Science found an exodus of Ph.D. holders from STEM and health roles at federal research agencies.
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The number of Ph.D. holders in STEM and health roles leaving 14 federal research agencies outnumbered hires 11 to 1 last year, according to a Science analysis of White House Office of Personnel Management (OPM) data. That has resulted in a net 4,224 fewer such Ph.D.s in those agencies, the journal reported this week.
Science also noted that reductions in force “accounted for relatively few departures.”
“At most agencies, the most common reasons for departures were retirements and quitting,” Science reported. “Although OPM classifies many of these as voluntary, outside forces including the fear of being fired, the lure of buyout offers, or a profound disagreement with Trump policies, likely influenced many decisions to leave.”
The National Institutes of Health saw the greatest increase in departures of STEM and health-relatedPh.D.s from 2024 to 2025, when President Trump retook the White House. In 2024,421 left the NIH; in 2025, more than 1,100 left. The agency also hired far fewer of those Ph.D.s last year than the year before. (Trump proposed cutting the NIH’s budget by roughly 40 percent this fiscal year, alongside massive cuts to other federal research agencies.)
The National Science Foundation lost a net 205 STEM and health-related Ph.D.s, equaling “40% of its total pre-Trump Ph.D. workforce of 517, by far the largest percentage at any agency,” Science reported. Nearly half of those who left the NSF last year were “rotators,” scholars on temporary leave from their universities, Science reported, noting that the agency erased 75 percent of those rotator positions last year.
Across all 14 agencies, the number of such Ph.D.s employed shrank17 percent on average from 2024 to last year.
In an email to Inside Higher Ed, Emily G. Hilliard, a spokesperson for the Health and Human Services Department, which includes the NIH, wrote that “under the Biden administration and throughout the pandemic, HHS ballooned into a bloated bureaucracy” that produced “no measurable improvements in public health.”
“The status quo was not working, and a major reset was overdue,” the spokesperson said. “HHS did just that, to streamline operations, reduce redundancies, and go back to pre-pandemic employment levels. It’s important to note many of these changes reflect voluntary departures through generous ‘Fork in the Road’ and early retirement offers, not a retreat from science.”
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Dive Brief:
Nearly all senior higher education leaders — 98% — reported that federal policymaking has introduced uncertainty into institutional planning, according to the latest pulse survey from the American Council on Education.
Topping the list of senior leaders’ most pressing concerns is state and federal interference with colleges’ autonomy.Over 70% of leaders said they were either extremely or moderately concerned about threats to independence and academic freedom.
“Uncertainty around research funding, immigration and international engagement, academic freedom, and student aid policy are shaping institutional decision-making and straining long-term planning efforts,” the report’s authors wrote.
Dive Insight:
After 2025’s many policy upheavals, it would be shocking only if college leaders didn’treport some uncertainty.
Last year, President Donald Trump and his administration upended many of the sector’s longstanding precedents and fundamental assumptions. Trump’s executive branch attacked everything from the U.S. Department of Education as a whole, to research funding, to the visa system for international students, to individual colleges, many of which became targets of civil rights investigations and political pressure campaigns.
All of that tumult is clearly weighing on the minds of college leaders.
Nearly three in four senior leaders described their level of uncertainty about the federal policy environment and its impact on planning as “extreme” or “moderate,” according to the poll. Another 19% reported “some” uncertainty and 7% described it as “slight.”
Trump’s impact on international student enrollment — with recent studies showing dips in graduate and new students from abroad — also loomed large for many leaders. Sixty percent said they were extremely or moderately concerned about immigration restrictions and visa revocations.
Academic freedom and institutional autonomy are also arguably more at risk than they have been in generations.
Trump’s government has tried to force policy changes at colleges through federal investigations, research funding cuts and his compact for higher education. In some cases, the administration has wrested payments and policy changes from institutions under pressure.
But many colleges and universities are also losing their independence through new state laws that aim to weaken governance, direct course content, and banish diversity, equity and inclusion efforts.
In a recent report, the free expression group PEN America described 2025 as a “catastrophe” for higher ed. The group counted 21 bills across 15 states enacted in 2025 that it says censor higher education and were the “result of a relentless, years-old campaign to exert ideological control over college and university campuses.”
College leaders also flagged perennial challenges among their concerns in the ACE poll. That includes fiscal pressures, with 44% reporting either extreme or moderate concern about long-term financial viability. Enrollment, the mental health of students and perceptions about higher education’s value were all among leaders’ most pressing concerns as well. Over 75% reported extreme or moderate concern around what the public and policymakers thought about the sector.
