Tag: Funding

  • Columbia University Faces $400 Million Federal Funding Cut in the Wake of Antisemitism Concerns

    Columbia University Faces $400 Million Federal Funding Cut in the Wake of Antisemitism Concerns

    Dr. Katrina ArmstrongColumbia University is grappling with significant financial challenges after the Federal Task Force to Combat Antisemitism announced $400 million in cuts to federal funding, a development that Interim University President Dr. Katrina Armstrong says will “touch nearly every corner of the University.”

    The task force described the cuts as a consequence of Columbia’s “continued inaction in the face of persistent harassment of Jewish students” and warned that this represents only the “first round of action,” with “additional cancellations” to follow.

    This announcement comes just four days after the task force revealed it would consider stop work orders for $51.4 million in contracts between Columbia and the federal government and conduct a “comprehensive review” of more than $5 billion in federal grant commitments to the institution.

    In her communication to the Columbia community, Armstrong acknowledged that the cuts would have an immediate impact on research and critical university functions, affecting “students, faculty, staff, research, and patient care.” Federal funding constituted approximately $1.3 billion of Columbia’s annual operating revenue in the 2024 fiscal year.

    “There is no question that the cancellation of these funds will immediately impact research and other critical functions of the University,” Armstrong wrote in en email to the campus community, while emphasizing that Columbia’s mission as “a great research university does not waver.”

    The situation at Columbia highlights the increasing tensions between academic institutions and the Trump administration, particularly regarding how universities respond to claims of antisemitism on campus. Since October 2023, Columbia has been at the center of pro-Palestinian student protests, drawing federal scrutiny, especially from the Trump administration.

    President Trump recently stated on Truth Social that “All Federal Funding will STOP for any College, School, or University that allows illegal protests.”

    Armstrong, who assumed her interim position following former University President Minouche Shafik’s resignation in August 2024, described Columbia as needing a “reset” from the “chaos of encampments and protests.” She emphasized that the university “needed to acknowledge and repair the damage to our Jewish students.”

    Armstrong affirmed the university’s commitment to working with the federal government on addressing antisemitism concerns, stating: “Columbia can, and will, continue to take serious action toward combatting antisemitism on our campus. This is our number one priority.”

    Armstrong, however, did not outline specific plans for how Columbia would adapt to the significant loss of federal funding, instead focusing on the university’s broader mission and values.

    “Antisemitism, violence, discrimination, harassment, and other behaviors that violate our values or disrupt teaching, learning, or research are antithetical to our mission,” Armstrong noted. “We must continue to work to address any instances of these unacceptable behaviors on our campus. We must work every day to do better.”

    The situation at Columbia raises important questions for higher education institutions nationwide about balancing free speech, campus safety, and federal compliance in the age of the Trump presidency. As universities increasingly face scrutiny over their handling of contentious social and political issues, the consequences—both financial and reputational—can be severe.

    Armstrong called unity within the Columbia community to maintain the university’s standing and continue its contributions to society.

    “A unified Columbia, one that remains focused on our mission and our values, will succeed in making the uncommonly valuable contributions to society that have distinguished this great university from its peers over the last 270 years,” she said. 

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  • Trump’s federal funding crackdown includes troubling attacks on free speech

    Trump’s federal funding crackdown includes troubling attacks on free speech

    With his second term underway, President Trump has moved aggressively to reshape federal spending. Organizations that promote “diversity, equity, and inclusion” (DEI) or “gender ideology,” for example, are at risk of losing government grants and contracts. Although the government has discretion in spending taxpayer dollars, some of the administration’s attempts to yank funding from groups based on their speech run headlong into the First Amendment.

    New funding restrictions target everything from DEI to ‘Gulf of Mexico’

    On Jan. 21, Trump issued an executive order that purports to require funding recipients to abandon “illegal DEI” programs but does not define “DEI” or explain which programs the administration deems unlawful. The Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) reportedly cited the order in moving to cancel contracts with eight U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) contractors over DEI language on the contractors’ own websites and LinkedIn profiles, even though it was unrelated to their contractual obligations. Late last month, a federal court blocked key parts of the executive order on First Amendment grounds.

    One thing is clear: The government cannot constitutionally use funding as a cudgel to control speech outside the funded activity. 

    DEI isn’t the administration’s only target. Another executive order bans the use of federal funds to “promote gender ideology.” Meanwhile, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) reportedly told The Nature Conservancy it would lose funding unless it adopted the term “Gulf of America” (echoing the White House’s ultimatum to the Associated Press to use the term or lose access to certain press events). And last week, Trump threatened to pull federal funding from any college that “allows illegal protests.”

    Although these examples are different in important ways, they all raise First Amendment questions.

    What does the Supreme Court have to say?

    Several of Trump’s moves clash with decades of Supreme Court precedent. One thing is clear: The government cannot constitutionally use funding as a cudgel to control speech outside the funded activity. The funding is supposed to support a specific program or purchase, not give the state control over everything an institution does. The government can, however, decide whether to pay a group or person to speak on its behalf.

    For instance, the Supreme Court held the government violated the First Amendment by forcing groups to denounce prostitution or lose funding for fighting HIV/AIDS. It also invalidated a ban on federal funding for public broadcasters who engaged in any editorializing, even with their own money.

    Conversely, in Rust v. Sullivan, the Court upheld federal restrictions on abortion counseling in government-funded family planning programs — because Congress was subsidizing and controlling its own message about family planning.

