Tag: Dept

  • Colleges May Lose State Dept. Partnership in Anti-DEI Crusade

    Colleges May Lose State Dept. Partnership in Anti-DEI Crusade

    State is planning to oust 38 universities from a partnership, The Guardian reported.

    Drew Angerer/AFP/Getty Images | Lance King, Mario Tama and Justin Sullivan/Getty Images | Liz Albro Photography/iStock/Getty Images

    The State Department’s Diplomacy Lab program says it enables students to work on real policy issues, benefitting both their careers and American foreign policy through their research and perspectives. It’s meant to “broaden the State Department’s research base in response to a proliferation of complex global challenges,” according to the program website.

    But now the Trump administration’s domestic policy fight against diversity, equity and inclusion could upend this partnership between the State Department and universities. The Guardian reported last week that the department is planning to suspend 38 institutions from the program, effective Jan. 1, because they had what the department dubbed a “clear DEI hiring policy.” It’s unclear how the department defines that phrase or how it determined these institutions have such policies.

    On Tuesday, The Guardian—citing what it called an unfinalized “internal memo and spreadsheet”—published the list of institutions that State Department plans to kick out, keep in or add to the program. A State Department spokesperson didn’t confirm or deny the list to Inside Higher Ed or provide an interview, but sent an email reiterating the administration’s anti-DEI stance.

    “The Trump Administration is very clear about its stance on DEI,” the unnamed spokesperson wrote. “The State Department is reviewing all programs to ensure that they are in line with the President’s agenda.”

    The institutions to be ousted, per The Guardian’s list, range from selective institutions such as Northeastern, Stanford and Yale universities to relatively small institutions including Colorado College, Gettysburg College and Monmouth University. The 10 universities to be added include Gallaudet University, which specializes in educating deaf and hard-of-hearing students, Liberty University, a conservative Christian institution, and the St. Louis and Kansas City campuses of the University of Missouri system. In all, the list shows plans for 76 institutions.

    The shakeup appears to be yet another consequence of the Trump administration’s now nearly year-long campaign to pressure universities to end alleged affirmative action programs or policies. The day after his inauguration, Trump signed an executive order mandating an end to “illegal DEI” and calling for restoring “merit-based opportunity.” But Trump’s order didn’t define DEI.

    Through cutting off federal research funding and other blunt means, the administration has tried to push universities to end alleged DEI practices. A few have settled with the administration to restore funding; Columbia University agreed this summer to pay a $221 million fine and to not, among other things, “promote unlawful DEI goals” or “promote unlawful efforts to achieve race-based outcomes, quotas, diversity targets, or similar efforts.” Columbia is among the institutions that the State Department intends to keep in the program, according to The Guardian’s list.

    Inside Higher Ed reached out Tuesday to the institutions listed to be ousted. Those who responded suggested the program didn’t provide much, or any, funding, and said they didn’t engage in any illegal hiring practices.

    The University of Southern California said in a statement that it “appreciated travel funding provided by the Diplomacy Lab program to two USC students in 2017 and looks forward to future opportunities to collaborate.” The university said that was the last time it received funding, and said it “complies with all applicable federal nondiscrimination laws and does not engage in any unlawful DEI hiring practices.”

    Oakland University political science department chair and Diplomacy Lab campus coordinator Peter F. Trumbore said through a spokesperson that he hasn’t received notice of a change in status as a partner institution. He also said his university received no funding from the State Department for the program, though “our students have had invaluable experiences conducting research on behalf of State, and working with State Department stakeholders in producing and presenting their work.”

    Georgia Institute of Technology spokesperson Blair Meeks said his university also never received funding from the State Department for the program. He also said “Georgia Tech does not discriminate in any of its functions including admissions, educational, and employment programs. We have taken extensive actions over time to eliminate any programs, positions, or activities that could be perceived as DEI in nature.”

    Meeks further wrote that the State Department “communicated that cuts or halts to the program were associated with the federal government shutdown” that ended earlier this month. Sarah Voigt, a spokesperson for St. Catherine University, said in an email that the State Department told her university back on Jan. 31 that it was pausing Diplomacy Lab activities, so the institution didn’t apply for research opportunities this semester. Then, last week, the State Department told the university that “‘due to the delays caused by the shutdown,’ they were again pausing Diplomacy Lab activities.”

    “Our understanding is that the program was shut down due to a lack of government funding,” she wrote.

    “The University had been participating as a Diplomacy Lab Partner Institution since early 2020, and we appreciated the opportunities to offer our students and faculty members very timely research topics through this program,” she added. “If the Department of State were to resume Diplomacy Lab activities, we would review what opportunities were available.”

    Source link

  • Where the Ed Dept. Stands After Longest Government Shutdown

    Where the Ed Dept. Stands After Longest Government Shutdown

    The House of Representatives passed a legislative package late Wednesday evening in a 222-209 vote, putting Congress one step closer to ending the federal government’s longest shutdown in history.

    Now, the legislation, which first passed the Senate late Sunday night, heads to the White House. There, President Donald Trump is expected to sign it into law.

