Tag: Events

Trump Admin Cuts Off New Research Funding to Harvard

Harvard has about $9 billion in grants and contracts from the federal government.

Joseph Prezioso/AFP/Getty Images

Harvard University won’t be getting any new grants, Education Secretary Linda McMahon wrote in a blistering letter to the institution that was posted on the social media platform known as X.

“Harvard will cease to be a publicly funded institution and can instead operate as a privately-funded institution, drawing on its colossal endowment and raising money from its large base of wealthy alumni,” McMahon wrote. “You have an approximately $53 billion head start, much of which was made possible by the fact you are living within the walls of, and benefiting from, the prosperity secured by the United States of America and its free-market system you teach your students to despise.”

McMahon didn’t specify what grants she was referring to in the letter, sent Monday evening, but other media outlets reported that the Trump administration was cutting Harvard off from new research grants.

The move escalates the Trump administration’s war with Harvard University. After the university rejected sweeping demands, the administration froze $2.26 billion of Harvard’s estimated $9 billion in grants and contracts. Harvard then sued. Trump also has threatened to revoke Harvard’s tax-exempt status and its ability to enroll international students.

The letter didn’t cite any legal authority for cutting off new funds to Harvard, so it’s unclear if McMahon can follow through on her threat.

McMahon accused Harvard of failing to follow federal law and abide “by any semblance of academic rigor.” She also raised questions about why the university was offering an introductory math course to address pandemic learning loss and criticized the decision to scrap standardized testing requirements.

“Why is it, we ask, that Harvard has to teach simple and basic mathematics, when it is supposedly so hard to get into this ‘acclaimed university’? Who is getting in under such a low standard when others, with fabulous grades and a great understanding of the highest level of mathematics, are being rejected?” McMahon wrote.

Over all, she wrote that Harvard had “made a mockery of the country’s higher education system,” referencing in part the plagiarism allegations against the university’s former president. To McMahon, it all shows “evidence of Harvard’s disastrous management” and an “urgent need for massive reform.”

Trump administration officials told Politico that to restore the flow of federal funds, Harvard “would have to enter into a negotiation with the government to satisfy the government that it’s in compliance with all federal laws.” (The government has yet to release any finding or evidence showing that Harvard isn’t complying with federal laws, though officials have made plenty of accusations.)

McMahon wrote that the administration stands by its demands for “common sense” reforms such as merit-based admissions and hiring decisions and an “end to unlawful programs that promote crude identity stereotypes.” Those changes “will advance the best interests of Harvard University,” she added.

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May 5, 2025
Confessions of a Reformed DEI Officer (opinion)

DEI is under fire—not just from politicians, but from within the academy itself. What began as a push for equity now faces an existential crisis. Faculty, students and even longtime advocates are questioning whether DEI has lost its way—whether it’s become too symbolic, too scripted or too powerless to make real change.

I spent five years as a DEI officer in higher education. I pushed for change in an academic system that claimed to want it. I still believe in DEI. Yet, I’ve seen how often it fails—not because the ideas are wrong, but because the execution is. Diversity, equity and inclusion, when thoughtfully and strategically embedded, can be transformative. But when they become symbolic gestures, checkbox exercises or top-down mandates imposed without trust or buy-in, they often backfire. I’ve seen both.

This isn’t a takedown. I write this because I still believe in the work—and because belief without scrutiny is dangerous. DEI doesn’t need to be dismantled. It needs to be reformed, strengthened and made more honest. We need fewer slogans and more substance. Less signaling and more systems. And above all, more humility about the complexity of this work.

One of the biggest problems I’ve seen is the reduction of diversity to only race, ethnicity or gender. These are important dimensions, but they’re not the whole picture. When diversity becomes a proxy for visible identity markers alone, we miss what actually makes institutions stronger: a wide range of lived experiences, skill sets and worldviews. Inclusion isn’t about agreement—it’s about making space for people who see the world differently. The danger of focusing too narrowly is that we create institutions that look diverse yet whose members still think the same—and that kind of monolith doesn’t solve complex problems. It makes us worse at solving them.

We live in a time of extraordinary complexity. Whether we’re addressing climate change, artificial intelligence, mental health or global conflict, these challenges require collaboration across differences. Research shows that diverse teams produce better results. They’re more creative, more innovative and more likely to challenge assumptions that would otherwise go untested. But it only works when inclusion is real—not performative. Diversity without inclusion is like assembling a symphony and never letting half the musicians play.

This is why we can’t afford to get DEI wrong. Because when we do, the consequences ripple out—not just in missed opportunities for innovation, but in eroded trust, disengagement and backlash. And some of that backlash, while politically weaponized in many cases, is also fueled by real problems with DEI itself.

We need to be honest about one of those problems: the silencing of dissenting views. When DEI is framed in a way that suggests there is only one acceptable perspective—or when people who raise legitimate critiques are dismissed as regressive—it undermines the very values of inclusion and dialogue. True equity work must make space for disagreement, especially when it’s respectful and grounded in a shared desire for improvement.

When critical questions are treated as threats, or when people fear professional consequences for expressing dissent, we risk undermining the values of intellectual rigor and inclusion that DEI is meant to uphold. It’s a short path from ideological clarity to rigidity, which can shut down the kind of dialogue that progress requires. Inclusion must mean inclusion of unpopular opinions, too. This is one lesson I learned the hard way.

Another challenge that continues to undermine trust in DEI efforts is the perception of the so-called diversity hire. The phrase is loaded, toxic and—when DEI is done badly—not entirely baseless. In institutions where hiring is reduced to checking demographic boxes, this perception takes hold. And with it, the person hired is immediately set up to fail. Not because they lack qualifications, but because their colleagues are convinced they were chosen for the wrong reasons. It erodes trust, breeds resentment and delegitimizes the entire process.