    One caveat: The government’s power to regulate speech within a funded activity is not absolute. The Court struck down a restriction on legal aid attorneys using federal grants to challenge welfare laws. Why? Unlike in Rust, the government wasn’t transmitting its own message — it was subsidizing legal aid attorneys’ advocacy on behalf of their indigent clients. Similarly, the University of Virginia — a public institution — violated the First Amendment when it denied a student magazine access to funding because of its religious viewpoint. The fund was for helping students express their own messages, not the university’s. 

    These same principles apply in other contexts where the government offers a financial benefit. Most Americans would rightly balk at the idea of a public school refusing to hire any Republicans, or a state government offering a tax exemption for Democrats only. Those policies would be plainly unconstitutional.

    Trump’s funding restrictions: legal or overreach?

    So how do Trump’s actual and proposed funding restrictions fit into this legal framework?

    In partially blocking enforcement of Trump’s DEI executive order, a federal court emphasized that it unlawfully limited speech “outside the scope of the federal funding.” That means DOGE’s alleged targeting of HUD contractors for their DEI activities likely violates the First Amendment if those activities have nothing to do with their government work. 

    As for the “Gulf of America” mandate, the administration may be able to require The Nature Conservancy to use the term in official reports produced for NOAA. But if the mandate goes beyond that, it could also run into First Amendment problems.

    And what about the executive order prohibiting use of federal funds to “promote gender ideology”? The only way this passes muster is if it controls the government’s own messaging or concerns non-speech activities, and not, for instance, if the government pulls a university’s funding because it believes a professor is somehow promoting such views. Congress funds universities to support the creation and spread of knowledge, not for faculty to act as government mouthpieces. 

    Pulling federal funding from colleges based solely on the views of student protests would also violate the First Amendment — and the administration cannot do so unilaterally. It’s one thing for the government to regulate its own speech, but quite another to punish colleges for how students express themselves on their own time. Trump’s statement referred to “illegal” protests, but his past remarks suggest his idea of “illegal” encompasses not just protest activity involving unlawful conduct but protected speech as well, such as whatever he deems “antisemitic propaganda.” This dovetails with how, during his first term, Trump directed civil rights agencies to use a definition of anti-Semitism that includes protected expression. 

    Efforts to deny federal funding to groups and institutions whose views the current administration dislikes seriously threaten Americans’ First Amendment rights. The government must tread carefully to avoid crossing the line into unconstitutional speech policing, otherwise the courts — and history — are unlikely to be on their side.

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  • The National Institutes of Health shouldn’t use FIRE’s College Free Speech Rankings to allocate research funding — here’s what they should do instead

    The National Institutes of Health shouldn’t use FIRE’s College Free Speech Rankings to allocate research funding — here’s what they should do instead

    In December, The Wall Street Journal reported:

    [President-elect Donald Trump’s nominee to lead the National Institutes of Health] Dr. Jay Bhattacharya […] is considering a plan to link a university’s likelihood of receiving research grants to some ranking or measure of academic freedom on campus, people familiar with his thinking said. […] He isn’t yet sure how to measure academic freedom, but he has looked at how a nonprofit called Foundation for Individual Rights in Education scores universities in its freedom-of-speech rankings, a person familiar with his thinking said.

    We believe in and stand by the importance of the College Free Speech Rankings. More attention to the deleterious effect restrictions on free speech and academic freedom have on research at our universities is desperately needed, so hearing that they are being considered as a guidepost for NIH grantmaking is heartening. Dr. Bhattacharya’s own right to academic freedom was challenged by his Stanford University colleagues, so his concerns about its effect on NIH’s grants is understandable.

    However, our College Free Speech Rankings are not the right tool for this particular job. They were designed with a specific purpose in mind — to help students and parents find campuses where students are both free and comfortable expressing themselves. They were not intended to evaluate the climate for conducting academic research on individual campuses and are a bad fit for that purpose. 

    While the rankings assess speech codes that apply to students, the rankings do not currently assess policies pertaining to the academic freedom rights and research conduct of professors, who are the primary recipients of NIH grants. Nor do the rankings assess faculty sentiment about their campus climates. It would be a mistake to use the rankings beyond their intended purpose — and, if the rankings were used to deny funding for important research that would in fact be properly conducted, that mistake would be extremely costly.

    FIRE instead proposes three ways that would be more appropriate for NIH to use its considerable power to improve academic freedom on campus and ensure research is conducted in an environment most conducive to finding the most accurate results.

    1. Use grant agreements to safeguard academic freedom as a strong contractual right. 
    2. Encourage open data practices to promote research integrity.
    3. Incentivize universities to study their campus climates for academic freedom.

    Why should the National Institutes of Health care about academic freedom at all?

    The pursuit of truth demands that researchers be able to follow the science wherever it leads, without fear, favor, or external interference. To ensure that is the case, NIH has a strong interest in ensuring academic freedom rights are inviolable. 

    As a steward of considerable taxpayer money, NIH has an obligation to ensure it spends its funds on high-quality research free from censorship or other interference from politicians or college and university administrators.

    Why the National Institutes of Health shouldn’t use FIRE’s College Free Speech Rankings to decide where to send funds

    FIRE’s College Free Speech Rankings (CFSR) were never intended for use in determining research spending. As such, it has a number of design features that make it ill-suited to that purpose, either in its totality or through its constituent parts.

    Firstly, like the U.S. News & World Report college rankings, a key reason for the creation of the CFSRs was to provide information to prospective undergraduate students and their parents. As such, it heavily emphasizes students’ perceptions of the campus climate over the perceptions of faculty or researchers. In line with that student focus, our attitude and climate components are based on a survey of undergraduates. Additionally, the speech policies that we evaluate and incorporate into the rankings are those that affect students. We do not evaluate policies that affect faculty and researchers, which are often different and would be of greater relevance to deciding research funding. While it makes sense that there may be some correlation, we have no way of knowing whether or the degree to which that might be true.