    One policy expert told Inside Higher Ed that he expects to see little operational change for institutions as the government reopens. But he and others will be paying close attention to whether the Trump administration follows through on one of the bill’s key compromises: reversing the most recent round of federal layoffs.

    LEAD IN

    PITHY STATEMENT FROM SPEAKER JOHNSON OR WHITE HOUSE

    Part of the package would fund the Department of Veterans Affairs, military construction, the Department of Agriculture, the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program and Congress through the end of the fiscal year. But it only appropriates funding for the Department of Education and most other agencies until Jan. 30, using what is known as a continuing resolution. For the most part, the CR gives agencies access to the same levels of federal funding as the last fiscal year.

    Jon Fansmith, senior vice president for government relations at the American Council on Education, said because some of the Education Department’s staff continued working throughout October and into November, not much will change for colleges and universities.

    “Financial aid was being disbursed, student loans were being serviced, all those things. So there probably won’t be an immediate significant shift,” he said. “It will, of course, be important for [grant] programs who have not been able to contact program officers with concerns or questions to have staff now available to them again. But that’s probably the biggest thing.”

    Fansmith also noted that some education benefits for military service members, which in many cases have been disrupted and backlogged due to staffing shortages, will take some time to get back up to speed.

    The 4 Parts of the Stopgap Bill

    “There are veterans who have housing benefits and education benefits and all sorts of assistance that they’re using to fund their educations that have just not been coming through over the last six weeks,” he said. “And even when they turn the government back on … that backlog has only grown in the interim. So it’s not going to be an immediate resolution.”

    Senate Democrats also negotiated with Republicans to reverse Trump’s latest round of layoffs in the stopgap bill. Theoretically, the legislation should reinstate more than 460 Department of Education employees within five days of it being enacted.

    It mandates that any employee who was subject to a reduction in force during the shutdown “shall have that notice rescinded and be returned to employment status.” (The majority of those employees were tasked with overseeing federal grant programs for both K–12 and higher education.)

    But Rachel Gittleman, president of the Education Department’s union, argues the language in the bill doesn’t do enough to protect public servants. She worries that saying staffers must be “returned to employment status” could allow Education Secretary Linda McMahon to place union members on administrative leave and not actually put them back to work.

    “The Trump administration has shown us repeatedly that they want to illegally dismantle our congressionally created federal agency,” she said. As such, “We have no confidence that the U.S. Education Department will follow the terms of the continuing resolution or allow the employees named in October firings to return—or even keep their jobs past January.”

    Fansmith is also skeptical department employees will return to their jobs.

    “[The administration hasn’t] shown much willingness to follow what the law requires. So I would absolutely assume we should expect to see efforts to further reduce staffing,” he said. “They’re not hiding the fact they’re trying to do it, and they don’t have a lot of compunction about the methods they use to do so.”

    A department spokesperson, however, told Inside Higher Ed that all employees—both those who were furloughed and those laid off during the shutdown—will return to work, as they remain employees of the department.

    The department also pointed to a ruling from the federal district court in Northern California that blocked the reduction in force in late October, saying that under that order, all employees who received a RIF notice during the shutdown remain employees of the federal government.

    Inside Higher Ed reached out to multiple Republican and Democratic lawmakers in both the House and the Senate to ask about the concerns Gittleman and Fansmith raised. None responded prior to publication.

    Source link

  • Trump Fires More Education Dept. Employees

    Trump Fires More Education Dept. Employees

    As of Friday afternoon, it remained unclear how many staff members would be affected.

    Photo illustration by Justin Morrison/Inside Higher Ed | Tierney L. Cross/Getty Images | BraunS and Prostock-Studio/iStock/Getty Images

    Staff members at the Department of Education will be affected by the mass layoffs taking place across the federal government, a spokesperson said Friday.

    Russell Vought, director of the Office of Management and Budget, has threatened the layoffs for weeks, citing the government shutdown. Vought wrote on social media Friday that his promised reduction in force had begun.

    A department spokesperson then confirmed in an email to Inside Higher Ed that “ED employees will be impacted by the RIF.” The spokesperson did not clarify how many employees will be affected or in which offices. Other sources say no one who works in the Office of Federal Student Aid will be laid off.

    Trump administration officials said in a court filing that an estimated 466 employees were given reduction-in-force notices. About 1,100 to 1,200 employees at the Department of Health and Human Services also got laid off. Overall, more than 4,200 workers across eight agencies were fired.

    At the Education Department, the estimated layoffs will leave the department with just over 2,001 employees. The agency, which President Trump wants to close, already lost nearly half its career staff members during a first round of mass layoffs in March. In the wake of those layoffs, former staffers warned that the cuts would lead to technical mishaps, gaps in oversight and a loss of institutional knowledge. College administrators have also reported delays and issues in getting communications and updates from the department, though agency officials say critical services have continued.

    The federal workers’ union and multiple outside education advocacy groups challenged the first round of layoffs in court. Lower courts blocked the RIF, but the Supreme Court overturned those rulings in July. Affected staff members officially left the department in August.

    Another lawsuit challenged this latest round when Vought threatened the layoffs – before the pink slips had even been distributed today. It was filed at the end of September.