But that’s not what DEI is supposed to be. When done right, it broadens the search process. It doesn’t lower the bar. It means casting a wider net, doing targeted outreach and making sure the applicant pool reflects the full range of talent that exists. It means interrupting the biases that shape hiring—especially in homogeneous departments. And when you do that, the candidate pool becomes more diverse and more competitive.

During my time as DEI officer, we developed a faculty hiring tool kit to address these challenges. It supported broader outreach and inclusive job ads and helped search committees examine how bias can influence evaluations. The tool kit was adopted across the university and became the basis for a peer-reviewed publication. Search committees reported feeling more confident, and hiring outcomes began to reflect that intentionality. That’s what it looks like when DEI becomes a tool for excellence rather than a threat to it.

But even the best tools can’t fix a broken structure. Many DEI leaders are hired to drive change but denied the power or resources to do so. They’re tasked with transforming the institution but positioned on the margins of decision-making. And when change doesn’t come fast enough, they’re blamed. I’ve felt that pressure. And I’ve seen how it erodes trust—not just for those doing the work, but for the communities they’re meant to serve. If we’re serious about equity, we have to stop treating DEI as both a priority and an afterthought. It can’t be the institution’s conscience and its scapegoat at the same time.

The truth is that a DEI office or officer does not matter in the slightest. What matters is what these offices and individuals are empowered to do—and how the institution responds. Too often, DEI structures are set up with grand titles but little actual authority. They’re underfunded, overburdened and expected to carry the weight of transformation without the tools to do it. Worse, they’re sometimes used for symbolic signaling while real decisions happen elsewhere.

Here’s a hot take: Land acknowledgments are one of the clearest examples of symbolic DEI gone wrong. Even many DEI advocates are uneasy about saying this out loud—but it’s a conversation we need to have. Originally intended as respectful recognition of Indigenous peoples, they’ve too often become formulaic, superficial and devoid of follow-up. When institutions recite them without engaging Indigenous communities, investing in their successes or addressing systemic issues affecting them today, the gesture rings hollow. Sometimes it’s even counterproductive—giving the appearance of moral action without the substance. That’s the danger of symbolic DEI: It feels good in the moment, but it can do more harm than good by masking the real work that needs to be done. Respect requires more than words. It requires meaningful engagement, resource investment and sustained commitment.

Another hot take: Sometimes constraints make the work better. Guardrails—even legal ones—can force us to get more creative, more deliberate and more focused on what actually works. In my home state of California, DEI work has operated under the legal constraints of Proposition 209, passed in 1996, which prohibits public institutions from considering race, sex or ethnicity in admissions, hiring or contracting. In 2020, a ballot initiative to repeal Prop 209 failed—leaving the status quo intact, but reigniting debate about what equity should look like in a race-neutral legal landscape.

Rather than marking a shift, the 2020 vote reaffirmed the challenge California institutions have been navigating for nearly three decades. Public colleges and universities have spent years adapting—expanding outreach and pipeline programs, revamping search processes, and investing in mentorship and faculty development—all without using race-conscious criteria. Without relying on the most legally vulnerable tools, they were pushed to build models of reform that were legally sound, broadly applicable and less susceptible to political attack.

California is not alone—some other states have adopted similar restrictions. And while the state is not immune from the scrutiny and investigations now facing institutions across the country, the constraints of Prop 209 forced a more intentional and durable approach to equity—one that may offer useful lessons for others.

As backlash to DEI spreads—through lawsuits, legislation and public discourse—it’s easy to dismiss it all as reactionary. Sometimes it is. But sometimes it’s a response to real flaws: lack of transparency, ideological rigidity, symbolic efforts with no outcomes. The solution isn’t to abandon DEI. It’s to do it better. With more rigor, less theater. More results, fewer slogans. We need to distinguish between bad DEI and good DEI. Between what divides and what unifies. Between what placates and what transforms.

Here’s the reality: The alternatives to diversity, equity and inclusion—uniformity, inequity and exclusion—aren’t values any institution should embrace. Few people, even DEI skeptics, would argue otherwise. The real debate isn’t about the values themselves—it’s about how they’ve been implemented, and whether the methods we’ve used actually advance the outcomes we claim to care about. If DEI is to survive, it has to evolve. Not into something shinier or trendier—but into something real. Built on trust, not performance. And that trust won’t come from more committees or statements. It will come from showing our work, owning our mistakes and staying committed to the values that brought us into this field in the first place.

That’s what I’ve learned. And I’m still learning. But I haven’t lost hope. The ground is shifting—but that disruption brings opportunity. It’s fertile soil for building something better. If we bring more humility to our certainty, more evidence to our strategies and more courage to our conversations, this might not be the end of DEI. It could be the beginning of something stronger.

Michael A. Yassa is a professor of neuroscience at the University of California, Irvine. He served for five years as associate dean of diversity, equity and inclusion and continues to work on institutional reform and mentoring in higher education. The views expressed in this article are solely those of the author and do not reflect the official policies or positions of UC Irvine.

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May 5, 2025
Westchester CC Sees 12-Point Growth in Graduation Rate

Providing students with wraparound support is one evidence-based practice that has demonstrated impact on student credit accumulation, persistence and graduation rates. In the mid-2000s, the City University of New York created a model of student support that has been duplicated at dozens of colleges to improve outcomes; now the State University of New York system hopes to build on this success on its own campuses.

In 2018, Westchester Community College became the first SUNY campus to adopt CUNY’s initiative, which WCC calls Viking Resources for Obtaining Associate Degrees and Success (Viking ROADS). A March 2025 report from the nonprofit education-research group MDRC highlights the success of Viking ROADS during its initial three years: a 12-percentage-point increase in graduation rates among participants, despite headwinds from remote instruction during the COVID-19 pandemic.

The background: CUNY created Accelerated Study in Associate Programs (ASAP) in 2007 as a comprehensive initiative to address barriers to student retention and completion.

