College athletics has fundamentally changed in the last two decades. With students earning thousands—sometimes millions—for their name, image and likeness and changing teams with greater ease via the transfer portal, athletics have transformed from amateur levels to something more akin to a professional sports league.
The imminent ruling on the $2.8 billion House settlement case stands to bring about even more change for the sector.
In the latest episode of The Key, Inside Higher Ed’s news and analysis podcast, Editor in Chief Sara Custer speaks with Karen Weaver, an adjunct assistant professor in the graduate school of education at the University of Pennsylvania, about what the new landscape means for everyone on college campuses, not just those in the athletic department.
“College athletics have played a critical role in higher education for over 100 years,” said Weaver. “The problem is that the money that has come into so much of college athletics at the highest level is just astronomical.”
With coaching salaries well into the millions and eight-figure investments into athletics facilities, the campus starts to look and feel differently, she said. “I think that has an impact on everybody.”
Meanwhile, ensuring athletes have academic success is further complicated when they can change institutions to pursue more lucrative deals, she said.
“The transfer portal has created an enormous burden on academic counselors and faculty when athletes are supposed to make normal progress toward a degree—all of that is very confusing now,” she said.
Weaver explained what policy shifts mean for the future of Olympic teams as well as Division II and III programs. In light of rumors that President Trump plans to sign an executive order to regulate payments for name, image and likeness, Weaver suggested collective bargaining would be a more comprehensive solution to the legal and financial complexities of the current state of affairs.
“I understand collective bargaining with students is tough, I get that, and it’s messy … but it’s still a legitimate outlet to try to address all of these issues and it needs to be talked about more.”
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Do transgender student athletes’ involvement in girls’ and women’s sports — an issue that has recently jeopardized schools’ federal funding — fall under government efficiency and oversight? That question starkly divided lawmakers among party lines in a nearly 4-hour hearing on Wednesday held by the Delivering on Government Efficiency Subcommittee, a newly-formed subcommittee of the House Committee on Oversight and Accountability.
The DOGE Subcommittee hearing — meant to discuss the politically charged issue of Title IX and transgender student rights that has taken center stage under the Trump administration — quickly deteriorated to repeated gavel-banging, a motion to adjourn the meeting, disagreement over the committee’s purpose, arguments over lawmakers’ allotted speaking times, and discussions of differences in male and female elbow-joint anatomy and muscle mass.
The subcommittee was created to oversee “federal civil service, including compensation, classification, and benefits; federal property disposal; government reorganizations and operations, including transparency, performance, grants management, and accounting measures generally,” according to the Committee on Oversight and Government Reform’s rule book.
Witnesses included two cisgender female athletes advocating for athletic teams without transgender students, the chair for the USA Fencing Board of Directors, and the CEO of National Women’s Law Center, a nonprofit organization that advocates for LGBTQ+ rights.
Republican lawmakers, who have called for less federal oversight of education and a return of that power to the states, said the hearing was necessary because it related to Title IX, a federal law meant to prohibit sex discrimination in federally funded education programs.
“It’s an important issue that biological men stay out of women’s sports,” said Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, chair of the committee and Republican from Georgia.
Rep. William Timmons, R-S.C., said the hearing was meant to “shine a light not only on the integrity of women’s sports,” but also on how institutions like USA Fencing and others may be misusing their authority to “push controversial policies that violate basic human rights and disregard their Congressionally-authorized mission.”
“This is what happens when you allow God to be pushed out of everything,” added Rep. Eli Crane, R-Ariz.
Democratic lawmakers at the hearing, however, said it was a waste of the subcommittee’s time and did not fall under the body’s jurisdiction, which instead includes issues like proposed cuts across the government.
“This subcommittee could be focusing on the layoffs that President Trump has executed: over 200,000 firings of federal employees,” said Rep. Stephen Lynch, D-Mass. “That does affect the efficiency of our government programs.”
Rep. Robert Garcia, D-Calif., concurred, saying the subcommittee has “never really talked about government efficiency or any serious legislative work,” and that he was “surprised that this subcommittee is not apparently in charge of policing women’s sports.”
Stephanie Turner, left, a fencer who refused to compete against a transgender athlete, and Payton McNabb, right, a former North Carolina high school volleyball player injured by a transgender opponent, are sworn in during the hearing held by the Delivering on Government Efficiency Subcommittee at the U.S. Capitol on May 7, 2025, in Washington, D.C.
Kayla Bartkowski/Getty Images via Getty Images
DOGE impacts on K-12
The DOGE Subcommittee is among the latest in a series of efforts by the Trump administration and Republicans to cut back on what they say are instances of abuse, fraud and waste in the government. Its formation is an extension of similar efforts conducted by the Department of Government Efficiency, also referred to as DOGE.
