Tag: government

  • What government policy still fails to understand about international education

    What government policy still fails to understand about international education

    This blog includes personal reflections shared at the 2025 Independent Higher Education Conference by  James Pitman, Outgoing Chair of IHE and Managing Director U.K. and Ireland, Study Group.

    International education is important to many IHE members but for some of our biggest members, including my own organisation Study Group, it is our entire business. 

    Government policies on international education over the last 15 have been less than supportive, and some in the last 2 years have been materially value destructive for the UK.

    The Dependents Visa – policy and discrimination

    The removal of the Dependants visa in 2024 and questions over the Graduate Route cost the UK 54,000 international students in 2024 vs 2023.  That is worth £6 billion at today’s values, and over £2 billion in receipts to the exchequer each year.  Certainly the dependants visa had a major flaw, but it was one that could have been corrected rather than withdrawing the whole visa scheme entirely for taught degrees.

    As predicted by the sector, that withdrawal was gender discriminatory, leading to the loss of 19,000 female students vs the prior year, in the January 2024 intake alone.  Every one of those was a human story, of ambitions denied, families fractured, careers restricted and yet again women being discriminated against – in this case by UK government policy. It is particularly ironic, considering the importance the UN Sustainable Development Goals place on women’s education as arguably the most effective way of lifting a whole society.

    Such discrimination is also a risk with the tightening of the BCA metrics to barrier levels that no other export sector has to endure, such that universities are already withdrawing completely from certain countries. This is collateral damage that will stop those good students that do exist in every country from coming to study in the UK.  Compliance absolutely yes, but constriction beyond what is rational – that is a step too far.

    This government makes much of taking decisions that are in the interests of the UK and not overtly political; and they tell us that they are driving growth and jobs.  And yet the loss of international students almost always leads to the loss of jobs in every region of our country, most especially those that need inward investment the most and will find it hardest to fund an alternative.

    Those lost 54,000 international students lost us well over £1 billion in inward investment, and the UCU says nearly 15,000 jobs have been lost in Higher Education, many probably at graduate level.

    Research from Oxford Economics and others implies that you can double that with job losses in local economies and supply chains. So, some 30,000 jobs lost or at risk with no substitution possible, as those students have already taken their £1 billion elsewhere. When Tata Steel’s Port Talbot plant announced 2,800 job losses, with more in the supply chain, this was front-page news. Where are the headlines that ask for immediate intervention to prevent ten times that impact?

    The International Student Levy – the new export tax

    Which brings me on to the International Student Levy, or more correctly, an export tariff or jobs tax.  The Institute for Fiscal Studies calls it a ‘tax on a major UK export’. 

    Whether the tariff goes on international student fees – which research indicates will lose us 16,000 students straight away – or is absorbed by universities (which they are in no position to cope with) jobs will be lost.  The loss of 16,000 students implies 4,000 jobs at risk in higher education and 4,000 more jobs in local economies. Martin Wolf in the Financial Times earlier this week wrote, ‘the proposed…tax on international student fees is a dagger aimed at one of the UK’s most successful export industries’.  Who can disagree!

    The Government is arguing that there is no alternative to fund domestic student maintenance (which to be clear is a worthy cause for support).  I can’t be the only one who can think of an obvious alternative. Current US policy is hammering the competitiveness of the market leader, so that offers the UK a golden opportunity, if government would only work with the sector to grow our international education exports rather than endlessly restricting them. 

    Back of the envelope calculation indicates that recovering only half of the students we lost in 2024 because of government policy would generate the required income to the exchequer to fund those maintenance grants sustainably and create jobs, not destroy them.

    The Graduate Route subsidy

    Finally the Graduate Route, which is an incredibly sensible tool to encourage students to study here and contribute after graduation, but which also subsidises UK tax payers and the NHS specifically, every year that it is available to international students. Why? If you pay the same Income Tax and National Insurance as a domestic equivalent but can, by law, only access less than half the services that are paid for from those taxes, then that is a subsidy in my book.

    We should all hope the Graduate Route visa is here to stay, but it has already been shortened by six months and the consequences could yet be dire. According to the ICEF, an Indian graduate on an average salary may take 25 years to repay the cost of undergraduate study in a Russell Group university –  36 without two years of post study work. As families calculate return on investment in a challenging market for graduate employment, nibbling away at policies that allow an opportunity to recoup investment may risk it altogether.

    Education not immigration

    A year ago, I recommended to the IHE conference that the Government needed to decouple international students from the toxicity of immigration politics, which research shows much of the public also supports.  They have not done so and show no inclination to do so.