The core components of ASAP are personalized academic advising, specialized enrollment options and financial aid for course material and transportation costs for three years.

Over the past decade, ASAP-inspired programs have been implemented at over a dozen institutions in seven states. WCC president Belinda Miles was a part of the ASAP replication initiative in Ohio in 2014, so when she began her role at WCC in 2015, “it wasn’t too long before I ran into ASAP,” she said.

Arnold Ventures and MDRC, along with an anonymous donor to the WCC Foundation, provided financial support for the launch of Viking ROADS.

In 2023, SUNY chancellor John B. King Jr. announced the system would implement ASAP at 25 of its 64 campuses starting in 2024. Now, results from a three-year MDRC evaluation of Westchester Community College’s program offer guiding principles to peer institutions scaling their own efforts.

“We’re delighted to be that pivot campus and a leader amongst our peers,” Miles said.

The study: MDRC’s study followed WCC staff and students from 2018 to 2021.

Viking ROADS requires WCC students to be enrolled full-time in an eligible major, meet with a dedicated counselor and use college support services monthly, as well as be a New York resident, a first-time college student and only enrolled in one developmental education course.

A majority of students involved in the Viking ROADS study were traditional college students, with about one in five identifying as a nontraditional student (defined as someone who is older than 24, works full-time, has children or does not have a high school diploma). One adaptation of ASAP that Viking ROADS staff implemented was to offer a transportation stipend, rather than a prepaid MetroCard; WCC is a commuter campus and students utilize both their own cars and public transport to reach campus, so having flexibility in how they addressed transportation barriers was key, Miles said.

Over all, program participants were more likely to have higher enrollment rates over time and complete more credits, compared to their peers. By their fourth semester, 20 percent of program participants had earned degrees, compared with 13.3 percent of control group students. And by their sixth semester, 35 percent of program participants had completed an associate degree, compared to 23 percent of the control group.

Researchers theorized this gap could be tied to the specialized course enrollment options and academic advising Viking ROADS participants receive, which could help students meet their course requirements and reduce their risk of earning excess credits that don’t support degree completion.

“It’s critical that students begin with a person and a plan, or a plan and a person, [so] we can say, ‘Here’s the road map, here’s your guided pathway, here are the steps you take.’ But having a person that’s reliable is something that is critical for students, particularly first-generation students,” Miles said, because some learners may not have supporters at home who understand the bureaucracy of higher education.

Program staff also reduce barriers to applying for graduation and making degrees official; among nonparticipants who earned 60 or more credits, only 69 percent earned a degree, compared to 83 percent of Viking ROADS students.

“Despite the challenges that were posed by the COVID-19 pandemic, Viking ROADS still had large effects on three-year graduation rates, confirming the strength and adaptability of the ASAP model,” according to the report. “Viking ROADS not only helped students navigate the immediate disruptions that were caused by the pandemic but also supported their continued academic progress and degree attainment.”

What’s next: In the same way Miles brought her work with ASAP to WCC, she and her staff plan to contribute to a community of practice for the other SUNY campuses joining these efforts.

“I’m happy to share with colleagues what our story is and how we keep it going and how we keep expanding, albeit incrementally,” Miles said.

Funding and providing resources for wraparound services can be a barrier to scaling initiatives, but reallocating and redesigning existing services to better address student needs is one way Miles said she is looking to expand student success efforts at WCC.

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This article has been updated to reflect the correct name of Arnold Ventures.

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May 5, 2025
Cultivating a Postdoc Community (opinion)
What happens when postdoctoral researchers feel like they truly belong? It is not just a feel-good moment—it is the foundation for success. A strong sense of community in the postdoctoral workplace can transform isolation into inclusion, stress into resilience and short-term survival into long-term thriving. It can help postdocs form the right mindset to face challenges such as career uncertainty, heavy workloads and relocation away from familiar support systems.

For postdocs, community combats a unique kind of professional isolation. Whether someone is fresh out of graduate school or pivoting from one career path to another, postdoctoral training is a time of both intense focus and high ambiguity. Demanding workloads, career uncertainty, immigration concerns and financial insecurity can weigh heavily on postdocs and increase their levels of stress and feelings of outsiderness, especially for those from historically underrepresented backgrounds. Because of this, for career practitioners, faculty and mentors, focusing solely on the professional development of postdocs no longer seems to be enough.

Why Community Matters

Looking to expand our support for postdocs beyond their professional development, we at the Office of Postdoctoral Affairs at Washington University in St. Louis embraced the need to prioritize postdoc well-being and the creation of an inclusive, engaged community. We believe postdocs who feel a sense of belonging to a supportive environment are more likely to:
- Maintain a healthier work-life integration, leading to better research outcomes, productivity and professional growth.
- Reflect on their career paths, plan their future goals and make informed decisions about their careers.
- Develop transferable skills such as communication, teamwork and leadership, which are crucial for career success.
- Stay at their institutions, avoiding disruptions in research projects or the research group’s morale.
With these objectives in mind, the skill-development side of the postdoctoral experience needs to be complemented with considerations about postdoc well-being, sense of belonging and identification with the institution.

Initiatives to Cultivate Community

Building a strong postdoc community and a strong sense of belonging has to be intentional. At WashU, partnerships and a little imagination helped us develop creative, low-cost initiatives to cultivate community, initiatives that any institution could tailor to fit the needs of their postdocs.

Our community-building work centers on three main strategies: programming, fun giveaways and improved communication methods.

Programming: Moments that Matter

From our fall holiday pop-up to year-round celebrations of cultural heritage and history months, we have hosted events that offer postdocs essential touch points for connection outside their academic research and scholarship. We have reached out to internal and local partners (such as libraries and cultural organizations) and found they are often enthusiastic about collaborating with programs that align with their educational and service missions.