    The union representing Education Department employees as well as sources with connections to staffers who were still working at the department as of Friday morning said that the latest round of cuts will at least affect staff members from the offices of elementary and secondary education and communications and outreach. A union representative added that all of the employees in the communications office’s state and local engagement division were laid off.

    A senior department leader, who spoke on condition of anonymity, told Inside Higher Ed that the layoffs were directed by OMB and came as a surprise.

    “Last week the [education] secretary’s office had said no RIFs at all,” the senior leader explained. “We heard on Tuesday that OMB sent over a list of people for ED to RIF … ED apparently edited it and sent it back.”

    In neither case were cuts planned for the Office of Federal Student Aid, which manages the Pell Grant and student loans, the senior leader added.

    Rachel Gittleman, president of the union that represents Education Department employees, promised in a statement to fight the layoffs.

    “This administration continues to use every opportunity to illegally dismantle the Department of Education against congressional intent,” Gittleman said. “They are using the same playbook to cut staff without regard for the impacts to students and families in communities across the country … Dismantling the government through mass firings, especially at the ED, is not the solution to our problems as a country.”

    Through late September and into the first 10 days of the shutdown, both Vought and President Trump used the threat of further RIFs to try to convince Democrats in the Senate to acquiesce and sign the Republicans’ budget stopgap bill. But Democrats have stood firm, refusing to sign the bill unless the GOP meets their demands and extends an expiring tax credit for health insurance.

    Health and Human Services Department spokesperson Andrew G. Nixon wrote in an email to Inside Higher Ed earlier on Friday that “HHS employees across multiple divisions” received layoff notices. But he didn’t provide an interview or answer written questions about whether the layoffs include employees at the National Institutes of Health, a major funder of university research.

    Nixon wrote that “HHS under the Biden administration became a bloated bureaucracy” and “all HHS employees receiving reduction-in-force notices were designated non-essential by their respective divisions. HHS continues to close wasteful and duplicative entities, including those that are at odds with the Trump administration’s Make America Healthy Again agenda.”

    Democrats and some Republicans have warned against the layoffs. Sen. Susan Collins, a Maine Republican who chairs the powerful appropriations committee, opposed the layoffs in a statement while also blaming Democrats in the shutdown.

    “Arbitrary layoffs result in a lack of sufficient personnel needed to conduct the mission of the agency and to deliver essential programs, and cause harm to families in Maine and throughout our country,” she said.

    But Democrats in particular have argued that firing federal workers during a shutdown is unconstitutional.

    “No one is making Trump and Vought hurt American workers—they just want to,” Sen. Patty Murray, a Washington State Democrat and vice chair of the appropriations committee, said in a statement Friday afternoon. “A shutdown does not give Trump or Vought new, special powers to cause more chaos or permanently weaken more basic services for the American people … This is nothing new, and no one should be intimidated by these crooks.”

    Rep. Bobby Scott, a Virginia democrat and ranking member of the House Education and Workforce Committee, pointed out in a statement that the administration has had to rehire employees who were fired earlier this year.

    “In addition to wasting millions of taxpayer dollars to fire and rehire government employees, arbitrarily firing government employees means there are fewer people to help administer essential programs,” he said. “Moreover, I fear the lasting impact of mass firings will be an incredible loss of invaluable institutional knowledge. Furthermore, random and chaotic layoffs will make it difficult to recruit qualified employees in the future.”

    Ryan Quinn contributed to this report.

    Source link

  • Education Dept. Subjects Harvard to More Financial Oversight

    Education Dept. Subjects Harvard to More Financial Oversight

    Harvard had a financial responsibility score of 2.8, well over the passing 1.5 required by the Education Department, in fiscal year 2023.

    John Tlumacki/The Boston Globe/Getty Images

    The Education Department announced Friday that it placed Harvard University on heightened cash monitoring, a designation that allows greater federal oversight of institutional finances and is typically reserved for colleges in dire financial straits. 

    By all accounts, Harvard, with its $53 billion endowment, is not.

    “It’s harassment,” said Jon Fansmith, senior vice president for government relations and national engagement at the American Council on Education. “Harvard has the money, yes, but it is adding a headache. It’s adding staff. It’s interfering with students’ ability to access federal financial aid … The government’s making it harder for Harvard to support low-income students, which speaks to exactly what the administration’s goals are here—they’re not to help students, they’re not to improve education, they’re not even to address what they see as concerns at Harvard—they’re just to attack Harvard.”

    Institutions placed on heightened cash monitoring are asked to put up a letter of credit that serves as collateral for the Education Department if the institution closes, or to award federal financial aid from their own coffers before being reimbursed by the department, explained Robert Kelchen, head of the Department of Educational Leadership and Policy Studies at the University of Tennessee at Knoxville. Harvard has been asked to do both.

    According to a Friday news release from the Education Department, Harvard must put up a $36 million irrevocable letter of credit or “provide other financial protection that is acceptable to the Department,” department officials wrote. 

    “Students will continue to have access to federal funding, but Harvard will be required to cover the initial disbursements as a guardrail to ensure Harvard is spending taxpayer funds responsibly,” officials wrote. 