    Secondly, for the component that most directly implicates the academic freedom of faculty, we penalize schools for attempts to sanction scholars for their protected speech, as tracked in our Scholars Under Fire database. While our Scholars Under Fire database provides excellent datapoints for understanding the climate at a university, it does not function as a systematic proxy for assessing academic freedom on a given campus as a whole. As one example, a university with relatively strong protection for academic freedom may have vocal professors with unpopular viewpoints that draw condemnation and calls for sanction that could hurt its ranking, while a climate where professors feel too afraid to voice controversial opinions could draw relatively few calls for sanction and thus enjoy a higher ranking. This shortcoming is mitigated when considered alongside the rest of our rankings components, but as discussed above, those other components mostly concern students rather than faculty.

    Thirdly, using CFSR to determine NIH funding could — counterintuitively — be abused by vigilante censors. Because we penalize schools for attempted and successful shoutdowns, the possibility of a loss of NIH funding could incentivize activists who want leverage over a university to disrupt as many events as possible in order to negatively influence its ranking, and thus its funding prospects. Even the threat of disruption could thus give censors undue power over a university administration that fears loss of funding.

    Finally, due to resource limitations, we do not rank all research universities. It would not be fair to deny funding to an unranked university or to fund an unranked university with a poor speech climate over a low-ranked university.

    Legal boundaries for the National Institutes of Health as it considers proposals for actions to protect academic freedom

    While NIH has considerable latitude to determine how it spends taxpayer money, as an arm of the government, the First Amendment places restrictions on how NIH may use that power. Notably, any solution must not penalize institutions for protected speech or scholarship by students or faculty unrelated to NIH granted projects. NIH could not, for example, require that a university quash protected protests as a criteria for eligibility, or deny a university eligibility because of controversial research undertaken by a scholar who does not work on NIH-funded research.

    While NIH can (and effectively must) consider the content of applications in determining what to fund, eligibility must be open to all regardless of viewpoint. Even were this not the case as a constitutional matter (and it is, very much so), it is important as a prudential matter. People would be understandably skeptical of, if not downright disbelieve, scientific results obtained through a grant process with an obvious ideological filter. Indeed, that is the root of much of the current skepticism over federally funded science, and the exact situation academic freedom is intended to avoid.

    Additionally, NIH cannot impose a political litmus test on an individual or an institution, or compel an institution or individual to take a position on political or scientific issues as a condition of grant funding.

    In other words, any solution to improve academic freedom:

    • Must be viewpoint neutral;
    • Must not impose an ideological or political litmus test; and
    • Must not penalize an institution for protected speech or scholarship by its scholars or students.

    Guidelines for the National Institutes of Health as it considers proposals for actions to protect academic freedom

    NIH should carefully tailor any solution to directly enhance academic freedom and to further NIH’s goal “to exemplify and promote the highest level of scientific integrity, public accountability, and social responsibility in the conduct of science.” Going beyond that purpose to touch on issues and policies that don’t directly affect the conduct of NIH grant-funded research may leave such a policy vulnerable to legal challenge.

    Any solution should, similarly, avoid using vague or politicized terms such as “wokeness” or “diversity, equity, and inclusion.” Doing so creates needless skepticism of the process and — as FIRE knows all too well — introduces uncertainty as professors and institutions parse what is and isn’t allowed.

    Enforcement mechanisms should be a function of contractual promises of academic freedom, rather than left to apathetic accreditors or the unbounded whims of bureaucrats on campus or officials in government, for several reasons. 

    Regarding accreditors, FIRE over the years has reported many violations of academic freedom to accreditors who require institutions to uphold academic freedom as a precondition for their accreditation. Up to now, the accreditors FIRE has contacted have shown themselves wholly uninterested in enforcing their academic freedom requirements.

    When it comes to administrators, FIRE has documented countless examples of campus administrators violating academic freedom, either due to politics, or because they put the rights of the professor second to the perceived interests of their institution.

    As for government actors, we have seen priorities and politics shift dramatically from one administration to the next. It would be best for everyone involved if NIH funding did not ping-pong between ideological poles as a function of each presidential election, as the Title IX regulations now do. Dramatic changes to how NIH conceives as academic freedom with every new political administration would only create uncertainty that is sure to further chill speech and research.

    While the courts have been decidedly imperfect protectors of academic freedom, they have a better record than accreditors, administrators, or partisan government officials in parsing protected conduct from unprotected conduct. And that will likely be even more true with a strong, unambiguous contractual promise of academic freedom. Speaking of which…

    The National Institutes of Health should condition grants of research funds on recipient institutions adopting a strong contractual promise of academic freedom for their faculty and researchers

    The most impactful change NIH could enact would be to require as a condition of eligibility that institutions adopt strong academic freedom commitments, such as the 1940 Statement of Principles on Academic Freedom and Tenure or similar, and make those commitments explicitly enforceable as a contractual right for their faculty members and researchers.

    The status quo for academic freedom is one where nearly every institution of higher education makes promises of academic freedom and freedom of expression to its students and faculty. Yet only at public universities, where the First Amendment applies, are these promises construed with any consistency as an enforceable legal right. 

    Private universities, when sued for violating their promises of free speech and academic freedom, frequently argue that those promises are purely aspirational and that they are not bound by them (often at the same time that they argue faculty and students are bound by the policies). 

    Too often, courts accept this and universities prevail despite the obvious hypocrisy. NIH could stop private universities’ attempts to have their cake and eat it too by requiring them to legally stand by the promises of academic freedom that they so readily abandon when it suits them.