Those efforts have had major implications for the K-12 sector in recent months, including gutting the Education Department by laying off more than 1,300 employees, closing or significantly reducing its offices, canceling grants entirely or retracting grant competitions, and proposing a 15% cut to the department’s funding.
The reduction in expenses from DOGE’s efforts is also expected to put a strain on K-12 finances, according to a Moody’s report released in April.
Among DOGE cuts were seven of the Education Department’s 12 local offices for the Office for Civil Rights, leaving schools with reduced oversight of civil rights compliance. Those offices were in charge of investigating allegations of Title IX violations — the subject of the hearing Wednesday — for half of states.
The Education Department has since announced a Title IX Special Investigations Team, which taps the Department of Justice for investigations and ultimate enforcement of the separation of transgender students from girls’ and women’s athletics teams and spaces in schools and colleges.
One such investigation recently conducted by the Education Department and referred to the Justice Department for enforcement has put on the line almost $864 million of Maine’s federal education funding, which it said could be cut for past and present Title IX violations. Those violations were found over the state’s policy allowing transgender athletes to play on girls’ and women’s sports teams.
The Department of Justice, in suing the state last month, said “many, many states” were next, including California and Minnesota, which are currently under investigation for alleged Title IX and FERPA violations related to transgender issues like school sports participation and gender support plans.
Title IX civil rights complaints have historically come second to disability-related complaints when excluding thousands of sex discrimination complaints that were filed by a single person in recent fiscal years, skewing OCR data.
Disability-related complaints were briefly paused by the administration after Trump took office and then resumed after reports emerged of thousands of OCR investigations coming to an abrupt halt.
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The Trump administration has suspended $175 million in federal funding for theUniversity of Pennsylvania, citing its athletics participation policies for transgender students, according to a Wednesday post from a White House social media account.
The cuts are to discretionary spending from the U.S. Department of Defense and the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, according toFox Business, the first to report the news.
“We are aware of media reports suggesting a suspension of $175 million in federal funding to Penn, but have not yet received any official notification or any details,” a Penn spokesperson said via email Wednesday.
The spokesperson added, “We have been in the past, and remain today, in full compliance with the regulations that apply to not only Penn, but all of our NCAA and Ivy League peer institutions.”
In an executive order last month, President Donald Trump barred colleges and K-12 schools from allowing transgender women to play on sports teams that align with their gender identity and threatened to pull all federal funding from institutions that don’t comply.
The day after Trump signed the directive, the U.S. Department of Education opened a Title IX investigation into Penn, San José State University and a K-12 athletics association over policies the agency said were out of step with the executive order.
Former Penn swimmer Lia Thomas, a transgender woman, has been at the center of polarizing debates over gender identity and college athletics participation.In 2022, Thomas became the first openly transgender athlete to win a NCAA Division I championship for her victory in the women’s 500-yard freestyle.
Last week, more than a dozen college athletes sued the NCAA, alleging that allowing Thomas to compete in the championship violated Title IX, the sweeping statute barring sex-based discrimination in federally funded institutions.
The complaint comes only a month after a similar lawsuit was filed against Penn and the NCAA over Thomas’ participation in the Ivy League’s 2022 swimming championship.
The NCAA updated its policies after Trump’s executive order to only allow students assigned female at birth to compete in women’s athletics.
On April 6, the U.S. Department of Education released a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (NPRM) on student eligibility for athletic teams under Title IX. The proposed rulemaking focuses on transgender students’ eligibility to participate on athletic teams as legislation and policies at the federal, state and local levels have been introduced to ban transgender student participation in athletic programs.
Under the NPRM, schools that receive federal funding would not be permitted to adopt or apply a “one-size-fits-all” ban on transgender students participating on teams consistent with their gender identity. Instead, the proposal allows schools the flexibility to develop team eligibility criteria that serves important educational objectives, such as fairness in competition and preventing sports-related injuries. The Department further explains that the eligibility criteria must take into account the sport, level of competition, and grade or education level of students participating, and the criteria would have to minimize harm to students whose opportunity to participate on a team consistent with their gender identity would be limited or denied.
The NPRM comes after the Biden administration announced its intention to release such a proposed rule after it excluded language on transgender student eligibility in athletics in its June 2022 Title IX proposed rule. The rule comes as policymakers at the federal, state and local levels have introduced and passed legislation that bans transgender participation on women’s athletic teams. Most recently, the House of Representatives passed H.R. 734, the Protection of Women and Girls in Sports Act, out of the Education and the Workforce Committee, where it now awaits a full floor vote. The bill would prohibit federally-funded education programs or activities to operate, sponsor or facilitate athletic programs or activities that allow individuals of the male sex to participate in programs or activities that are designated for women or girls, defining “sex” as an individual’s reproductive biology and genetics at birth.
Public comments in response to the NPRM will be due 30 days from the date of publication in the Federal Register. CUPA-HR will work with other higher education associations to fully analyze the NPRM and respond accordingly.