    The federal government froze $2.7 billion in federal grants for Harvard after the university rejected its sweeping demands in April. Harvard sued, and a judge ruled earlier this month that the freeze was illegal. The university has reportedly received some of the frozen funds, but the Trump administration says it’s still hoping to cut a deal with Harvard. 

    The release says three events triggered Harvard’s heightened cash monitoring designation: a determination by the Department of Health and Human Services that Harvard violated Title IV of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 by allegedly allowing antisemitism on campus, accusations that the university isn’t complying with an ongoing investigation by the Office for Civil Rights, and the $1 billion in bonds Harvard has issued to make up for pulled federal funding. Harvard did not respond to Inside Higher Ed’s request for comment Friday. 

    “Today’s actions follow Harvard’s own admission that there are material concerns about its financial health. As a result, Harvard must now seek reimbursement after distributing federal student aid and post financial protection so that the Department can ensure taxpayer funds are not at risk,” Education Secretary Linda McMahon said in a statement. “While Harvard remains eligible to participate in the federal student aid program for now, these actions are necessary to protect taxpayers.”

    The department also pointed to layoffs at Harvard and a hiring freeze instituted in the spring. Several other wealthy colleges have frozen hiring and shed staff this year, in part because of the administration’s actions related to federal funding. A few other universities have either issued bonds or taken out loans to get immediate cash. But so far, the department has made no public mention about putting those colleges on heightened cash monitoring.

    As of June 1, 538 colleges and universities were on heightened cash monitoring, federal data showed. About one-third of those colleges are private nonprofits, while about 42 percent are for-profit institutions. Most of the institutions—464 of them—are based in the U.S. 

    Many on the list are private institutions that have low financial responsibility composite scores, Kelchen said. This test assigns institutions a score between -1.0 and 3.0 based on the institution’s primary reserve ratio, equity ratio and net income ratio. To be considered financially responsible, an institution must score at least a 1.5, which Harvard does. 

    During fiscal year 2023, the latest for which data is publicly available, Harvard’s financial responsibility composite score was 2.8. Harvard’s estimated primary reserve ratio in fiscal year 2023 was 7.6, meaning that the university could operate for about seven and a half years by spending only its existing assets. By comparison, Hampshire College, another private, nonprofit college placed on heightened cash monitoring with a financial responsibility composite score of 0.6, had an estimated primary reserve ratio of 0.3, meaning it could continue operations for about four months before running out of expendable assets. Drew University, another institution on heightened cash monitoring and also with a financial responsibility composite score of 0.6, has a primary reserve ratio of -1.06.

    But beyond the financial responsibility score, there are plenty of reasons an institution can end up on heightened cash monitoring. Some institutions, including Hampshire and Arkansas Baptist College, were put on the list due to a late or missing compliance audit. Others have been put on the list while the department reviews their programs, or because their accreditation was revoked. But, “the department can also just specify that an institution is not financially responsible,” Kelchen said.

    The political motivation behind the move is clear, Fansmith said. 

    “To the extent that there is a problem—and to be clear, there are real problems—it’s not Harvard’s ability to pay their bills or meet their obligations. That’s a problem this administration has created,” he said. “They caused a situation, and then they are blaming Harvard for taking reasonable steps to address that situation. It’s also ironic when they send letters to Harvard using terms like ‘enormous’ and ‘massive’ and ‘colossal’ to describe Harvard’s endowment, and now they’re suddenly determining that they’re worried that Harvard is at financial risk … It is absolutely Orwellian.”

    Source link

  • Education Dept. Opens Up FAFSA Beta Test to All

    Education Dept. Opens Up FAFSA Beta Test to All

    The full version of the Free Application for Federal Student Aid is scheduled to launch Oct. 1.

    Photo illustration by Justin Morrison/Inside Higher Ed | SimoneN/iStock/Getty Images

    All students can now access a beta version of the 2026–27 Free Application for Federal Student Aid, the Department of Education announced Wednesday.

    The grant application platform won’t officially launch until Oct. 1, the congressionally mandated FAFSA launch deadline, but for the 12 days between now and then, students and families can start their application by participating in the test model.

    “We’re using this time to monitor a limited number of FAFSA submissions to ensure our systems are performing as expected,” the department’s Federal Student Aid website explains. “This is a common practice in website and software development.”

    The first round of beta testing was opened to a limited number of students in early August. Students who submit their form during the test will only have to submit it once, the department website states.    

    Source link

  • Ed Dept. Says George Mason Violated Civil Rights Law

    Ed Dept. Says George Mason Violated Civil Rights Law

    The Virginia university has been under investigation since early July.

    John M. Chase/iStock Unreleased/Getty Images

    Gregory Washington, president of Virginia’s George Mason University, must apologize to the university community for “promoting unlawful discriminatory practices” in order to resolve allegations that the institution violated civil rights law, the Department of Education announced Friday.

    The department claims that the university has illegally factored race and “other immutable characteristics” into hiring, promotion and tenure practices since at least 2020.