    NIH could additionally require that this contractual promise come with standard due process protections for those filing grievances at their institution, including:

    • The right to bring an academic freedom grievance before an objective panel;
    • The right to present evidence;
    • The right to speedy resolution;
    • The right to written explanation of findings including facts and reasons; and
    • The right to appeal.

    If the professor exhausts these options, they may sue for breach of the contract. To reduce the burden of litigation, NIH could require that, if a faculty member prevails in a lawsuit over a violation of academic freedom, the violating institution would not be eligible for future NIH funding until they pay the legal fees of the aggrieved faculty member.

    NIH could also study violations of academic freedom by creating a system for those connected to NIH-funded research to report violations of academic freedom or scientific integrity.

    It would further be proper for NIH to require institutions to eliminate any political litmus tests, such as mandatory DEI statements, as a condition of grant eligibility.

    The National Institutes of Health can implement strong measures to protect transparency and integrity in science

    NIH could encourage open science and transparency principles by heavily favoring studies that are pre-registered. Additionally, to obviate concerns that scientific results may be suppressed or buried because they are unpopular or politically inconvenient, NIH could require its grant-funded research to make available data (with proper privacy safeguards) following the completion of the project. 

    To help deal with the perverse incentives that have created the replication crisis and undermined public trust in science, NIH could create impactful incentives for work on replications and the publication of null results.

    Finally, NIH could help prevent the abuse of Institutional Review Boards. When IRB review is appropriate for an NIH-funded project, NIH could require that review be limited to the standards laid out in the gold-standard Belmont Report. Additionally, it could create a reporting system for abuse of IRB processes to suppress, or delay beyond reasonable timeframes, ethical research, or violate academic freedom.

    The National Institutes of Health can incentivize study into campus climates for academic freedom

    As noted before, FIRE’s College Free Speech Rankings focus on students. Due to logistical and resource difficulties surveying faculty, our 2024 Faculty Report looking into many of the same issues took much longer and had to be limited in scope to 55 campuses, compared to the 250+ in the CFSR. This is to say there is a strong need for research to understand faculty views and experiences on academic freedom. After all, we cannot solve a problem until we understand it. To that effect, NIH should incentivize further study into faculty’s academic freedom.

    It is important to note that these studies should be informational and not used in a punitive manner, or to decide on NIH funding eligibility. This is because tying something as important as NIH funding to the results of the survey would create so significant an incentive to influence the results that the data would be impossible to trust. Even putting aside malicious interference by administrators and other faculty members, few faculty would be likely to give honest answers that imperiled institutional funding, knowing the resulting loss in funding might threaten their own jobs.

    Efforts to do these kinds of surveys in Wisconsin and Florida proved politically controversial, and at least initially, led to boycotts, which threatened to compromise the quality and reliability of the data. As such, it’s critical that any such survey be carried out in a way that maximizes trust, under the following principles:

    • Ideally, the administration of these surveys should be done by an unbiased third party — not the schools themselves, or NIH. This third party should include respected researchers across the political spectrum and no partisan slant.
    • The survey sample must be randomized and not opt-in.
    • The questionnaire must be made public beforehand, and every effort should be made for the questions to be worded without any overt partisanship or ideology that would reduce trust.

    Conclusion: With great power…

    FIRE has for the last two decades been America’s premier defender of free speech and academic freedom on campus. Following Frederick Douglass’s wise dictum, “I would unite with anybody to do right and with nobody to do wrong,” we’ve worked with Democrats, Republicans, and everyone in between (and beyond) to advance free speech and open inquiry, and we’ve criticized them in turn whenever they’ve threatened these values.

    With that sense of both opportunity and caution, we would be heartened if NIH used its considerable power wisely in an effort to improve scientific integrity and academic freedom. But if wielded recklessly, that same considerable power threatens to do immense damage to science in the process. 

    We stand ready to advise if called upon, but integrity demands that we correct the record if we believe our data is being used for a purpose to which it isn’t suited.

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  • CSUDH announces alternate funding sources for Work-Study

    CSUDH announces alternate funding sources for Work-Study

    On Feb. 25, California State University, Dominguez Hills, communicated to campus employers that the university had utilized nearly all of its Federal Work-Study (FWS) funds for the current school year. The notice was amplified by this article, which incorrectly stated that the campus was terminating student employees.

    CSUDH is fully committed to ensuring our FWS students receive the amount they expected to be awarded. Administrators have identified alternate funding sources to compensate these students, including university scholarship and grant funds for those who qualify, as well as discretionary funding where needed.

    This will be a complex task, due to the different situations each student employee and department are in. For now, the university is asking that departments postpone any employment-related decisions for affected student workers until financial aid staff provide further details.

    Going forward, CSUDH is implementing new internal controls over FWS hiring and tracking to address anticipated high demand for FWS. We will also be hosting FWS trainings to support employers and timekeepers who will be hiring and managing FWS.

    CSUDH deeply appreciates the patience and collaboration of our campus community while we work to resolve this matter quickly and equitably for all impacted students.

    Sincerely,

    Lilly McKibbin
    Media Relations Specialist
    California State University, Dominguez Hills

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  • Statement on President Trump’s Truth Social post threatening funding cuts for ‘illegal protests’

    Statement on President Trump’s Truth Social post threatening funding cuts for ‘illegal protests’

    President Trump posted a message on Truth Social this morning that put social media and college campuses on high alert. He wrote:

    Colleges can and should respond to unlawful conduct, but the president does not have unilateral authority to revoke federal funds, even for colleges that allow “illegal” protests. 

    If a college runs afoul of anti-discrimination laws like Title VI or Title IX, the government may ultimately deny the institution federal funding by taking it to federal court, or via notice to Congress and an administrative hearing. It is not simply a discretionary decision that the president can make.  