For example, we connected with campus health and wellness programs to offer existing services (like CPR certification, health screenings or nutrition workshops) branded as postdoc-only events. Likewise, during LGBT History Month, we hosted Walk with Pride, a walking tour highlighting a local neighborhood’s LGBT history, in collaboration with the local history museum, which donated items for a raffle. With low investment, these events provide postdocs with opportunities to engage with diverse communities and cultures, enriching their personal and professional lives.

Fun Giveaways: Small Tokens, Big Meaning

We regularly ask our on-campus partners for fliers and branded stationery, which we include in a welcome kit we give away during orientation. A welcome kit is a small bag containing a collection of practical campus resources and promotional merchandise from the Office of Postdoctoral Affairs and our partners. We found that elements like stickers and branded lanyards not only boosted morale but also became a way for postdocs to visibly identify other postdocs across campus, sparking lighthearted and spontaneous conversation. We have learned to not underestimate the power of a sticker that says, “I’m a WashU Postdoc. I got this.” These small tokens help postdocs feel valued and connected.

Communication: Making Sure No One Misses Out

To ensure postdocs actually know about our programming and services, we leveled up our communications strategy with calendar invites, personalized welcome emails and festive event announcements tied to specific holidays or cultural celebrations. A successful strategy for us has been to share our announcements with the administrative staff in the academic units—they replicate our event invites in their internal departmental communications and thus create another avenue for the information to reach postdocs. Partnerships for proactive, clear communication go a long way in making sure everyone feels included.

Call for Action

There is still so much more we are excited to build at WashU. We are developing a postdoc parent network, a postdoc alumni network and a mentor network. We are planning more cultural events that connect postdocs with their identities and local history. We are finding ways to better support postdocs’ financial well-being.

Community building is essential. We believe every postdoc deserves to feel like they belong, not just as researchers, but as people. And through practical initiatives like the ones we’ve shared, postdocs can develop a wide range of career skills that will serve them well in their future endeavors.

There is no need for huge budgets or massive teams if we rely on curiosity, willingness to listen and partnerships across the campus and community. Talk to your postdocs. Then try something small, fun and heartfelt. It could be a sticker or a bake-off. Maybe it could be just a well-timed welcome email that says, “We are glad you are here.”

The difference between isolation and engagement can start with a single gesture. That is a difference worth making. A supportive, connected postdoc community is not just a nice-to-have—it is a must-have for professional growth.

Elizabeth Eikmann is currently the assistant director of curricular innovation in the College of Arts and Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis and previously served as program coordinator in WashU’s Office of Postdoctoral Affairs. Paola Cépeda is the assistant vice chancellor for postdoctoral affairs at WashU. They are both members of the Graduate Career Consortium—an organization providing an international voice for graduate-level career and professional development leaders. This article represents their views alone.
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May 5, 2025
Pasco-Hernando President Resigns Amid State DOGE Scrutiny

Pasco-Hernando State College president Jesse Pisors has resigned after less than 18 months on the job, amid scrutiny from Florida’s version of the Department of Government Efficiency, The Tampa Bay Times reported.

Pisors stepped down Thursday, the day before a special meeting called by board chair Marilyn Pearson-Adams to discuss concerns about student growth and retention, according to meeting documents. In a letter to other trustees, which included analysis from Florida’s DOGE on student growth and retention, Pearson-Adams noted the college was among the worst on those metrics.

Specifically, she noted PHSC was second-to-last in retention numbers, which she called “alarming.” She added that trustees “had not been made aware of these numbers” despite “our continued requests over the past 12 months regarding this type of information and data.”

The agenda shows only one action item for Friday’s special meeting of the Pasco-Hernando Board of Trustees: “Determination of Sustainability of College’s Future.”

Florida is one of several states that has sought to implement cost-cutting measures modeled on DOGE, the federal initiative led by billionaire bureaucrat Elon Musk to reduce government waste through layoffs and the elimination of various programs—an effort that has run into multiple legal challenges. DOGE-driven cuts have also fallen far short of their intended vision, with Musk often exaggerating savings for taxpayers in his work for the Trump administration.

Florida’s DOGE has also sought records of all faculty research at public institutions published in the last six years, leading to concerns about how the effort may be weaponized against faculty.

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May 5, 2025
Trump Proposes Deep Cuts to Education and Research

President Donald Trump wants to end funding for TRIO, Federal Work-Study and other grant programs that support students on campus as part of a broader plan to cut $163 billion in nondefense programs.

The funding cuts were outlined in a budget proposal released Friday. The document, considered a “skinny budget,” is essentially a wish list for the fiscal year 2026 budget for Congress to consider. The proposal kicks off what will likely be a yearlong effort to adopt a budget for the next fiscal year, which starts Oct. 1. Trump is unlikely to get all of his plan through Congress, though Republicans have seemed especially willing this year to support his agenda.

If enacted, the plan would codify Trump’s efforts over the last three months to cut spending and reduce the size of the federal government—moves that some have argued were illegal. (Congress technically has final say over the budget, but Trump and his officials have raised questions about the legality of laws that require the president to spend federal funds as directed by the legislative branch.)

The proposed budget plan slashes nearly $18 billion from the National Institutes of Health, $12 billion from the Education Department, and nearly $5 billion from the National Science Foundation. The skinny budget also eliminates funding for the Institute of Museum and Library Sciences, AmeriCorps, National Endowment for the Arts, and National Endowment for the Humanities. Trump has already made deep cuts at those agencies and put most—if not all—of their employees on leave.

A fuller budget with more specifics is expected later this month.

Democrats were quick to blast Trump’s plan, saying it would set the country “back decades by decimating investments to help families afford the basics.” But Republicans countered that the proposal would rein in “Washington’s runaway spending” and right-size “the bloated federal bureaucracy.”

For higher ed groups and advocates, the proposed cuts could further jeopardize the country’s standing as a leader in global innovation and put college out of reach for some students.