    Acting Assistant Secretary for Civil Rights Craig Trainor said the unlawful practices began shortly after the murder of George Floyd, when Washington called on faculty and administrators to expunge campus of “racist vestiges” by “intentionally discriminat[ing] on the basis of race.” 

    “You can’t make this up,” Trainor said in the statement. “Despite this unfortunate chapter in Mason’s history, the university now has the opportunity to come into compliance with federal civil rights laws by entering into a Resolution Agreement with the Office for Civil Rights.”

    The Education Department first announced in early July that it would investigate GMU for potentially violating Title VI of the Civil Rights Act, which bars discrimination based on race and national origin. Later that month, the Department of Justice announced it would investigate the institution’s Faculty Senate after the panel passed a resolution in support of Washington, who had been quick to push back on the Trump administration and defend the university’s commitment to addressing social injustice. Many conservatives called for Washington—the institution’s first Black president—to be fired. But the university’s Board of Visitors spared him at a meeting Aug. 1, at least for now, and gave him a raise.

    Trainor said in the statement that “the Trump-McMahon Department of Education will not allow racially exclusionary practices—which violate the Civil Rights Act, the Equal Protection Clause, and Supreme Court precedent—to continue corrupting our nation’s educational institutions.”

    In addition to an apology, the Education Department is demanding that GMU post that statement “prominently” to the university’s website, remove any contrary statements from the past and revise campus policies to prevent future race-based programming. It also wants the institution to begin an annual training session for all individuals involved in recruitment, hiring, promotion or tenure decisions to emphasize the ban on racial consideration and provide records documenting compliance whenever they are requested moving forward.

    George Mason officials have 10 days to respond to the department’s proposed resolution agreement.

    Source link

  • Dept. of Ed Clarifies What Race-Based Data Must Be Reported

    Dept. of Ed Clarifies What Race-Based Data Must Be Reported

    President Trump first issued the executive action Aug. 7 mandating colleges and universities submit data to verify that they are not unlawfully considering race in admissions.

    Roman Didkivskyi/Getty Images

    The Trump administration released further details on its order for colleges to supply more racially disaggregated admissions data and wants to hear from the public about its plan.

    A draft of the proposal, which will officially be published Friday on the Federal Register, states that certain institutions will be required to collect and report comprehensive data about their admissions decisions going back five years. It must be broken down by race and sex and include students’ high school GPA, test scores, time of application (early decision, early access or regular decision) and financial aid status, among other things.

    However, the new survey component, which the Department of Education is calling the Admissions and Consumer Transparency Supplement, will not affect all colleges and universities—just four-year institutions that use “selective college admissions,” as they “have an elevated risk of noncompliance with the civil rights laws,” officials wrote in the notice.

    (The document does not say anything about reporting data on legacy admissions, another practice that, like affirmative action, has received public pushback in recent years.)

    Members of the public will have 60 days to comment on the notice. Among other things, the department wants feedback on what institutions should be subject to the new reporting requirements as well as the anticipated burden the request will place on university staff.

    Some higher education scholars and officials are already chiming in with their concerns informally.

    University of Tennessee higher education professor Robert Kelchen wrote in a post on LinkedIn that not only will the request be a “substantial lift” for colleges, but also for staff at the department who run the Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System and will manage the data on the back end.

    The Department of Education laid off nearly half its staff—including most of the employees at the National Center for Education Statistics, which would collect and analyze the data—in March.

    “I’d love to see the survey form where all of this data would be collected—because after years of sitting in [meetings] where we figured these things out, the sheer number of variables/elements and the lack of any definition around the vagueness of them demonstrates the loss of the knowledgeable NCES staff they lost,” wrote Carolyn Mata, a consultant who works in institutional research, in a response to Kelchen’s post. “This is a case of throwing everything possible at the wall.”

    Source link

  • Education Dept. Hears From Public About Higher Ed Overhaul

    Education Dept. Hears From Public About Higher Ed Overhaul

    The Education Department’s yearlong effort to roll out the sweeping higher ed changes signed into law last month kicked off Thursday with a four-hour hearing that highlighted the many tweaks college administrators and others want to see.

    The law, known as the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, capped federal student loans, created new loan-repayment plans, extended the Pell Grant to include short-term workforce programs and instituted a new measure to hold institutions accountable. Now, the department is planning to propose and issue new regulations that spell out how those various changes will work. 

    On nearly all fronts, college administrators, policy experts and students argued that lawmakers left significant gaps in the legislation, and they want a say in how Trump administration officials fill them in. For instance, the legislation doesn’t explain what data will be collected for either workforce Pell or the accountability measure or who will have to take on that task. Some speakers raised concerns about how new reporting requirements could increase administrative burdens for colleges.

    But Nicholas Kent, the department’s newly confirmed under secretary, said at the start of the meeting that he looks forward to clarifying all the details during the lengthy process known as negotiated rule making.

    “Simply put, the current approach to paying for college is unsustainable for both borrowers and for taxpayers,” Kent said. “President Trump has laid out a bold vision, one that aims to disrupt a broken system and return accountability, affordability and quality to postsecondary education that includes reducing the cost of higher education, aligning program offerings with employer needs [and] embracing innovative education models … Today’s public hearing marks a key milestone in our accelerated timeline to implement this sweeping legislative reform.”