    Education and immigration must be decoupled if we are to ever escape relentlessly self-harming  policies. Until they do so, I am afraid that their maxim of doing what is right for our country and not just what is supposedly popular is destined to continue to ring very hollow for international education, one of our greatest exports and probably greatest source of influence for good.

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  • Integrity Bill passes as government vows crackdown on “quick-buck” operators

    Integrity Bill passes as government vows crackdown on “quick-buck” operators

    The Albanese government has passed legislation that it says will strengthen the integrity of the international education sector, despite sector concerns about some elements of the reforms set to impact higher and international education.

    The Education Legislation Amendment (Integrity and Other Measures) Bill 2025 proposes amendments across several key acts within education, including the Education Services for Overseas Students Act (ESOS). 

    “With the passing of this legislation, we now have more tools to stop unscrupulous individuals in the international education system trying to make a quick buck,” said education minister Jason Clare.

    In a statement on the Bill’s passing, the federal government chose to highlight some of the changes it is set to bring about, including:

    • Enabling the banning of commissions to education agents for onshore student transfers
    • Requiring most prospective VET providers excluding TAFEs to first deliver courses to domestic students for two years before they can apply to teach overseas students as evidence of their commitment to quality education
    • Cancelling the registration of providers that fail to deliver a course to overseas students for 12 consecutive months to help deal with ‘phoenixing’
    • Giving ministers the power to limit or cancel a providers’ ability to deliver courses where it is in the public interest or there are systemic quality issues

    Education providers will also now require authorisation from TEQSA to deliver Australian degrees offshore. The government described these changes as “light-touch, set transitional arrangements and utilise information that providers already hold”.

    “Australia’s future success requires a focus on quality, integrity and a great student experience. That’s why we’re cracking down on exploitation, increasing transparency, and safeguarding the reputation of our sector,” said Julian Hill, assistant minister for international education.

    We’re cracking down on exploitation, increasing transparency, and safeguarding the reputation of our sector
    Julian Hill, assistant minister for international education

    According to Hill, the changes will “protect genuine students and support high-quality providers”.

    Ministers say the reforms are about “safeguarding” Australia’s reputation as a world leader in education but certain parts of the Bill garnered fierce criticism from the sector. A public call for submissions gathered concerns about changes to the definition of an education agent and whether ministerial intervention powers were appropriately balanced, among other changes.

    The Bill is set to tighten oversight of education agents by broadening the legal definition of who qualifies as an agent and introducing new transparency requirements around commissions and payments.

    Elsewhere, one of the most significant points of concern related to new ministerial powers over provider and course registrations. The Bill would allow the minister to make legislative instruments suspending the processing of applications for provider registration – or registration of new courses – for periods of up to 12 months.

    The new Bill closely mirrors last year’s version but drops the proposed hard cap on international student enrolments that contributed to the earlier Bill’s failure in parliament. Instead, the government is managing new enrolments through its National Planning Level and visa processing directive MD115, rather than legislated limits.

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  • A government running out of road still sets the economic weather for higher education

    A government running out of road still sets the economic weather for higher education

    For a party that it’s become fashionable to criticise for failing to have prepared for power, Labour has in fact set an awful lot of ambitious policy machinery into motion over the last 16 months.

    There’s barely been a month go by without some large-scale reform to how the country is governed, organised, and understood as a sum of diverse parts and competing pressures, and we’ve had our work cut out thinking through the implications of each for the higher education sector: from devolution to industrial strategy, from health reform to an explicit tying together of skills and migration (which has barely got started yet), from a new communities strategy to belatedly moving skills policy to the Department for Work and Pensions.

    Whatever your views on the merits and mechanics of these, and the many other initiatives that different departments have launched, they are all downright interesting – and pose a plethora of questions for how higher education fits in and demonstrates value.

    But all need time. The overall ambitions of devolution are still on their starting blocks as councils pitch their ideas for new geographies; the industrial strategy was explicitly badged as bearing fruit in 2035; the NHS workforce plan that should really have been alongside the 10-year health plan has been delayed to the spring – and so on and so on. No-one involved in pulling together all these long-term reforms did so under the assumption that all the pieces would be in place within one parliamentary term.

    Yet here we now are, with the commentariat consensus being that both Keir Starmer and Rachel Reeves are toast, and public sentiment pointing emphatically in that direction as well – though this is not to say the party cannot regain momentum under a new leader. The sector is already asking questions about how to prepare for a Reform government (as discussed in the most recent instalment of our new HE Influence newsletter, I should mention).

    The post-16 white paper presented a somewhat upbeat vision of what the government would like higher education’s role to feel like across the country, but was weaker on any kind of immediate reform, proposing instead that traditionally glacial changes to research funding, a piece-by-piece strengthening of the Office for Students’ remit, and putting FE, HE and business in the same room would do much of the heavy lifting, given time and goodwill.