“Rather than ushering in a new Golden Age, the administration is proposing cuts to higher education and scientific research of an astonishing magnitude that would decimate U.S. innovation, productivity, and national security,” said Mark Becker, president of the Association of Public and Land-grant Universities, in a statement. “We call on Congress to reject these deeply misguided proposed cuts and instead invest in the nation’s future through education and pathbreaking research.”

Zeroing Out ED Programs

At the Education Department, the Trump administration is proposing to end a number of programs and reduce funding to others.

The president wants to eliminate the department altogether; Education Secretary Linda McMahon said in a statement that the proposal reflects “an agency that is responsibly winding down, shifting some responsibilities to the states, and thoughtfully preparing a plan to delegate other critical functions to more appropriate entities.”

McMahon laid off nearly half of the agency’s staff in March, so the budget also addresses those cuts.

To compensate for the cuts to programs that directly support students or institutions, the administration argued colleges, states and local communities should on take that responsibility. Other justifications for the cuts reflect the administration’s crackdown on diversity, equity and inclusion programs and higher ed.

For instance, officials from the Office of Management and Budget wrote that the SEOG program “contributes to rising college costs that [institutes of higher education] have used to fund radical leftist ideology instead of investing in students and their success.” (The SEOG program provides $100 to $4,000 to students “with exceptional financial need,” according to the department.)

On TRIO and GEAR UP, which help low-income students get to college, the administration said those programs were a “relic of the past when financial incentives were needed to motivate Institutions of Higher Education to engage with low-income students and increase access … Today, the pendulum has swung and access to college is not the obstacle it was for students of limited means.”

Additionally, the administration wants to cut the Office for Civil Rights’ budget by $49 million, or 35 percent. The budget document says this cut will refocus OCR “away from DEI and Title IX transgender cases.” In recent years, the Biden administration pleaded with Congress to boost OCR’s funding in order to address an increasing number of complaints. The office received 22,687 complaints in fiscal year 2024, and the Biden administration projected that number to grow to nearly 24,000 in 2025.

But the OMB document claims that OCR will clear its “massive backlog” this year. “This rightsizing is consistent with the reduction across the Department and an overall smaller Federal role in K-12 and postsecondary education,” officials wrote.

The administration also proposed cutting the Education Department’s overall budget for program administration by 30 percent. The $127 million cut reflects the staffing cuts and other efforts to wind down the department’s operations.

“President Trump’s proposed budget puts students and parents above the bureaucracy,” McMahon said. “The federal government has invested trillions of taxpayer dollars into an education system that is not driving improved student outcomes—we must change course and reorient taxpayer dollars toward proven programs that generate results for American students.”

Science and Research Cuts

Agencies that fund research at colleges and universities are also facing deep cuts. The $4.9 billion proposed cut at the National Science Foundation is about half of what the agency received in fiscal year 2024—the last year Congress adopted a full budget.

The cuts will end NSF programs aimed at broadening participation in the STEM fields, which totaled just over $1 billion, as well as $3.45 billion in general research and education.

“The budget cuts funding for: climate; clean energy; woke social, behavioral, and economic sciences; and programs in low priority areas of science,” the officials wrote in budget documents. “NSF has fueled research with dubious public value, like speculative impacts from extreme climate scenarios and niche social studies.”

As examples of “research with dubious public value,” officials specifically highlighted a $13.8 million NSF grant at Columbia University to “advance livable, safe, and inclusive communities” and a $15.2 million grant to the University of Delaware focused on achieving “sustainable equity, economic prosperity, and coastal resilience in the context of climate change.” The administration is maintaining the funding for research into artificial intelligence and quantum information sciences.

The budget plan also aims to make significant reforms at the National Institutes of Health while slashing the agency’s budget by $17.9 billion. NIH received $47 billion in fiscal 2024.

The plan would consolidate NIH programs into five areas: the National Institute on Body Systems Research; National Institute on Neuroscience and Brain Research; National Institute of General Medical Sciences; National Institute of Disability Related Research; and National Institute on Behavioral Health.

The National Institute on Minority and Health Disparities, the Fogarty International Center, the National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health and the National Institute of Nursing Research would all be cut. The administration is planning to maintain $27 billion for NIH research.

“The administration is committed to restoring accountability, public trust, and transparency at the NIH,” officials wrote. “NIH has broken the trust of the American people with wasteful spending, misleading information, risky research, and the promotion of dangerous ideologies that undermine public health.”

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May 2, 2025
NIH Speeds Up Implementation of New Public Access Policy

The National Institutes of Health is accelerating a Biden-era plan to make its research findings freely and quickly available to the public, the agency announced Wednesday.

The 2024 Public Access Policy was set to take effect Dec. 31, 2025, but will now take effect July 1 of this year. It updates the 2008 Public Access Policy, which allowed for a 12-month delay before research articles were required to be made publicly available. The 2024 policy removed the embargo period so that researchers, students and members of the public have rapid access to these findings, according to the announcement.

NIH director Jay Bhattacharya, who took over last month, said the move is aimed at continuing “to promote maximum transparency” and rebuilding public confidence in scientists, which has waned in recent years.

“Earlier implementation of the Public Access Policy will help increase public confidence in the research we fund while also ensuring that the investments made by taxpayers produce replicable, reproducible, and generalizable results that benefit all Americans,” Bhattacharya said in the memo. “Providing speedy public access to NIH-funded results is just one of the ways we are working to earn back the trust of the American people.”

Although the scientific research community is supportive of the policy itself, some are calling on the NIH to reinstate the original implementation date to give researchers time to effectively comply with this and other new agency regulations.

“This new effective date will impose extra burdens on researchers and their institutions to meet the deadline,” Matt Owens, president of COGR, which represents research institutions, said in a statement Wednesday. “Ironically, at the same time NIH is accelerating implementation of this policy, the agency is adding new burdensome certification and financial reporting requirements for grant recipients. This runs counter to the administration’s efforts to reduce regulations.”