    Neither Kent nor other department officials said what specific changes and clarifications are on the table.

    What Is Negotiated Rule Making?

    Negotiated rule making, or “neg-reg,” started in the early 1990s. It entails using an advisory committee to consider and discuss issues with the goal of reaching consensus in developing a proposed rule. Consensus means unanimous agreement among the committee members, unless the group agrees on a different definition. The department must undertake negotiated rule making for any rule related to federal student aid.

    Determining the details of the regulations and policy changes will be left up to two committees of higher education leaders, policy experts and industry representatives that will review and negotiate over the department’s proposals during a series of meetings throughout the fall and into the new year. The first committee is scheduled to begin discussions in September.

    In the meantime, here are three key issues Thursday’s speakers said they hope to see addressed by both the advising panels and department officials before the legislation starts taking effect in July 2026.

    Who’s Making the Decisions?

    Before the public hearing, some higher ed lobbyists and advocates raised concerns about who would be included on the advisory committees. Multiple constituent groups argued they weren’t properly represented on the committees.

    For instance, neither committee includes a representative from the financial aid community, despite the fact that college financial aid administrators will play a key role in implementing the legislation on campuses.

    Multiple groups, including the American Council on Education, drew attention to the absence, but Melanie Storey, president of the National Association of Student Financial Aid Administrators, voiced the most concern.

    Financial aid professionals will “interpret, communicate and operationalize the intricate details of this wide-ranging bill for millions of students and families. To exclude their practical, technical experience from the negotiation table risks developing rules that are difficult to administer, creating unintended negative consequences,” she said. “We have heard the perspective that representatives from each college sector can speak to the needs of their institutions. However, their role is to advocate for the broad interests of that sector. That is fundamentally different from representing the profession responsible for the … mechanics of aid delivery.

    A department official who moderated the hearing, responded, “We expect we will have financial aid administrators at the table,” as the department has in the past, but he did not clarify how that would be done. (This paragraph has been corrected.)

    Other speakers called for better representation of civil rights advocates, apprenticeship program leaders and minority-serving institutions, but none of those requests were directly addressed by government officials.

    What Qualifies as a Professional Program?

    Speakers also raised questions about how the new caps to student loans would work and whom they would affect.

    How to Make a Policy, Neg-Reg Edition

    As part of negotiated rule making, the Education Department must:

    1. Put out a public notice about intent to form a committee and hold a public hearing
    2. Publish notice inviting nominations for negotiators
    3. Hold a public hearing
    4. Pick the negotiators
    5. Hold negotiated rule-making sessions
    6. Write the proposed regulations
    7. Publish those regulations for public comment, which lasts at least 30 days
    8. Read and respond to the comments; revise the regulations as needed
    9. Publish the final rule. Rules need to be published by Nov. 1 in order to take effect July 1 of the following year, but the department can implement rules early.

    Congress’s Big Beautiful Bill caps loans for professional degrees at $200,000 and limits loans for graduate programs to half of that. But lawmakers didn’t specify which degree programs fall in which category. Determining how to sort programs will likely be a key point of debate for the rule-making committee, the comments showed.

    Certain programs, like law and medical school, will almost certainly be considered professional programs, but other programs, like master’s degrees in nursing, education or social work, are not guaranteed. Knowing this, a variety of academic association representatives, workforce advocates and college administrators made their case throughout the hearing for why their own discipline should be a professional program.

    Matt Hooper, vice president of communications for the Council on Social Work Education, said to not include certain programs in the professional bucket would mean ignoring their critical nature as a public service.

    Social work graduates “pursue careers in health care, children and family services, criminal justice, public policy, government, and more,” he said. “An M.S.W. provides full professional preparation, similar to a J.D. in law or an M.D. in medicine, and we think it should be categorized in the same respect.”

    A handful of speakers went so far as to argue that certain bachelor’s programs, like aviation or aeronautical science, that are often paired with certification from the Federal Aviation Administration should be grouped into the professional category, as they come at a cost and time commitment similar to graduate school.

    If those programs don’t get the benefit of a higher loan cap, multiple airline advocates said, America could see a steep shortage of pilots within the next two decades.

    “Over the next 15 years, nearly half of our nation’s airline pilots will retire due to mandatory age limits,” said Sharon DeVivo, president of Vaughn College of Aeronautics and Technology. “The current training pipeline is not equipped to meet that demand, putting at risk the transportation infrastructure, especially the economic health of small and rural communities that depend on reliable air service.”

    Training to become a pilot can cost $80,000 to $100,000 more than a traditional bachelor’s degree, added Carlos Zendejas, vice president of flight operations at the regional airline Horizon Air. So to hold these students to the same loan limit as other undergraduates would deter prospective pilots from pursuing a high-return-on-investment career.

    “The need to stabilize the pilot pipeline is real,” he said. “The One Big Beautiful Bill gives the department the ability to fix this.”

    Should Gainful Go?