The ACE report drew from a December survey of 386 senior leaders from colleges nationwide.
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Most clicked story of the week:
Senate lawmakers have rejected the Trump administration’s proposal to vastly reduce federal funding for scientific research. Instead the Senate advanced proposals last week that would provide $188.3 billion for scientific research — 21.3% more than the Trump administration proposed.
The Senate passed those bipartisan measures Thursday in a 82-15 vote, sending them to President Donald Trump’s desk. The House passed them in a 397-28 vote earlier in the month.
Number of the week: 5.9%
The decline in graduate international students enrolled in U.S. colleges in fall 2025 compared to the year before, according to final figures from the National Student Clearinghouse Research Center. However, enrollment ticked up 1% overall, thanks to a 1.2% increase in undergraduate students.
The latest on mergers, closures and financial distress:
The California College of the Arts, a 120-year-old institution, announced that it will close at the end of the 2026-27 academic year and hand over its campus to Nashville-based Vanderbilt University. Despite a major fundraising push, CCA President David Howse said the arts college’s “tuition-driven business model is not sustainable.”
Oregon’s Higher Education Coordinating Commissionrecently passed a report that in part advises all of Oregon’s public colleges to collaborate and craft plans for “targeted institutional integration.”. Those plans could range from two colleges sharing programs to fully merging, according to the report.
Hampshire College, a private nonprofit in Massachusetts that narrowly avoided closing five years ago, is once again in potential financial trouble. According to its latest audit, the institution could shutter if it can’t refinance its debt.
‘A year of catastrophe’ for higher ed:
PEN America, a free expression group, found that 21 bills across 15 states were enacted in 2025 that censor higher education. “For higher education in America, 2025 was a year of catastrophe,” researchers wrote in a report summarizing the findings.
The researchers found the laws were a “result of a relentless, years-old campaign to exert ideological control over college and university campuses.” Although the conservative-led push began before President Donald Trump’s second term, researchers noted the campaign was “greatly exacerbated” by his administration.
Now, over 50% of college students are studying in states with at least one law on the books that censors higher education. “This is a staggering figure that should give us all pause,” they wrote.
Student parents are facing the ripple effects of a volatile federal policy landscape.
Photo illustration by Justin Morrison/Inside Higher Ed | RichVintage/E+/Getty Images
Cuts to federal funding that supported students of color and undocumented students dominated headlines in the first year of the Trump administration. But advocates for student parents say the administration has gutted benefit programs these students rely on, leaving a fifth of the country’s college students vulnerable to financial hardship or even at risk of stopping out.
Federal funds for programs providing a critical element of support for student parents, childcare, could be frozen or canceled. In a recent example, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services froze billions of dollars in childcare and family assistance funds to five Democrat-led states, citing fraud concerns. About $2.4 billion in Childcare and Development Fund grants and $7.35 billion in Temporary Assistance for Needy Families funds are on the line.
The Education Department also nixed grants for on-campus childcare at more than a dozen colleges this summer; ED officials claimed the institutions didn’t hire childcare staff based on merit or hired staff who taught gender identity and racial justice to children. Funding for the federal grant program Child Care Access Means Parents in School (CCAMPIS) was already uncertain after Trump recommended axing it in his proposed budget for 2026.
Childcare “is a lifeline for parenting college students,” said Nicole Lynn Lewis, a former parenting student and founder and CEO of Generation Hope, a nonprofit that supports student parents. “To have that support significantly reduced, frozen, taken away, attacked, threatened—that is a major blow to families’ ability to excel and to be able to experience economic mobility.”
In their efforts to close the Department of Education, officials also shuffled responsibility for CCAMPIS over to HHS. The move risks adding new layers of confusion and bureaucracy to a program that already only reaches a small fraction of parenting students, Lewis said. Parents make up a fifth of the tens of millions of college students across the country, and CCAMPIS serves about 11,000 of them.
But childcare isn’t the only worry. Advocates say recent cuts to public benefits are also a major concern for parenting students.
The One Big Beautiful Bill Act will reduce funding to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, by about $186 billion over 10 years. The legislation also made some of SNAP’s work requirements more restrictive. While parents with dependent children are still exempt from certain work requirements, a dependent is now defined as below age 14, instead of 18, meaning more parents will now need to work 80 hours per month to qualify for benefits long term. OBBBA will also slash $990 billion from Medicaid over the course of a decade and make its requirements more restrictive.
Mark Huelsman, director of policy and advocacy at the Hope Center for Student Basic Needs, emphasized that parenting students are more likely than other students to participate in these public benefit programs because of financial hardship and because parenting young children or participating in TANF helps them gain SNAP eligibility. About 30 percent of parenting students are estimated to be on Medicaid or SNAP. But that also means these students are bound to be disproportionately affected when public benefits take a beating.