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May 2, 2025
AmeriCorps Cuts Force College Access Groups to Reduce Staff

Brianne Dolney-Jacobs has spent the last year advising high school seniors in Bay City, Mich., on their options after graduation.

She met with 96 percent of the seniors at least once to talk about college applications, financial aid options, standardized tests and more. In doing so, she helped nearly 30 students access a countywide scholarship, up from under 10 in the previous year.

But now, she’s one of 32,000 people affected by sweeping cuts to AmeriCorps, a federal agency focused on service and volunteerism across the United States. At least 100 college-access groups, including the Michigan College Access Network, where Dolney-Jacobs works, rely on AmeriCorps funding or members to make the college application process more accessible to high school students, especially those in low-income areas and at schools with low rates of college attendance.

MCAN lost its grant funding this week and was ordered to cease all AmeriCorps work immediately, though the organization was able to use its own funds to buy staff members an extra month. Dolney-Jacobs will now wrap up her time at the high school at the end of May; she was supposed to stay on through late June.

Without someone in her position, Dolney-Jacobs told Inside Higher Ed, there is no one at her school who would have the bandwidth to meet with individual students as they navigate the college application process. Many students would never have heard about different scholarships that are available to them or know that community college—including both an associate’s degree and some trade certifications—is free for recent high school graduates in Michigan.

When her students heard that her position had been impacted, a group brought flowers to her office.

“They told me, ‘you are the Class of 2025’s hero,’” she recounted. “And I was just bawling.”

The National College Attainment Network, the association for MCAN and other similar organizations, is still taking stock of how many of its members have been impacted, said Elizabeth Morgan, NCAN’s chief external relations officer. But damage has been widespread.

“I think it’s safe to say probably our members that use AmeriCorps are serving hundreds of thousands of students across the country,” Morgan said. “They are devastated by this news for a couple of reasons: The students they are supporting right now, many are high school seniors who are just weeding through their [college] decision-making process … [and] the AmeriCorps members are being thrown out of work months early.”

A total of $400 million in AmeriCorps grants were axed, according to America’s Service Commission, a nonprofit that represents state and national service commissions, including funding for food pantries and disaster relief programs in areas impacted by recent natural disasters. The majority of AmeriCorps’ staff was also put on administrative leave in mid-April.

It’s just one of the many agencies that have faced funding cuts and grant cancellations as part of the Trump administration’s war on government spending. Its defenders say that the agency, which pays modest stipends to its members, is anything but wasteful: It provides both vital supports for American communities and professional development training to its members, all for a low price tag.

“I don’t believe Washington is really in tune to what is going on in the local communities,” said Grady Holmes, who works with a different MCAN AmeriCorps program that provides college success coaching to community college and tribal college students. “This is a program that is not government waste. It basically assists the government in making sure their productive citizens are being moved toward self-sufficiency and obtaining a college degree … When the powers that be decided this is wasteful spending—they don’t understand AmeriCorps.”

Twenty-four states sued the Trump administration over the cuts, calling the dismantling of the agency, which was created by Congress in 1993, “unauthorized.”

Advisers’ Impacts

MCAN is facing cuts to two student-facing programs: AdviseMI, which is focused on college readiness for high schoolers, and the College Completion Corps, which is geared toward students at tribal and community colleges. Both rely on AmeriCorps grants and are staffed by AmeriCorps members, who work in yearlong service positions in exchange for stipends and educational awards that can cover current educational expenses or pay off student loans. The organization employs over 100 AmeriCorps members across both programs.

Both programs have been successful, MCAN leaders say. In the 2023–24 academic year, students supported by AdviseMI advisers submitted 21,420 college applications and were awarded more than $32 million in financial aid.

The advisers “often interact with parents, as well, to help parents understand the role of FAFSA and help parents understand what’s happening with their student,” said Ryan Fewins-Bliss, the organization’s executive director. “And [they] engage the school in what we hope to be a schoolwide college-going culture … so when the juniors become seniors, they’re ready for this.”

After MCAN learned Friday night that it lost one of its AmeriCorps grants, the organization spent the weekend trying figure out how it could keep its AmeriCorps staff on board if the rest of the grants were also canceled. (In total, MCAN lost $2.1 million in AmeriCorps funds.)

Come Monday, MCAN found out its remaining grants, including funding for AdviseMI and College Completion Corps, were indeed cancelled, and that it had to stop operating those programs immediately. MCAN was able to find funding in the budget to continue those programs for an extra month, but the future beyond then is uncertain.

Other organizations had to lay off their AmeriCorps members entirely. Partnership 4 Kids, a Nebraska-based organization that works with students from prekindergarten through college, had two full-time AmeriCorps fellows working with high school seniors and three fellows working directly with college students. All five had to stop working Friday, immediately after P4K received word that its grants had been terminated.

“These two in the high schools had great relationships with their students. They were doing one-on-one case management; they were the driving force [behind] college applications, scholarship applications, helping students overcome barriers they might have, and really to get them to that finish line to graduate,” P4K president Deb Denbeck said.

This year, 97 percent of P4K’s senior cohort graduated and 80 percent of them are going to college—an impressive feat in a state where the college-going rate for high school graduates has been on the decline.

‘Brings Out the Best in People’

AmeriCorps members have worked in high schools as college advisers for at least two decades, starting with the College Advising Corps, an organization that began in Virginia and has since expanded to 15 states. It’s a model that college-access leaders say has been incredibly effective, helping thousands of students go to college and boosting the careers of the advisers.

It’s also been embraced by politicians on both sides of the aisle, according to Nicole Hurd, who founded the CAC and is now president of Lafayette College.