    President Trump also lacks the authority to expel individual students, who are entitled to due process on public college campuses and, almost universally, on private campuses as well.

    Today’s message will cast an impermissible chill on student protests about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Paired with President Trump’s 2019 executive order adopting an unconstitutional definition of anti-Semitism, and his January order threatening to deport international students for engaging in protected expression, students will rationally fear punishment for wholly protected political speech.

    As FIRE knows too well from our work defending student and faculty rights under the Obama and Biden administrations, threatening schools with the loss of federal funding will result in a crackdown on lawful speech. Schools will censor first and ask questions later. 

    Even the most controversial political speech is protected by the First Amendment. As the  Supreme Court reminds us, in America, we don’t use the law to punish those with whom we disagree. Instead, “[a]s a Nation we have chosen a different course—to protect even hurtful speech on public issues to ensure that we do not stifle public debate.” 

    Misconduct or criminality — like true threats, vandalism, or discriminatory harassment, properly defined — is not protected by the First Amendment. In fact, discouraging and punishing such behavior is often vital to ensuring that others are able to peacefully make their voices heard. 

    However, students who engage in misconduct must still receive due process — whether through a campus or criminal tribunal. This requires fair, consistent application of existing law or policy, in a manner that respects students’ rights.

    President Trump needs to stand by his past promise to be a champion for free expression. That means doing so for all views — including those his administration dislikes.

     

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  • Arizona bill to cut off state funding over college DEI courses gains traction

    Arizona bill to cut off state funding over college DEI courses gains traction

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     Dive Brief:

    • An Arizona bill that would cut all state funding for public colleges offering classroom instruction related to diversity, equity and inclusion cleared a key legislative hurdle Thursday. State Senate lawmakers advanced the bill in a preliminary vote, and a final Senate vote on the measure could come as soon as Monday.
    • If enacted, the legislation would prohibit faculty at the state’s public universities and community colleges from relating “contemporary American society” to a wide range of social and economic topics, including whiteness, antiracism, unconscious bias and gender-based equity.
    • It would also ban colleges from teaching that racially neutral or color-blind policies or institutions “perpetuate oppression, injustice, race-based privilege, including white supremacy and white privilege, or inequity.”

    Dive Insight:

    State Sen. David Farnsworth introduced the bill earlier this month, saying in a recent press release that he was motivated to do so after taking a class at a nearby community college.

    “The course provided by the local community college represents the very ideology that is dividing America, teaching students to view white American men through a lens of privilege and oppression,” he said. 

    Farnsworth further described education about gender fluidity as “indoctrination” and said his proposal puts “students’ academic futures over political agendas.”

    If the bill is enacted, faculty would not be allowed to “relate contemporary American society to”:

    • Critical theory.
    • Whiteness.
    • Systemic racism.
    • Institutional racism.
    • Antiracism.
    • Microaggressions.
    • Systemic bias.
    • Implicit bias.
    • Unconscious bias.
    • Intersectionality.
    • Gender identity.
    • Social justice.
    • Cultural competence.
    • Allyship.
    • Race-based reparations.
    • Race-based privilege.
    • Race-based diversity.
    • Gender-based diversity.
    • Race-based equity.
    • Gender-based equity.
    • Race-based inclusion.
    • Gender-based inclusion.

    The bill would allow colleges to teach about subjects related to racial hatred or race-based discrimination, like slavery and Japanese-American internment in World War II — but only if instructors do not include any of the above subjects.

    The proposal faces an uncertain fate, as control of Arizona’s executive and legislative branches is split between parties, with a Democratic governor but Republican control of the House and Senate. 

    Despite growing more conservative through the 2024 election, the Republican party doesn’t have a veto-proof supermajority. And Arizona Gov. Katie Hobbs, who has voiced support for and spearheaded DEI initiatives, is unlikely to sign the bill.

    Even so, the bill threatens large pools of funding for Arizona’s higher education institutions, especially its three public universities.

    Arizona’s public four-year institutions receive 74% of their funding from state support, according to a 2024 report from the State Higher Education Executive Officers Association. 

    For example, the University of Arizona’s main campus got almost $303 million in state general funds in fiscal 2024.

    Farnsworth’s bill comes as Arizona colleges are already facing two powerful headwinds — a $96.9 million reduction in overall state funding for fiscal year 2025 and a wave of federal DEI restrictions.

    Since taking office Jan. 20, President Donald Trump has signed executive orders attempting to eliminate DEI in higher education and elsewhere, though a court order recently blocked major portions of two of those orders. And the U.S. Department of Education recently issued guidance giving colleges until the end of February to cut all DEI or risk losing federal funding.

    The University of Arizona recently took down the webpage for its Office of Diversity and Inclusion. The flagship also removed references to “diversity” and “inclusion” from its land acknowledgement — a statement recognizing the Indigenous tribal land the campus sits on — though the original version remains available on at least one department webpage.

    Protesters on the University of Arizona’s main campus called on the institution’s leaders Thursday to continue its DEI initiatives.

    As of Thursday evening, almost 2,500 University of Arizona students, employees, affiliates and others signed a letter calling for the institution to reverse the changes it made to its web presence.

    “We view your actions as preemptive and harmful over-compliance,” the letter reads, referencing the university’s response to the Education Department’s guidance and Trump’s executive orders. “Faculty, staff, and students should not have to fear political retaliation for upholding academic freedom, engaging in free speech, or advocating for their rights.”