“I think the goal of any administration or policymakers that care about student success should be to provide as comprehensive supports as possible for this population,” Huelsman said, noting parents already face barriers to graduating. “I think we’ve seen the exact opposite over the past year.”
State higher education budgets might also take a hit as states try to make up for cuts to Medicaid, leaving institutions with fewer resources to support parenting students, said Carrie Welton, a former parenting student and senior policy strategist at Trellis Strategies, an education consulting firm.
“When states are looking for ways to cut costs, [higher ed] is one of the first things on the chopping block,” Welton said.
She also worries that a general sense of political and economic uncertainty may drive parents to disenroll.
“Even though their economic circumstances may not have changed drastically with the new administration, people feel more uncertain and …less confident about the economy and about their future,” she said. “We’ve seen that affect consumer spending, and I think that’s going to affect people’s perspectives about enrolling and persisting in a college credential program,” Welton said. Especially when they have children to worry about, parents’ instinct might be to “hunker down” and save their money.
The Trump administration’s proposed limits on graduate student borrowing for programs not classified as “professional” could also hurt parenting students’ career aspirations, Lewis, of Generation Hope, said. Of the roughly 200 students with children in her organization’s Hope Scholars program, two-thirds of them are studying in fields that don’t qualify for higher professional loan caps, such as nursing, social work and teaching.
Those students now face an extra barrier to “unlock the earning potential that comes with an advanced degree, unlock the promotion potential that comes with being able to pursue graduate school,” Lewis said.
Former parenting students and advocates say one of the ways colleges can help parenting students is by ensuring they have accurate information about recent policy changes.
Huelsman said parenting students’ confusion around policy changes is understandable given the speed of the change and misinformation online.
“Someone might see a headline that federal childcare funding has been frozen, but it might not apply to their state or their school. They might see that the administration is proposing zeroing out funding for something, but they haven’t done it yet,” Huelsman said. “Outreach is genuinely vital, probably now more than ever.”
The Trump administration’s efforts to restrict Head Start’s diversity, equity and inclusion efforts and downsize the early childhood education program were dealt a blow Tuesday, after a federal judge in Washington state temporarily blocked actions taken by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services last year.
The preliminary injunction from the U.S. District Court in Seattle says HHS’ anti-DEI warnings to Head Start providers puts them “in an impossible situation” where they cannot comply with the government’s DEI prohibitions while also fulfilling the program’s purpose, which is to provide early childhood education for historically underserved populations.
The temporary block also postpones mass office closures and layoffs at the Office of Head Start, which — together with the DEI ban — disrupted programs nationwide. The pause applies to programs nationwide, said attorneys from the American Civil Liberties Union, which is litigating the case.
Dive Insight:
The case was partly prompted by a letter sent to Head Start providers in March, which stated “The Office of Head Start will not approve the use of federal funding for any training and technical assistance (TTA) or other program expenditures that promote or take part in diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) initiatives.”
The letter told recipients to “carefully review their annual funding application, including the budget and budget justification narrative, TTA plans, program goals, and any other supplemental materials to ensure they are in accordance with this change.”
Two weeks later, on April 1, 2025, HHS closed half of Head Start regional offices and laid off those staff, which left Head Start agencies in 23 states in the lurch, according to the original complaint filed in April by the ACLU.
After that, as Head Start programs had difficulty accessing federal grant funds that were already allocated to them and faced other funding issues, the programs were asked to certify that they did not promote DEI, accessibility or “discriminatory equity ideology.”
Head Start providers in Washington, Pennsylvania, Illinois and Wisconsin said in the court documents that the slew of federal changes “have started to dismantle the program piece by piece, resulting in what Head Start agency directors across the country describe as ‘chaos’ that impedes their ability to effectively continue running their programs.” Head Start programs were designed by Congress to provide services that reflect the needs of their communities and serve marginalized populations.
Head Start serves about 750,000 infants, toddlers and preschool children a year. More than 17,000 Head Start centers operate nationwide with the support of 250,000 staff, according to the National Head Start Association, which represents the program’s families, students and staff.
The court documents pausing the changes on Tuesday say that HHS returned one Wisconsin program director’s grant application and provided her a list of of 197 terms to exclude from applications, including but not limited to “Black,” “diversity,” “disability,” “women,” “tribal,” “equality,” “mental health” and “barrier.”
