In early 2025, a video (archived) circulated online that appeared to show U.S. President Donald Trump announcing his plan for the American Academy,
The video and quotes from it circulated on TikTok (archived), Facebook (archived) and X (archived). Snopes readers also messaged us to ask if the video was authentic.
Trump announced his plans for the American Academy in a video posted (archived) by Trump's presidential campaign on Nov. 1, 2023. This was the same footage used in the TikTok video and other claims above. Therefore, we rate this claim true.
In the video, Trump said, in part:
Under the plan I'm announcing today, we will take the billions and billions of dollars that we will collect by taxing, fining and suing excessively large private university endowments, and we will then use that money to endow a new institution called the American Academy.
Its mission will be to make a truly world-class education available to every American, free of charge, and do it without adding a single dime to the federal debt. This institution will gather an entire universe of the highest quality educational content, covering the full spectrum of human knowledge and skills, and make that material available to every American citizen online for free.
Whether you want lectures or an ancient history or an introduction to financial accounting, or training in a skilled trade, the goal will be to deliver it and get it done properly, using study groups, mentors, industry partnerships and the latest breakthrough in computing. This will be a truly top-tier education option for the people.
It will be strictly nonpolitical, and there will be no "wokeness" or jihadism allowed — none of that's going to be allowed.
Most importantly, the American Academy will compete directly with the existing and very costly four-year university system by granting students degree credentials that the U.S. government and all federal contractors will henceforth recognize. The academy will award the full and complete equivalent of a bachelor's degree.
Social media posts in March and April 2025 that claimed the plan for the American Academy was a new announcement were incorrect, given that the academy was part of the election campaign.
Not only was the video featuring Trump authentic — meaning, not generated by artificial intelligence — the proposal made in the video was, at the time of its release, a real policy point.
Trump's American Academy plan was widely reported across outlets including Politico, The Atlantic, Forbes, MSNBC and The Wall Street Journal.
Critical reporting drew parallels to Trump University, a collection of short courses including a real-estate training program. The "university" shut down in 2011, and Trump settled three fraud lawsuits related to its real-estate courses in 2016.
We reached out to the White House press office to ask whether the American Academy was still part of the Trump administration's policy in 2025 and, if so, what the latest update on the development of the project was. We await a reply.
Republicans mull tax plans that could raise funds
In the announcement video, Trump proposed that the American Academy would be funded by "taxing, fining, and suing excessively large private university endowments."
University endowments are money and other financial assets given to a university by private donors meant to function as a long-term source of income for the institution. They are generally separate from government funding.
Since the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act that became law during the first Trump administration in 2017, a 1.4% tax applies to university endowment income if a university has more than 500 students and endowment assets exceed $500,000 per student. A leaked memo from the House Budget Committee Republicans in January 2025 included suggestions to raise the 1.4% tax on university endowment income to 14% and expand the number of universities required to pay it.
Congressional Republicans were in the process of crafting updated budget legislation to enact Trump's various policies at the time of this writing.
Aside from a potential rise in endowment income tax, it was unclear at the time of this writing whether the Trump administration still intended to fine and sue "excessively large private university endowments" to set up the American Academy.
The Trump administration has frozen federal funding for at least seven universities, six of them in the Ivy League, due to reasons including alleged civil rights violations, allegations of antisemitism on campus and failure to comply with the administration's demands to discontinue diversity, equity and inclusion practices. Harvard University sued the Trump administration after it froze billions of dollars worth of federal funding to the institution.