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  • Innovative K-12 staffing strategies are feeling the brunt of federal funding cuts

    Innovative K-12 staffing strategies are feeling the brunt of federal funding cuts

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    Many schools and higher education partnerships that support the teacher pipeline are starting to feel the brunt of a $600 million cut in “divisive” teacher training grants announced Feb. 17 by the U.S. Department of Education.

    The cost-cutting measures by the Education Department are part of a broader effort throughout the federal government initiated by the Trump administration. The initiative led by the Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, reported this week that the Education Department is leading among other federal agencies for the most savings in total funding cuts. 

    Two of the most common federal grant programs impacted so far are the Teacher Quality Partnership Program and the Supporting Effective Educator Development Grant, said Cheryl Holcomb-McCoy, president and CEO of the American Association of Colleges for Teacher Education. AACTE has been surveying its members to gauge the grant slashing effort’s reach.

    Though the Education Department did not specify which teacher training grants programs were being cut, the agency said in its announcement that the reductions are targeting funds to institutions and nonprofits that were using training materials on topics such as critical race theory and diversity, equity and inclusion. The department added that “many of these grants included teacher and staff recruiting strategies implicitly and explicitly based on race.”

    At American University in Washington, D.C., for instance, a Teacher Quality Partnership Program grant allowed the university to help paraprofessionals at Friendship Charter Public Schools earn a master’s degree in early childhood or special education, “which there is a real need for,” said Holcomb-McCoy, who previously served as dean of American University’s School of Education. 

    The multiyear federal grant — which covered the private university’s tuition for about 15 teacher candidates to get credentialed, Holcomb-McCoy said — was written to benefit Friendship Charter Public Schools, as well as to address special educator shortages throughout the city.. That funding was “essentially cut.” 

    “We talk about teacher shortages of special education, teacher shortages in subjects such as science and math and technology,” Holcomb-McCoy said. “Cutting these grants essentially is cutting off the pipeline for many aspiring educators to get into the profession, and it’s not helping us. It’s hurting K-12 districts in many ways.”

    The grant also noted that it’s important to have a diverse representation of special education teachers trained in inclusive practices in Washington, D.C., schools, Holcomb-McCoy said. “The impact that that has on students with special needs is huge, and to stop that pipeline of people who aspire to work in that space is devastating to school districts and to communities and families.”

    AACTE estimates that about 31 Supporting Effective Educator Development grants and as many as 75 Teacher Quality Partnership Program grants were recently canceled nationwide. The association is providing support to its members and plans to help them first appeal their cases to the Education Department. 

    AACTE is also exploring potential litigation options, Holcomb-McCoy said.

    A hit to diversifying the teacher workforce

    Many of the applications for federal grants that were cut were written to align with priorities related to diversity set by former presidential administrations. As a result, Holcomb-McCoy said, a lot of those grant programs intentionally sought to address issues over diversity, equity and inclusion.

    Still, diversity in the teacher workforce has been a longstanding issue, she said. As the student population becomes more diverse, the hope has been to hire and keep teachers who are representative of their students. 

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  • Study permit caps not to blame for Ontario college funding crisis

    Study permit caps not to blame for Ontario college funding crisis

    Educators in Ontario are setting the record straight about the cause of the province’s college funding crisis – the blame for which, they say, falls squarely on the Ontario provincial government.  

    “We currently see a wave of Ontario college program closures/suspensions sweeping across all of Ontario’s 24 colleges… This is just the tip of the iceberg and there will be many more to follow,” school educator and former college administrator David Deveau wrote in a letter to government officials.  

    “This letter aims to correct the media’s false assertion that these program suspensions are a direct result of the federal government’s restrictions on international student visa approvals and identify the actual reason for this alarming trend across the Ontario college system,” he continued.  

    The letter, which has been widely shared by sector stakeholders, lays the blame for Ontario’s college crisis on decades of underfunding from the provincial government, exacerbated by a 10% tuition fee reduction and freeze in 2019.  

    “Ontario’s higher education sector is in crisis due to chronic underfunding, tuition freezes, and a reliance on international student tuition as a financial lifeline,” said Chris Busch, senior international officer at the University of Windsor.  

    In 2001/02, Ontario’s colleges received 52.5% of their revenue from public funding, the second lowest of any province, according to Canada’s statistics agency.  

    By 2019/20, this figure had dropped to 32%, by far the lowest proportion across Canada’s provinces and territories, which, on average, provided 69% of college funding that year.   

    “Colleges and universities have had to attract talent from abroad, increasingly enrolling international student to help fill the funding gap,” said Vinitha Gengatharan, assistant VP of global engagement at York University.  

    This is particularly evident at the college level, where institutions have seen international student enrolment of 30-60%, compared to universities where it ranges from 10-20%, added Gengatharan.

    Educators across Ontario’s college and university sector have spoken out in support of Deveau’s letter, calling for a long-term commitment to stable and adequate funding from the provincial government.  

    In recent weeks, Ontario’s 24 public colleges have made the headlines for sweeping budget cuts, course closures and staff layoffs.  

    Stakeholders have raised additional concerns about increased class sizes and deferred maintenance and tech upgrades eroding the quality of education and the student experience for all learners, including Ontarians, Busch maintained.  

    This week, Algonquin College announced the closure of its campus in Perth, Ontario, alongside the cancellation of 10 programs and the suspension of 31, citing “unprecedented financial challenges”.  

    It follows Sheridan and St. Lawrence colleges announcing course suspensions with associated layoffs, and Mohawk College cutting 20% of admin jobs.  

    The ability of Ontario’s universities to fulfil their mission – providing high-quality education, driving research, and fuelling the economy with talent – is at significant risk under current conditions
    Chris Busch, University of Windsor

    “What is currently happening within our colleges is a downward spiral that will hurt Ontarians, the labour market, and our economies in the end,” wrote Deveau, adding that it was especially important to be strong in the face of externally imposed tariffs from the Trump administration.  