In another case in Washington, a program requested professional development on working with children with autism to support more than 10% of its enrolled children, “but they were forced to remove these plans along with the other ‘prohibited’ terms from applications as ‘a condition of grant renewal,’” the Tuesday court documents say.
“When a Head Start program has their funding withheld because of their efforts to provide effective education to children with autism, serve tribal members on a reservation, or treat all families with respect, it is an attack on the fundamental promise of the Head Start program — that even children who are furthest away from opportunity should be given the early education they need to succeed in school,” said Joel Ryan, executive director of the Washington State Head Start and Early Childhood Education and Assistance Program, in a Jan. 7 statement.
HHS did not respond to K-12 Dive’s requests for comment.
Measures by the U.S. Department of Education to cut DEI from education or education-related services have also been successfully challenged.
Multiple rulings by federal judges last spring struck down the Education Department’s anti-DEI policy, which one judge said raises “the specter of a public ‘witch hunt’ that will sow fear and doubt among teachers.” That anti-DEI policy included an “End DEI portal” and a Title VI certification requirement, which was overturned.
Title VI protects students against racial discrimination and has typically been invoked to protect historically underserved races, but the Trump administration has used it to prohibit DEI initiatives, saying such measures discriminate against White people.
Parents rights supporters attend a rally in Simi Valley on Sept. 26, 2023.,the night before a Republican presidential primary debate.
Credit: Courtesy of Rebecca Holz / California Policy Center
Top Takeaways
A judge ruled parents have the right to know if a student expresses gender incongruence.
California Attorney General Rob Bonta’s office applied to stay the court’s injunction.
The ruling may ultimately be appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court.
A federal judge issued a ruling Monday that strikes down California school policies aimed at preventing schools from revealing a student’s gender identity to their parents.
The class action suit, filed by California teachers and parents, hinges on whether TK-12 educators can breach a student’s confidentiality and tell parents that students are using a name or pronoun other than what they have been assigned at birth.
U.S. District Judge Roger Benitez, of San Diego, ruled in favor of two Escondido Union School District teachers, Elizabeth Mirabelli and Lori Ann West, who claimed that district policies “flatly prohibit teachers from respecting parents’ wishes.” The middle school teachers named district officials in the suit and said district policies violated the teachers’ constitutional free speech and religious rights.
Benitez, a George W. Bush appointee, wrote in his order granting summary judgment that California’s public schools “place a communication barrier between parents and teachers.” The judgment applies to all California public schools, not just the original North San Diego County district.
“Parents and guardians have a federal constitutional right to be informed if their public school student child expresses gender incongruence,” Benitez wrote. “Teachers and school staff have a federal constitutional right to accurately inform the parent or guardian of their student when the student expresses gender incongruence.”
The suit, filed in April 2023, named California state officials, including State Superintendent Tony Thurmond, the State Board of Education and Attorney General Rob Bonta.
Benitez’s ruling references guidance that the California Department of Education shared with school districts, including an FAQ that has since been deleted, as well as cultural competency training. But he stated that this case is not about California Assembly Bill 1955, which prohibits forcing teachers to disclose the gender identity of their students.
The Support Academic Futures and Educators for Today’s Youth, or SAFETY Act, was signed by Gov. Gavin Newsom in July 2024, in response to more than a dozen California school boards proposing or passing parental notification policies that required school staff to inform parents if a child asks to use a name or pronoun different from the one assigned at birth.
A statement from the California Legislative LGBTQ Caucus says that Benitez’s ruling “deliberately injects confusion into the public understanding” of the SAFETY Act and “signals an alarming willingness to undermine long-standing constitutional rights to privacy and nondiscrimination protections across California law.”
Bonta’s office on Monday filed a brief seeking to stay the court’s injunction. A spokesperson for Bonta said the district court misapplied the law and that the decision will ultimately be reversed on appeal.
“We are committed to securing school environments that allow transgender students to safely participate as their authentic selves while recognizing the important role that parents play in students’ lives,” said a statement from Bonta’s office.
A statement from the Thomas More Society, the Chicago-based conservative Catholic law firm that took on the case, called the judge’s decision a “landmark class-action ruling.”
“Today’s incredible victory finally, and permanently, ends California’s dangerous and unconstitutional regime of gender secrecy policies in schools,” said Paul M. Jonna, special counsel at Thomas More Society and a partner at LiMandri & Jonna.
The American Civil Liberties Union said in a statement that this ruling puts transgender and gender-nonforming students at risk of being outed.
“A culture of outing harms everyone — students, families, and school staff alike — by removing opportunities to build trust. LGBTQ+ students deserve to decide on their own terms if, when, and how to come out, and to be able to be themselves at school,” said Christine Parker, senior staff attorney with the ACLU Foundation of Southern California.