AmeriCorps members are a natural fit for college-readiness work, these leaders say. Because many are recent college graduates, they can remember what it was like to be in the high schoolers’ shoes, making it easy for them to empathize with and respond to the challenges their students are facing. The college adviser positions are relatively easy to train, meaning individuals from any background can take on these roles.

But perhaps most importantly, leaders of college-access nonprofits feel AmeriCorps’ long-standing ethos of volunteerism aligns perfectly with their missions to bring educational opportunity to all.

“AmeriCorps brings out the best in people, and it gives them an opportunity to learn as well—to learn how to be professionals in their field,” said Denbeck. “When you look at everything that AmeriCorps does, whether it’s working in education or mentoring or agriculture or disaster relief, they’re doing it because of their heart.”

The impacted organizations doubt they’ll be able to rely on AmeriCorps going forward. For now, they’re working to figure out how to continue their work and where they might get the funding necessary to deploy college advisers into the communities that need them most.

“In the future, it’s safe to say that there are countless students that won’t attend college because they’re not getting this kind of support,” Morgan said.

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May 2, 2025
ED Announces Further Changes to Accreditation

Secretary McMahon said the Dear Colleague letter will “foster a competitive marketplace” for accreditors and the institutions they oversee.

Jim Watson/AFP/Getty Images

The Department of Education intends to accelerate the process for changing accreditors, a move announced in a Dear Colleague letter that builds on other recent changes to oversight.

Last week the Trump administration released a highly anticipated executive order to overhaul accreditation. That order took aim at accreditors who have diversity, equity and inclusion in their standards, threatening to revoke their recognition, and sought to make it easier for institutions to switch from one accrediting body to another and for new accreditors to enter the marketplace.

The Department of Education cast the Dear Colleague letter as an action to comply with that executive order and announced that ED had “lifted the Biden Administration’s moratorium on accepting and reviewing applications for initial recognition of potential new accreditors.”

The Trump administration revoked guidance from the Biden administration from 2022 that exerted more scrutiny over changing accreditors, which came after Florida’s Republican-led Legislature passed a bill that year requiring its public institutions to switch accreditors regularly. (The bill came after state officials clashed with the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools Commission on Colleges, which accredited all of Florida’s public institutions, over concerns of political influence.)

“We must foster a competitive marketplace both amongst accreditors and colleges and universities in order to lower college costs and refocus postsecondary education on improving academic and workforce outcomes for students and families,” U.S. Secretary of Education Linda McMahon said in a statement about the guidance. “President Trump’s Executive Order and our actions today will ensure this Department no longer stands as a gatekeeper to block aspiring innovators from becoming new accreditors nor will this Department unnecessarily micromanage an institution’s choice of accreditor.”

Thursday’s letter, signed by Deputy Under Secretary James P. Bergeron, emphasized that the U.S. Department of Education aims to expedite the process of changing accreditors by removing what ED called “unnecessary requirements” that officials argued stifle institutional innovation.

ED will no longer scrutinize reasons for changing accreditors, according to the letter.

“The law and regulation do not dictate a robust or onerous process for receiving the Department’s approval for a change in accrediting agencies or maintaining multiple accreditation,” Bergeron wrote in the Dear Colleague letter. “Therefore, consistent with statutory and regulatory obligations, the Department will conduct expeditious reviews of applications received except in rare cases where an institution lacks a reasonable cause for making a change.”

The new guidance noted that institutions can switch to accreditors for a variety of reasons, including better alignment with their religious mission, a change mandated by state law or because an accrediting body requires a university to adopt “discriminatory” DEI principles.

Additionally, Bergeron wrote, if the department “does not approve a change in accrediting agency within 30 days of the date of its receipt of a complete notice of this change and materials demonstrating reasonable cause, approval will be deemed to have been granted, unless the change or multiple accreditation is prohibited as described” in the Dear Colleague letter.

Some accreditors offered a positive response to the change.

The Middle States Commission on Higher Education, which recently launched its own effort to streamline the process of changing accreditors, welcomed the development in a statement.

“As an accreditor with institutions that have been stalled in the process, this guidance will have a positive impact on the work we have been doing with several institutions. We look forward to helping our institutions understand what this may mean for them and for us,” MSCHE president Heather Perfetti wrote. “We appreciate that there are well-defined restrictions that will not allow for institutions to change accreditors to avoid accountability with an existing accreditor.”

Thursday’s letter also prompted celebration in some conservative quarters.

The Defense of Freedom Institute, a conservative think tank, urged ED in February to revoke the Biden administration’s guidance on switching, saying that in doing so the department would “wipe away politically motivated and patently unlawful actions of the previous administration.”

They argued that doing so would create a more effective accreditation system. Following the release of the Dear Colleague letter Thursday, the organization thanked the Trump administration in a statement.

“The Defense of Freedom Institute applauds the Trump administration for taking bold, necessary action to restore integrity, accountability, and competition to our broken accreditation system. For too long, accreditors have leveraged their Title IV gatekeeper status to stifle innovation in American higher education and to require ideological litmus tests that undermine civil rights and academic freedom on campus,” DFI president and co-founder Bob Eitel wrote.

Critics, however, argue that making it easier to switch accreditors will have negative effects.

Wesley Whistle, project director for student success and affordability in the higher education initiative at New America, a left-leaning think tank, told Inside Higher Ed that the new process amounts to a rubber stamp for changing accreditors. He argued that allowing institutions to switch accreditors more easily will likely drive them toward accreditors with lower standards.

“What this Dear Colleague letter does is dilute that requirement [to demonstrate reasonable cause to switch accreditors], and undermines a critical safeguard that’s meant to ensure that institutions don’t escape oversight just because they don’t like scrutiny,” Whistle said.

Whistle also suggested the compressed timeline for ED approval within 30 days limits any actual oversight. Timing is compounded, he added, by the lack of personnel, given the job cuts at the department.

