending medical school, is worried about her prospects. “I don’t know where I’m going to get the funds, especially when they passed that bill,” Ahmed said. “It’s scary.” Kent State freshman Hannah McCauley, who plans to study journalism and history, noted another significant change: “Under the big, beautiful bill, instead of having six months to start paying things back, we have to start doing so immediately. That might not seem like a lot of time, but still plenty of time that we could be saving up.”
For some students, the broader political climate is just as concerning as the specific policy changes. Kent State freshman Jonah Axelrod didn’t mince words about the president: “Yeah, he sucks. Get out of our country. Bad foreign policy. Bad domestic policy. He’s not fair to his own people. He dumps money in the White House when he should be dumping it, you know, into like cancer research for kids, meals for kids. He’s a selfish, greedy, pig.” Axelrod, who is training to be a commercial pilot, also pointed to the impact of federal budget cuts on the Federal Aviation Administration. “I’ve been impacted sometimes because I fly out of a New York-area airport. New York has been affected by it. You know, all the ATC [Air Traffic Control] outages. There have been times where you’ve had less controllers at my airport.”
Even scholarships are not immune to the shifting landscape. OSU freshman Kelly Hauck, who attends on a competitive Morrill Scholarship, said the eligibility criteria had to be adjusted due to the state’s DEI ban, although her award was preserved. Hauck expressed her own worries: “I’m a little worried for everything but I’m trying to stay positive and not consume too much media because it does give me a little anxiety.”
Gen Z voters, much like the country at large, remain divided. About half reported voting for Trump and half for former Vice President Kamala Harris in the last election, according to Gabriel Rubin, a Montclair State University professor who studies young voters. Rubin observed that conservative students often feel cautious about revealing their political views, sometimes requesting anonymity for fear of backlash.
With the academic year just beginning, Ohio’s Gen Z students are learning to navigate a new reality—one where the rules of higher education, and perhaps the rules of engagement for young Americans, are being rewritten in real time. Whether these changes will lead to lasting transformation or spark a new wave of activism and adaptation remains to be seen, but for now, the sense of uncertainty is a defining feature of campus life.