An attorney for the Escondido Union School District argued in court documents that both the California Constitution and the state education code protect the privacy rights of students in many contexts. For instance, the California Supreme Court has held that children have the right to an abortion without state notification of their parents. And school counselors are barred from disclosing confidential information if the counselor believes that it would result in a danger to the health or safety of the student.
Legal experts said the case is likely to reach the U.S. Supreme Court.
When the case came up during a panel at the California School Boards Association conference in Sacramento earlier this month, Anthony De Marco, a partner at the firm Atkinson, Andelson, Loya, Ruud & Romo, which represents school districts, called it a “direct attack” on California education.
“It crosses a line,” De Marco said, while speaking to board members about important legal issues they may be facing. “Certified employees should not be able to opt out.”
Jeff Freitas, president of the California Federation of Teachers, called the court decision “an attack on the safety of our students and educators.” He said that as a math teacher, he witnessed students who were struggling with issues that they wanted to keep private from their parents.
“Students more often go to their parents than their teachers,” Freitas said. “If they’re not going to their parents, there’s probably a reason why.”
EdSource reporter Thomas Peele contributed to this report.
A federal judge on Thursday denied the U.S. Department of Education’s request for an 18-month extension to decide borrower defense claim decisions due by the end of January, according to lawyers representing the borrowers.
The affected borrowers belong to the last of three groups covered under a landmark 2022 settlement with the Education Department to resolve a class-action lawsuit that accused the agency of stonewalling borrower defense applications. Under that agreement, the borrowers were set to receive automatic relief if the agency didn’t decide their cases by Jan. 28.
U.S. District Judge William Alsup declined to provide any extension on claims filed by borrowers who attended one of 151 institutions that the Education Department previously said had strong indications of engaging in “substantial misconduct.” For other borrowers, Alsup extended the deadline for the Education Department to resolve their cases to April 15.
Dive Insight:
The Sweet v. McMahon lawsuit, originally filed in 2019 during the first Trump administration, accused the Education Department of improperly delaying decisions on borrower defense to repayment claims. The program provides debt relief to borrowers who were defrauded by their colleges.
Three years later, under the Biden administration, the Education Department struck a settlement that promised either timely decisions or automatic relief to three separate groups of borrowers.
The agency said it would automatically clear debts for the first group, roughly 200,000 borrowers who attended one of 151 colleges listed by the Education Department. In court documents, the Education Department said that “attendance at one of these schools justifies presumptive relief” because the institutions had strong signs of misconduct.
The second group is composed of borrowers who didn’t attend one of those colleges. The Education Department promised to make decisions for them by certain dates depending on when those borrowers applied for relief — or automatic relief if it didn’t meet those deadlines.
The majority of those borrowers have had their claims approved, with only a small share still pending, according to a court filing earlier this month.
The last group is composed of those who filed borrower defense applications after the Education Department had already struck the settlement but before it received final approval. That group is composed of roughly 207,000 people who filed over 251,000 claims following the settlement’s announcement.
Alsup denied granting any extension to the Education Department for borrowers in that group who attended the agency’s list of 151 colleges. Around 80% of borrower defense applications filed by the last group involve one of those institutions, according to the Project on Predatory Student Lending, a legal nonprofit representing the borrowers. The remainder will face a roughly 2 and ½ month delay.
“The Court sent a clear message today: borrowers deserve fair, timely decisions, not years of uncertainty,” Eileen Connor, president and executive director of PPSL, said in a statement Thursday.“This is a critical victory for people who have waited far too long for justice and relief, but this case isn’t over.”
The Education Department is still “evaluating the impact of the order,” Ellen Keast, the agency’s press secretary for higher education, said in a Friday email.
“We remain committed to doing the right thing for students, families, and taxpayers,” Keast said.
The Education Department asked for the delay in early November, projecting that it still would not have reached decisions on roughly 193,000 borrower defense applications from the final group by the Jan. 28 deadline. The agency argued it didn’t have the resources it needed to adjudicate the group’s claims and had seen “staffing dwindle at the time when resources for postclass adjudication are most needed.”
The Education Department has cut roughly half of its staff under President Donald Trump, who signed an executive order in March for the agency to close by the “maximum extent appropriate and permitted by law.”
The final group in the settlement has a total outstanding loan balance of $11.8 billion, according to the agency’s court filing. The Education Department said it had issued decisions on roughly 54,000 borrower defense applications for the group by October, and it had denied roughly half of them.