    Since the inauguration, Trump officials in all sectors of the federal government have been vocal about combating fraud, waste and abuse. But higher education experts are concerned that one measure in the reconciliation bill could do the opposite.

    The new accountability tool it introduced uses a new earnings test to evaluate colleges’ eligibility for federal student loans. But it does not apply to certificate programs, which some policy and data analysts say are more likely to provide a poor return on investment.

    According to a recent report from the Postsecondary Education and Economics Research Center at American University, only 1 percent of college programs at the associate level and higher will fail the new earnings test, but about 19 percent of certificate programs would do so.

    Representatives from American as well as New America, Third Way and the Century Foundation, all progressive think tanks, sounded the alarm on the matter at Thursday’s hearing. As a solution, they encouraged the administration to keep an existing accountability policy in place that applies to certificate programs and for-profit institutions. That metric, known as the gainful-employment rule, is not codified in law.

    “A recent publication from the Senate health committee’s chairman, Bill Cassidy, confirms it was not lawmakers’ intent to exempt such programs from any accountability,” said Clare McCann, the PEER Center’s managing director of policy and operations. “So to carry out that intent, the department should maintain a strong gainful-employment program regulation for those programs that should include maintaining the debt-to-earnings tests under the gainful-employment rules, which are an important check on institutions offering unaffordable degrees.”

    Source link

  • Senate Appropriators Reject Trump’s Education Dept. Cuts

    Senate Appropriators Reject Trump’s Education Dept. Cuts

    Senate Republicans are planning to protect the Pell Grant program, keeping the maximum grant award at $7,395 for the coming academic year, despite the Trump administration’s proposal to lower it to $5,710.

    The rejection of Pell Grant cuts at a key committee markup Thursday is just the latest rebuke from congressional appropriators as lawmakers in both chambers have appeared wary of President Trump’s plans to shutter offices, gut programs and generally reshape the federal government.

    In addition to protecting $22.5 billion for Pell, the GOP also spared TRIO, campus childcare subsidies and numerous other programs that Trump had proposed zeroing out. It also set new staffing standards for the recently gutted Department of Education, increased funding for medical research by $400 million and rejected the National Institutes of Health’s attempt to cap indirect research cost reimbursements at 15 percent. The legislation also restricts other efforts at NIH to change how grants are awarded, though Democrats say “more needs to be done to protect NIH research programs.”

    Over all, the Department of Education is going to receive $79 billion and the NIH will get $48.7 billion. In comparison, Trump had requested $66.7 billion for ED and $27.5 billion for NIH.

    Committee chair Sen. Susan Collins, a Maine Republican, said she was proud of the legislation that advanced Thursday, calling it a bipartisan effort to fund the health and education of American families. She noted that “the appropriations process is the key way that Congress carries out its constitutional responsibility for the power of the purse.”

    But Democrats, while overall supportive, noted that they’ve had to make a number of compromises already and warned that Trump could still attempt to make unilateral changes moving forward.

    “These are not the bills I would have written on my own, but nonetheless they represent serious bipartisan work to make some truly critical investments in our country and families’ future,” said Sen. Patty Murray, a Washington Democrat and ranking member of the committee. Still, she added, this is only half the battle. “The fact of the matter is we have an administration right now that is intent on ignoring Congress, breaking the law and doing everything it can without transparency to dismantle programs and agencies.”

    The Trump administration has repeatedly frozen or cut grant funding, largely declining to spend money that Congress appropriated—moves that Murray and others have decried as illegal. More recently, the administration waited weeks before sending critical funding to states that supports after-school programs, migrant education and adult education. About $7 billion was affected, and colleges had to scramble to find a way to fill the funding gaps before Trump’s Office of Management and Budget finally released the money last week. Meanwhile, colleges are still waiting for the Education Department to open up grant applications for millions in funds.

    At NIH, grant cancellations and other changes have slowed the flow of research funding to colleges. Earlier this week the administration briefly paused all new grant awards, infuriating congressional Democrats. Over all, since Trump took office, the biomedical research agency has cut more than 4,000 grants at 600 institutions totaling somewhere between $6.9 billion and $8.2 billion.

    Beyond the grant cuts, the Trump administration recently clawed back money that had been allocated to public broadcasting, using a legislative process called rescission. The president is expected to propose a second rescission package in the months to come, this time targeting education dollars. Democrats have warned that using rescissions to change the budget could endanger talks on fiscal year 2026 spending.

    So while higher ed lobbyists typically look to the Senate’s spending plan as the framework for what to expect in the final bill, Trump’s willingness to test the limits of executive power complicates the picture.

    Still, the Senate’s proposals for the NIH as well as the Education Department, which funds a number of programs at the previous year’s level, is a victory for advocates who spent months warning that Trump’s budget cuts would be devastating for students and research.

    “We are not surprised by what we’ve seen. The Senate often works more bipartisanly together, and that was reflected in the markup today,” said Emmanual Guillory, senior director of government relations at the American Council on Education. “In this political environment, flat funding is a win. It’s not ideal, but it is us being mindful of the current realities that we’re in and the financial constraints that we’re in, especially with the upcoming rescissions package that’s supposed to include education.”