    In the letter, Deveau said the tuition freeze – which continues to this day – is akin to a “chokehold suffocating the life out of the college system” that is eliminating vital programs, restricting career choices of Ontarians and “jeopardising the province’s economic future”. 

    He raised attention to the “domino effect” of program closures impacting students’ career prospects, faculty layoffs and damaging local economies.  

    “The ability of Ontario’s universities to fulfil their mission – providing high-quality education, driving research, and fuelling the economy with talent – is at significant risk under current conditions,” said Busch.  

    In March 2023, the Ontario government itself published a Blue-Ribbon Report recognising the need to increase direct provincial support for colleges and universities, “providing for both more money per student and more students” and raising tuition fees.

    Last year, the Ontario government injected $1.3 billion into colleges and universities over three years to stabilise the sector’s finances, though critics are demanding systemic funding changes rather than “stop-gap” and “gimmicky” proposals, said Deveau.  

    Nationwide, Canada’s colleges were dealt another blow when the IRCC announced its new PGWP eligibility criteria, which stakeholders warned risked “decimating” Canada’s college sector.

    It is feared that more Ontario colleges will face cuts before the province’s 2025 budget, expected in April.  

    The PIE News reached out to the Ontario government but is yet to hear back.

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  • The government’s in a pickle over fees and funding

    The government’s in a pickle over fees and funding

    We’re increasingly relying on Wales to get intel on where the Westminster government’s thinking is on higher education finance.

    As DK notes elsewhere on the site, Vikki Howells, Minister for Further and Higher Education in the Welsh Government, has announced an additional £18.5m in capital funding for estate maintenance and digital projects to reduce costs, improve sustainability, and enhance the student experience.

    But the other thing that happened was disclosed in the papers outlining the 2024–25 supplementary budget process. That contains a change in the student loan resource budget from £277m in October to £428m now. That feels like a big thing, and it’s worth unpacking why.

    Imagine for a minute that you own a pub, and you let students run up a tab. Then imagine that you expect them to gradually pay you back over decades – “pay us back when you can afford it mate”, or an “income contingent” loan.

    If you were trying to work out how well off you are now by thinking of how much that group of students will pay you back, you’d have to guess how much money they’ll have and when, and how much of that they’ll give you at a given point.

    But you’d need to guess how much that future money will be worth.

    The thing about student loans – and how they’re treated in the national accounts (including the “devolved” national accounts of the nations) – is that that’s broadly how it’s done.

    Before 2020, the government accounted for student loans in a way that understated their real cost. Every loan was recorded in the national accounts as if it would be fully repaid, plus interest.

    But a significant portion of loans would always be written off, but this wasn’t properly accounted for. This made the government’s books look better – despite knowing that many students would never repay in full. That “fiscal illusion” allowed George Osborne to spare higher education from austerity while your local council was cutting bin collections.

    Then ONS forced the government to acknowledge that much of the money lent to students wouldn’t be repaid. The removal of the “fiscal illusion” means that now, every loan is split into two parts – the part expected to be repaid, which is counted as an asset, and the part likely to be written off, which is counted as spending immediately.

    That sounds sensible – it makes the true cost of student loans more transparent in government accounts. But then, things got complicated – because that calculation has to be constantly revised.

    A scenario

    Imagine a student owes you £10,000 in 30 years. How much is that worth to you today? If you expect high investment returns elsewhere, future money is worth less today because you could invest it and earn more. Conversely, if expected returns are low, future money retains more value in today’s terms.

    So if you expect high investment returns elsewhere, you might say: “That £10,000 in 30 years is worth only £3,000 to me today.” If you expect low investment returns, you might say: “That’s still worth £7,000 to me today.”

    And so for the government, the “discount rate” is how they decide how much future student loan repayments are worth in today’s money.

    The higher the discount rate, the less future repayments are worth today and the more expensive student loans appear in the accounts. The lower the discount rate, the more valuable future repayments seem, and the cheaper student loans look on paper.

    Every so often, His Majesty’s Treasury (HMT) revises the discount rate – and a wander down the rabbit hole reveals that it’s gone up again – which means the government is now valuing future student loan repayments less in today’s terms. Hence the change in Wales.

    Why? Because the government’s own borrowing costs have risen.

    Lend us a fiver mate

    The government raises money by selling bonds (gilts), and the interest rates on those bonds (gilt yields) have gone up. Money is loaned to the government but those loaning it expect higher returns.

    Because the government is borrowing more money, lending to it is riskier. Inflation is higher, so investors want more interest to protect the value of their money. And there’s more economic uncertainty, so investors demand higher returns to compensate for potential risks.

    Then, as other investment options become more attractive, the government needs to offer better rates to compete for investors’ money. All of that combined makes investors ask for higher interest rates when lending to the government.

    So the government now pays more to borrow money. Then when it lends it out, like those lending to the government, it expects higher returns to match its increased costs. That makes the government value future student loan repayments less in today’s money. It’s like saying, “If I’m paying more to borrow, I need to earn more when I lend.”

    As a result, the government sees student loans as less valuable now, even though students will still repay the same amount in the future – and so when that discount rate changes, it suddenly makes loans look more expensive in government accounts.

    So what?

    In theory, if the interest rate on student loans goes up, expected total repayments grow faster. It should make the loan book appear more valuable today – because the government would record a lower upfront cost for issuing the loans.

    Then if it wanted to reduce the reported cost of student loans, you’d think they would increase interest rates, which lowers the “cost” of issuing loans in the accounts. Graduates would pay more, but in the government accounts, loans would look cheaper to taxpayers.