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President Donald Trump signed an executive order Thursday challenging the growing ecosystem of state AI laws and setting the stage for a federal policy to oversee the technology, citing concerns over compliance challenges for businesses and stymying innovation.
The executive order tasks U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi with creating an AI Litigation Task Force in the next 30 days to challenge state AI laws that “unconstitutionally regulate interstate commerce” or clash with existing federal laws. Trump also called for a national policy framework for AI that would preempt state AI laws, add child safety protections, ensure copyright safeguards and hinder censorship.
“My administration must act with the Congress to ensure that there is a minimally burdensome national standard – not 50 discordant State ones,” the order said. “The resulting framework must forbid State laws that conflict with the policy set forth in this order.”
States will face evaluation of their AI laws under the executive order, as well as potential restrictions on funding if their laws are found to be burdensome, according to the document.
The proposal was met with sharp criticism from some advocates and lawmakers including Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.), who described the executive order as “dangerous, and most likely illegal,” in a post on social media platform X.
“Trump’s new executive order tries to eliminate state AI laws – in both red and blue states – that are protecting Americans from harmful deepfakes, scams, and online exploitation,” Klobuchar said on X. “We shouldn’t remove the few protections Americans have as Congress fails to act.”
Trump’s move to create roadblocks for state AI law implementation aligns with the interests of tech companies, which have worked against state regulations in 2025 as new models, agentic tools and applications spread among enterprises.
Despite its attempt to slow state efforts regulating AI, the executive order isn’t likely to shift enterprise compliance or AI governance strategies as a result, said Forrester Principal Analyst Alla Valente.
“They can’t pull back on what they’re doing when it comes to AI standards, assessments, controls and governance,” Valente said. “They’re going to have to stay the course on it.”
Companies building AI products, particularly in highly regulated fields such as healthcare, are aware they can’t adopt a technology without managing risk, said Alaap Shah, an AI, privacy, cybersecurity and health IT attorney at Epstein Becker Green. Many companies that have already adopted compliance frameworks based on consensus-based standards will likely continue to implement them, he added.
Still, businesses will continue to advance AI development and deployment regardless of the state of the regulatory landscape, Shah said.
“It’s sort of like a build now, fail fast, mentality and investors are continuing to invest,” Shah said.
The pushback against state AI regulation comes at a time when tech companies like Google, OpenAI, AWS, Microsoft, Meta and more are investing billions in building out infrastructure in the U.S. and globally. Gartner estimated that global AI spending will reach $1.5 trillion in 2025.
Google and OpenAI earlier this year advocated for a federal policy preempting state AI laws. Meta also launched a lobbying effort to support political candidates who aligned with the company’s views on AI oversight, marking another step by Big Tech against state AI regulation after a proposed 10-year moratorium on state AI laws failed to pass in Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act.
What CIOs can expect from U.S. states
As the AI market rapidly expands, U.S. states including California, Colorado, Connecticut and Texas have passed AI legislation in an attempt to regulate AI model developers and deployers. California’s AI law requirements stand to have a particular effect on CIOs and businesses because the law imposes direct obligations on companies that run data centers or are building their own AI models.
Navigating the landscape of state AI laws can be challenging for businesses because it requires them to comply with differing standards, which makes compliance tricky, Shah said. Even as enterprises create AI guidelines and policies, more than two-thirds of C-suite executivesadmitted to using unapproved AI tools, according to research commissioned by software company Nitro.
Many states are trying to solve similar issues with respect to AI, such as transparency, bias and discrimination risk, Shah said. That means states aren’t necessarily legislating in different directions but it can take time for businesses to understand the laws’ nuances.
“Clients who are developing AI or adopting AI certainly are attuned to the fact that there’s a litany of different kinds of AI laws out there and they’re variable across the states, many of which are nascent or maybe not even on the books yet,” Shah said. “There’s a great deal of ‘what do we need to focus on?’”
Businesses can struggle to keep track of what’s happening at the state level and understanding how it applies to their uses of AI, as well as developing AI-related compliance programs, said Katy Milner, a partner at law firm Hogan Lovells.
There are various roles within the AI value chain, from AI developers to deployers. While some legal frameworks apply exclusively to developers, others – like California’s AI law – can apply to both, Milner said.
“There are questions of when would a deployer be considered a developer because of the way they’re adapting it,” Milner said. “Developing compliance strategies amid this very active legislative backdrop has been challenging.”
Part of Trump’s policy push will be to target certain AI laws and make an example of ones the administration deems most burdensome, like Colorado’s, Shah said. Trump named the Colorado AI Act specifically in his executive order, which likely makes it first on the list to face the AI Litigation Task Force, he added.