“This guarantees there will be no meaningful review. This isn’t about streamlining, it’s surrender. It’s the Wild West here: Do whatever you want, just say ‘mission’ and you can change accreditors,” he said.

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May 2, 2025
Trump Order Targets Undocumented Students’ In-State Tuition

Immigrant rights advocates are urging state and higher ed leaders not to make any hasty changes to their in-state tuition policies after President Trump issued an executive order on Monday threatening to crack down on sanctuary cities and localities with laws that benefit undocumented immigrants.

The blow to undocumented students, who in nearly half the country pay in-state tuition, is tucked into an executive order focused mostly on pressuring state and local officials to abandon their cities’ sanctuary status and cooperate with federal immigration authorities. The order demands federal officials make lists of “sanctuary jurisdictions” and the federal funds that could be suspended or cut if they don’t change course. The order also commands them to take “appropriate action” to stop the enforcement of state and local laws and practices “favoring aliens over any groups of American citizens,” including in-state tuition benefits to undocumented students “but not to out-of-state Americans.”

The move has the potential to affect 24 states and Washington, D.C., which allow in-state tuition for local students with or without citizenship. (Florida previously allowed undocumented students to pay in-state tuition rates but ended its decade-old, historically bipartisan policy in February.) Undocumented students and supporters have long touted these policies as a way to make college more affordable for those who can’t access federal financial aid but who grew up in the states and plan to work in their local communities after they graduate.

“What immigrant, international and refugee students bring is needed talent, skills and contributions,” said Miriam Feldblum, executive director of the Presidents’ Alliance on Higher Education and Immigration. “In-state tuition increases the number of a state’s residents who are college educated, who are able to contribute far more to the state’s economy and to their communities than if they did not have a college education.”

Gaby Pacheco, president and CEO of TheDream.US, a scholarship provider for undocumented students, said many of these students come from low-income backgrounds and couldn’t afford college otherwise.

Her organization is currently scrambling to help undocumented students in Florida pay for the remainder of their credits and graduate before they have to pay much higher out-of-state tuition rates. In some cases, that means helping them transfer to more affordable institutions.

For many, “it’s just impossible for them to be able to come up with that money,” she said.

She’s encouraging state and institutional leaders to avoid “panicking” or “making abrupt policy changes” in response to the executive order.

Other executive orders have “created so much panic and unnecessary movement from colleges, universities, states, that it was more hurtful than anything,” she said. The administration is putting forward a “belief” that charging undocumented students in-state tuition rates is unlawful, but “that belief is legally dubious.”

Deciphering the Executive Order

Immigrants’ advocates and legal scholars say the meaning of the executive order is somewhat hazy. For example, it’s unclear what it means for federal officials to “take appropriate action” to prevent in-state tuition policies from being enforced.

The order also doesn’t directly say states or institutions with such laws will lose any federal funding, noted Ahilan Arulanantham, professor from practice at the UCLA School of Law and co-director of the law school’s Center for Immigration Law and Policy.

Still, the order’s threatening tone toward sanctuary cities’ federal funds could be “a window into where this fight could go if the federal government wants to expend significant political capital on this issue,” Arulanantham said. Congress, for example, could decide to pass a law to cut federal funds from universities that offer undocumented students in-state tuition—a proposal outlined in Project 2025. But the executive order itself doesn’t explicitly take away federal dollars from anyone or have the power to do so, he said.

“If I were a local government or state government official, I probably wouldn’t sue tomorrow over this,” Arulanantham said. “I would wait to see if this is actually going to have any teeth, or if it’s just like a press release.”

Pacheco similarly described the order as “warning” states of the administration’s posture toward these policies. At the same time, she believes it’s important to plan ahead in case Trump takes the issue further.

“They’re trying to tell states, ‘We believe that you providing certain benefits for undocumented students is against the law,’” she said. “We’ve known this forever—these states are not violating the law.”

The order suggests that in-state tuition for undocumented students “may violate” a federal statutory provision that says undocumented people can’t receive higher ed benefits unless citizens are also eligible. But in-state tuition policies are designed to serve citizens living in these states, as well. For example, under California’s Assembly Bill 540, any nonresident who spent three years in California high schools is eligible for in-state tuition. That policy also benefits citizens who grew up in the state who may have left for any reason and returned.

These types of in-state tuition policies, including California’s, have faced legal challenges in the past, “but all the challenges have failed, said Kevin Johnson, dean of the UC Davis School of Law. He described the executive order as “vaguely worded,” while the state laws, by contrast, are “very clear.”

The legal argument is that undocumented students are “just being treated equally as all other residents of the state,” he said. “The idea is that they’re residents, which means they’re taxpayers—maybe it’s sales tax, maybe state income tax, federal income tax—whatever it is, they should be treated like other residents and not discriminated against because of their immigration status.”

What Happens Next

Arulanantham worries that despite their strong legal foundation, states and higher ed institutions may rush to end in-state tuition benefits for undocumented students out of fear.

“That’s actually almost certainly the primary purpose of this order”: to spur “pre-emptive discrimination because [institutions] think they have to or they think it’s safer to,” he said.

Feldblum noted that, prior to the executive order, some state lawmakers were already starting to shift on the issue, perhaps “to align themselves with the federal government.”

While some states have recently doubled down on such policies, proposing new legislation to expand in-state tuition eligibility, others have also moved to curtail them. Following in Florida’s footsteps, lawmakers in other states, including Kansas, Kentucky and Texas, are considering legislation to prohibit in-state tuition for undocumented students. Texas was the first to allow undocumented students to pay in-state tuition rates in 2001, joined by California that same year.

“This is not coming in a vacuum … We have to take this seriously and substantively, consider the kinds of actions we need to take to defend in-state tuition—including, if needed, legal action,” Feldblum said. “And then also make sure we’re placing equal emphasis on supporting and communicating with potentially impacted students so that they know their education is important and that they’re important.”

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May 2, 2025