    But in 2023, Rishi Sunak’s reforms actually lowered interest rates for new students – from RPI+3% to RPI. This means future repayments won’t grow as quickly, so the value of the loan book shrank. Why did he do that with no obvious political benefit?

    The weird thing is that lowering interest rates on student loans can actually make them look less expensive for the government in the short term, even though the actual long-run costs have increased.

    That’s because the government only records the part of loans that won’t be repaid as a cost upfront, while treating the rest as an asset. Because lower interest rates mean students are expected to repay less overall, the unpaid portion of loans (write-off) shrinks – so the immediate cost to the government looks smaller.

    But because the government borrows money to fund these loans, and its own borrowing costs are rising, a big financial hit comes later when it earns less from student loan interest while still paying more to finance the system.

    And when the Treasury gets round to noticing that second part, it adjusts the discount rate – and then the hit appears in the accounts. Cheers, Rishi.

    As IFS says, all of the above means that the official statistics are likely constantly understating the true cost of the student loans system to the taxpayer:

    The ONS [government accounts] measure focuses only on the share of loans that is not repaid in full and thus misses the spread between government borrowing costs and student loan interest rates, which is now expected to be negative.

    And that all then ends up having implications for future reform.

    What next?

    The Russell Group’s spending review submission doesn’t touch on any of this. Nor does Guild HE’s. Universities UK’s submission is silent on it too.

    But Rachel Reeves has set a spending envelope. Her new Public Sector Net Financial Liabilities (PSNFL) measure is a broader measure of government debt that includes both traditional borrowing (like gilts) and other financial commitments, including student loans.

    It differs from the old Public Sector Net Debt (PSND) because PSND only counts traditional government borrowing, whereas PSNFL includes all financial assets and liabilities – including the value of student loans.

    So increasing the value of student loans – tuition or maintenance – would classify these loans as financial assets under PSNFL. But the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) says that practices like that might hide underlying fiscal risks, because loans are recorded as assets regardless of the probability of repayment. If a big(ger) portion of these loans is not repaid that would hit the public finances.

    Providing bigger (tuition or maintenance) grants instead of loans would result in immediate government expenditure, increasing the deficit in the short term. That could conflict with the government’s fiscal mandate to achieve a balanced or surplus current budget by 2029–30. Grants don’t add to future liabilities, but they do directly impact day-to-day spending, making it harder to adhere to Reeves’ fiscal rules.

    Government investment in university infrastructure – like funding for new buildings and research facilities – is capital expenditure, typically financed through borrowing. Under current fiscal rules, the government has to ensure that Public Sector Net Financial Liabilities (PSNFL) fall as a share of the economy by 2029–30. Investments like that might be crucial for long-term growth, but increased borrowing adds to public debt. So to stay within fiscal limits, the government has to manage the spending to prevent an unsustainable rise in its future financial liabilities.

    Politically, it may also want to consider relieving the pressure on young/new graduates – by raising the repayment threshold, or introducing stepped repayments. But then to pay for any or all of the above, it would need to introduce steeper interest rate bands so that higher earners pay more, have a higher repayment rate for higher earners, or look again at early repayment penalties to maintain long-term repayment contributions. And they would all bring political costs.

    The iceberg and the tip

    And that’s the irony. When the last government gave a (graduate) tax cut to higher earners by cutting interest to RPI, the idea was that they would pay no more, no less than the “real” cost of their HE – and that was paid for by lower earners paying more back, rather than having profit from higher earners subsidising lower earners.

    But once the cost of borrowing the money to loan to students starts to exceed inflation, the government loses money on every loan. That’s why from a government point of view, aligning student loan interest rates with the government’s long-term borrowing costs would make more sense.

    Having interest rates that are significantly lower than the government’s borrowing costs results in an expensive subsidy spent on the rich – it benefits higher earners who would repay their loans even with higher interest rates. Low-earning graduates, who are less likely to repay their loans in full, get no benefit.

    So the rich either pay upfront through the great boomer wealth transfer, or go into the loan scheme and pay less than the loan costs. While everyone, and everything, else suffers.

    Just like the student housing problem, financing things through borrowing is fine when the costs of borrowing are low, and crucially lower than inflation. But once that becomes your default way of financing something, it’s like an iceberg – at the tip you have the tuition fee, below that there’s the value of maintenance, below that is the terms you offer for paying you the money back that you lend out, but what ends up driving everything deeper down is the cost of borrowing it to lend out in the first place.

    Put another way, and to return to the pub, what I didn’t say at the start was that you as the landlord of the Dickinson Arms used to be able to borrow money at low rates to buy stock, pay staff, and maintain the premises. You offered loans or credit to regulars who weren’t able to pay immediately, figuring that the low cost of borrowing made it a sustainable business model. You offered affordable pints and generous credit terms, confident that the costs of borrowing were lower than the rate of inflation.

    But the cost of borrowing is up. Each barrel of beer bought on credit now costs you more to finance than it did before. You continue offering low-interest loans to your punters, but the true cost of financing is being hidden beneath the surface, gradually growing into a larger financial burden. And at some stage, the pub becomes insolvent. That’s the real problem the government faces now over HE reform – one that spending review submissions from sector bodies really did need to address.

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  • This week in 5 numbers: Court temporarily blocks NIH funding cuts

    This week in 5 numbers: Court temporarily blocks NIH funding cuts

    The number of states that sued to block the National Institutes of Health from implementing cuts to funding for indirect research costs. Earlier this week, U.S. District Court Judge Angel Kelley issued restraining orders against the cuts in the attorneys general-led case, along with a similar one filed by the Association of American Medical Colleges and other groups.

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