New York and New Jersey state attorneys general have already indicated they plan to stand against the president’s order threatening U.S. states’ ability to regulate AI.
“We embrace technological innovation,” New Jersey State Attorney General Matthew Platkin said during a Thursday press briefing by The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights. “But no industry in the history of our country has received the types of protections that these AI oligarchs are seeking and that apparently President Trump is willing to succumb to.”
Florida Governor Ron DeSantis also pushed back on executive authority to preempt state AI laws. He said Congress, after it didn’t vote to pass the 10-year state AI law moratorium, might not even want to pursue legislation preempting state AI laws. An attempt to include a state AI law preemption in the National Defense Authorization Act this year also failed.
“I doubt Congress has the votes to pass this because it is so unpopular with the public,” DeSantis said in a post on social media platform X.
Trump likely recognizes that passing a federal AI policy framework through Congress won’t happen anytime soon, Valente said. The order said the administration will be working on a “legislative recommendation” for Congress to establish a federal policy preempting state AI laws, but with no set deadline.
“This executive order is putting states on notice, hoping that it slows down some states from creating AI laws,” Valente said.
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Federal lawmakers are divided over whether the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act and the Protection of Pupil Rights Amendment should be used to protect student’s LGBTQ+ status from parents or to reveal it.
The disagreements arose during a Wednesday hearing held by the House Education and Workforce’s Early Childhood, Elementary and Secondary Education subcommittee as the two originally bipartisan laws — which are meant to protect students’ records and information collection from unauthorized disclosures — are increasingly being wielded by federal authorities to crack down on districts over their privacy policies on issues like students’ gender pronouns.
“This should not be a partisan issue,” said Rep. Kevin Kiley, R-Calif., chairman of the subcommittee. “Keeping parents in the dark is wrong.”
Kiley and witnesses at the hearing said some school districts keep dummy files in order to keep parents in the dark about information like a preferred name a student is using in school, have “secret transition policies” directing staff to withhold from parents if children express a gender identity different from their sex at birth, and conduct “intrusive” surveys and evaluations of students’ mental health.
However, representatives and witnesses on the other side of the issue say that policies requiring parents to know students’ gender identities, sexual orientations, or pronoun and name changes jeopardize student safety and housing security in some cases, and also violate student rights.
“Forcing teachers to out every student every time they want to go by a different name or engage in some form of self-expression is an unrealistic expectation and disrupts the teacher-student bond,” said Rep. Suzanne Bonamici, D-Ore. “If students are not talking to their parents about their gender identity, maybe there’s a good reason for that. A lot of homeless youth are LGBTQ, and they get kicked out of their house when they reveal their gender identity.”
LGBTQ+ people are overrepresented in the homeless youth population, according to the National Network for Youth, a nonprofit that aims to reduce youth homelessness. These youth are 120% more likely to experience homelessness than their non-LGBTQ+ peers and represent up to 40% of all youth experiencing homelessness, despite accounting for only 9.5% of the overall population.
Administration cracks down on schools protecting LGBTQ+ students
According to Parents Defending Education, a conservative parental rights group, over 1,200 districts impacting more than 21,000 schools and a collective 12.4 million students have policies stating that district personnel “can or should keep a student’s transgender status hidden from parents.”
Nearly half of those noted districts are in California, which has a state law that went into effect this year preventing school employees from disclosing any information related to a student’s sexual orientation, gender identity, or gender expression to any other person without their consent. The law also prohibits schools from requiring employees to disclose such information to parents and is the subject of an Office for Civil Rights investigation launched in March.
By contrast, at least 15 states have policies requiring schools to reveal students’ LGBTQ+ status under some circumstances, according to the Movement Advancement Project, which tracks issues related to transgender students.
The hearing last week and disagreements over the essence of the privacy laws — as well as LGBTQ+ student safety — came as the Trump administration increasingly uses FERPA and PPRA to investigate schools for civil rights violations, similar to the investigation in California.
In August, for example, it launched investigations into four Kansas school districts for alleged FERPA violations also related to withholding student information from parents’ related to LGBTQ+ status. “My offices will vigorously investigate these matters to ensure these practices come to an end,” said McMahon in a statement related to the Kansas investigations.
Ultimately, these investigations could be used to withhold funds from schools, many of which are in states with LGBTQ+ protection laws requiring such school policies.
In March, the U.S. Department of Education sent districts a Dear Colleague letter warning that documents such as gender plans being withheld from educational records available to parents may be considered civil right violations.