    That said, Guillory noted that he’s bracing for deeper cuts from the House, which has yet to release its education and health spending proposals.

    “I could see the House having a bit more influence [than most years past], as they have had more influence so far this Congress,” he said.

    Seeking Guardrails

    Democrats did try to amend the bill in order to establish guardrails that would retroactively address Trump’s funding cuts and protect the fiscal year 2026 appropriations from a similar ambush.

    Sen. Dick Durbin, an Illinois Democrat, proposed reinstating all college grants frozen or retracted since Jan. 28, with the exception of those pulled due to financial malfeasance. He highlighted how, in Chicago, the cuts have halted infant heart defect research and then ran through a lengthy list of other medical projects affected in other senators’ districts.

    “This could happen to any of your states’ research centers. It could hurt any of your families,” he argued.

    Later, Sen. Chris Murphy of Connecticut, one of the few Democrats who did not support the bill, sought an inspector general report into whether the Department of Education’s civil rights office is properly following statutes when investigating discrimination complaints and issuing discipline.

    The Department of Education’s OCR, along with other agencies, has launched dozens of investigations into alleged civil rights violations at colleges and universities. Those inquiries haven’t followed the required statutory procedures, but colleges have lost funding and faced other consequences.

    Murphy proposed withholding OCR funding until the appropriations committee received the IG’s report.

    “My worry is simply that the president is going to ignore the will of Congress that is present in this legislation,” he said. “If this does become normalized—if the president of the United States gets to deny funds to universities because they don’t like political viewpoints of the student body or of the faculty—that is a Pandora’s box that is hard to ever again close.”

    Sen. Shelley Moore Capito, the West Virginia Republican who leads the education and health subcommittee, shot down both proposals, calling Murphy’s amendment “contrary to the point of the [OCR] office” and Durbin’s “too broad.”

    “I think every administration has the prerogative to implement new goals and priorities,” she said.

    Source link

  • Education Dept. Lifts Freeze on Remaining Federal Funds – The 74

    Education Dept. Lifts Freeze on Remaining Federal Funds – The 74


    Get stories like this delivered straight to your inbox. Sign up for The 74 Newsletter

    A freeze on federal education funding that prompted two lawsuits has been lifted, and states will be able to access the money next week, the U.S. Department of Education announced Friday.

    The White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB), which argued that districts were spending the money to advance a “radical left-wing agenda,” has completed its review of five different programs totaling $5.5 billion, said Madison Beidermann, spokeswoman for the department. 

    The funds support education for English learners and migrant students and pay for staff training and extra instructional positions. The news came a week after the administration released over $1.3 billion for summer and afterschool programs, which was also held up for review.

    The department alerted states June 30, one day before they expected to receive the money, that the review was in process, forcing programs to cut staff and end summer programs early. Congress appropriated the funds for this coming school year, and President Donald Trump signed the budget in March. 

    The release of the funds, announced just hours before Education Secretary Linda McMahon was scheduled to meet with the nation’s governors in Colorado Springs, Colorado, comes as superintendents nationwide were preparing to eliminate services like literacy and math coaches, according to a survey conducted by AASA, the School Superintendents Association. Half of the 628 chiefs who responded from 43 states said they would have to lay off staff who work with special education students if the funds weren’t released. American Federation of Teachers President Randi Weingarten brought the message to attendees at the union’s annual TEACH conference in Washington, D.C. 

    “The administration backed down and we are getting the money,” she said to a cheering audience. “Those of you who lobbied yesterday, thank you. Those of you who brought the lawsuit, thank you.”

    Attorney generals from 24 blue states and the District of Columbia sued on July 14 over the freeze, arguing that the administration’s actions were harming schools. School districts, parents, unions and nonprofits filed a second challenge on July 21, saying that OMB has never stood in the way of the department’s practice of releasing the funds in two steps, first on July 1 and the rest on Oct. 1. Republican senators joined their Democratic colleagues in pressuring the administration to free up the money.

    Friday’s announcement doesn’t mean the legal fight is over. In a statement, Skye Perryman, president and CEO of Democracy Forward, which is handling the second case, said the legal team would “continue to monitor the situation and work in court to ensure the administration fully complies with the law and that these resources reach the schools and students who need them most.” 

    Districts can now start the school year without the shortfall, but that doesn’t mean advocates’ worries are over about future disruptions to funding. The July 1 distribution date is a longstanding practice, not something written into the law. 

    Tara Thomas, government affairs manager for AASA, said her organization wants to “have additional conversations” with Congress or the administration to “ensure that this type of uncertainty at the last minute doesn’t happen again. Districts need to continue to rely on stable, timely, reliable federal funding.”

    Another fight over education funds could also be ahead. The White House is reportedly preparing another recissions package that would target education funding. Thomas said she didn’t know what might be included, but it could be cuts that the Department of Government Efficiency made to grant programs. 

    On Friday, Trump signed a recissions package, pulling back $9 billion in funds from public television and foreign aid.


    Get stories like these delivered straight to your inbox. Sign up for The 74 Newsletter

    Source link