“Many states and school districts have enacted policies that imply students need protection from their parents,”said U.S. Education Secretary Linda McMahon in a March statement. “Going forward, the correct application of FERPA will be to empower all parents to protect their children from the radical ideologies that have taken over many schools.”
Last week, the issue also made it to the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals after a mother said a New York school violated her constitutional rights when it didn’t inform her of the child’s request that staff use gender neutral pronouns and a masculine name. The mother in Vitsaxaki v. Skaneateles Central School District ultimately withdrew the student from the district. Alliance Defending Freedom is representing the mother.
At least three other cases filed by ADF are also pending, including against Texas’ Houston Independent School District and Michigan’s Rockford Public Schools.
‘Worth no more than the paper they’re printed on’ as department dissolves
The issue of privacy laws and its new enforcement strategy under the Trump administration also made it to lawmakers’ radar as the Education Department is downsizing by transferring the management of many of its core oversight responsibilities, including for elementary and secondary education, to other agencies.
Such a move would weaken the enforcement of privacy laws, some witnesses and lawmakers said.
In 2018, the Education Department’s Office of the Inspector General said the department failed to conduct timely and effective investigations of complaints related to data privacy, as cases piled up in a backlog without any effective strategy to track the number or status of the complaints it received.
“And that has largely not been resolved,” said Cody Venzke, senior policy counsel at the ACLU’s National Political Advocacy Department, during the House subcommittee hearing. Dissolving the department could compromise student privacy oversight and make the backlog worse, he said.
“Moreover, FERPA and the PPRA — they are premised on receiving funds from the department of education,” said Venzke. “If those critical grants are dispersed elsewhere throughout the federal government, FERPA and PPRA become worth no more than the paper they’re printed on.”
The Education Department and its Office of Federal Student Aid typically hold a conference the first week of December each year.
Photo illustration by Justin Morrison/Inside Higher Ed | Caiaimage/Chris Ryan/iStock/Getty Images
Each year during the first week of December, the Department of Education has historically hosted the Federal Student Aid Training Conference to provide university administrators with updated education on regulations and technical systems. That hasn’t happened this year.
Now, many financial aid experts are expressing their frustrations on social media, attributing the lapse to the Trump administration’s majorreductions in force and calling it a shortsighted mistake.
“There is no conference. That’s what happens when you fire many of the staff who organized and conducted the training,” Byron Scott, a retired FSA staff member, wrote on LinkedIn. “Perhaps in ‘returning’ this Department of Education function to the states—where [it] never was—the Department forgot to tell the states about this new responsibility.”
Department officials have neither announced the event’s cancellation nor clarified whether and when it might take place. The conference website, where logistical information is traditionally posted, only says, “Information coming soon.”
One senior department official who spoke with Inside Higher Ed on the condition of anonymity said the conference is slated to occur in person in March.
“The announcement was queued up but the shutdown got in the way,” the source wrote in a text message. “I think the plan [will be released] in the coming days.”
An Education Department spokesperson did not respond to questions about the March date but blamed any delay on the government shutdown.
“The Democrats shut down the government for 43 days, and as you can imagine, planning a conference is not an exempted activity,” the spokesperson said. “We’ll have more updates on this in the coming weeks.”
If the conference is eventually held in person, it would be the first time since the COVID-19 pandemic broke out in 2020.
The senior department official said they hope that “returning the conference to in-person will make the wait worth it.”
But Heidi Kovalick, director of financial aid at Rowan University, responded to Scott’s LinkedIn post saying that right now is “a critical time.”
Financial aid officers have a lot to adapt to; the One Big Beautiful Bill Act mandated major changes to the student loan system, and the department issued regulations outlining new standards for Public Service Loan Forgiveness, among other significant shifts since Trump took office.
“Fin[ancial] aid administrators really need to hear from the experts,” Kovalick wrote. “Of course as others have mentioned, [it’s] kind of hard when they have been forced out. We miss you all.”
Regardless of whether staffing shortages or the government shutdown played a role in the delay, Melanie Storey, president of the National Association of Student Financial Aid Administrators, said one of her greatest concerns is the tight timeline financial aid officers will face if the department does reschedule the conference for spring.
“Truthfully, March is pretty soon—three months away. Institutional budgets are tight. People are going to have to book flights and hotels, and you know that that can be expensive,” she said. Still, the NASFAA president applauded the department for its effort to return the conference to an in-person event.
“The last few were virtual, which had mixed reviews. The sessions had to be prerecorded. They weren’t always as timely. And there wasn’t an opportunity for interaction. But those are all the things that financial aid professionals prioritize,” she said. “If March is when they can do it, well, we’ll be happy to see it in March.”