    All this feels like a recipe for the sector to retreat to more comfortable home territory over the next few years, fighting battles over the international student levy, the size of teaching grants, and the shape of the REF, and gradually giving up on pushing for a central role in the government’s overall vision for the country, given the increasing probability that dreams like a planned and unswerving industrial strategy will all be swept away in 2029.

    Quite what’s to be done about all this is a question for another day – with the Budget looming on Wednesday, and admittedly still three and a half years in office remaining for Labour, the other thing that’s worth reflecting on is quite how much the choices the Chancellor makes around tax, public spending, debt, and general macroeconomics will determine the success – or otherwise – of higher education institutions in England over the next few years. These big tickets items all impact the sector deeply, however much the temptation might be to throw one’s hands up in the air, snipe about a “tax” on overseas recruitment, and start looking at what opposition parties can be convinced of.

    Labour on labour

    There’s a pretty strong case to be made for the most consequential policy decision for universities since Labour came to power being the decision to hike employer national insurance contributions in last autumn’s budget. Clearly it has cost universities a small fortune, and the move also sucked up a sizeable slice of the government’s various funding “boosts” for schools and FE colleges – and the NHS and elsewhere – leaving less putative generosity to go around.

    But perhaps most importantly of all, the ENICs rise has decimated the labour market for young people – in the court of public opinion at least – by making new hires and part-time workers more expensive, all while AI is supposedly making them obsolete.

    The result is that university graduates – and the institutions ever more judged on those graduates’ success – are seen to be in a right old state. The Guardian was the latest to take a run at this last week, with tales of qualified grads banging their heads against the job application wall, accompanied by analysis from the paper demonstrating that almost half of all jobs lost since Labour came to power were among the under-25s. Down in the small print we see that this is driven almost entirely via reduced employment of 16- and 17-year-olds, but the vibes aren’t good, even if less hyperbolic analysis from the likes of the Institute of Student Employers and Prospects Luminate paints merely a concerning, rather than cataclysmic, picture.

    The sad fact is that, longer term, this deluge of negative publicity about the value of a degree – alongside a necessary tailing off of the supposed “graduate premium” as a viable sector talking point as the minimum wage heads ever up – will inevitably move from being fodder for anti-HE journalists to actually driving changes in young people’s decision-making (even if a tight jobs market in the short-term often pushes graduates back towards postgraduate study) and scar the sector’s ability to make its case for its value.

    The result is that keeping a watchful eye on Labour’s economic moves around the costs associated with employment – both on Wednesday and beyond – has become a matter of some importance for higher education. Further increases in the national living wage over the next few years, lower-profile changes to business taxation, and even wildcards like any surprise revenue-raising changes to the growth and skills levy, all hold the possibility of making this problem worse. All while leading to higher costs for universities and making it harder for students to work alongside their studies, despite this being ever more necessary.

    Pound in pocket

    Rachel Reeves finally taking the plunge with an income tax rise, as a good proportion of the Labour backbenches were calling for, seems to have definitively fallen off the table for the Budget – with a handful of consequences worth noting for the sector.

    First, it will almost certainly mean that future spring and autumn statements will be equally fraught, as the Treasury fails to leave clear blue water between its spending plans and its spending rules. By not maintaining a sensible “headroom”, public finances will remain permanently at the mercy of external shocks and OBR downgrades, and we’ll probably be back here in less than six months’ time wondering what levers will need to be pulled. At least at some point in the Parliament, said levers will end up being haircuts to departmental budgets rather than new taxes or further borrowing.

    Following on from this, the use of a basket of smaller revenue-raising measures to partially fill the gap left by not raising income tax increases the likelihood that this shortfall gets filled by employment-related measures – that is, all the issues we’ve been over above, which have serious consequences for universities as large employers who are not quite in the public sector (as may be the case this week if rumoured changes to salary sacrifice rules go ahead).

    And the other effect that an income tax rise would have achieved, which the “smorgasbord” approach will not to the same extent, is bringing down inflation.

    Inflation is arguably the most serious financial threat that higher education institutions face. Even if many within the sector, both in internal conversations and public pronouncements, are often quite happy to let audiences believe that measures like the dependants ban are what’s most responsible for blowing a hole in HE finances, the fundamentals weren’t sound even before the post-pandemic recruitment glut.

    While tuition fees and maintenance loans in England (and, at least for one year, Wales) are now linked to inflation, or more precisely to inflation forecasts – Office for Budget Responsibility predictions on Wednesday will set the levels for 2026–27 – the idea of any measures to compensate for all the shortfalls baked in over several years of rocketing price rises appears to have been permanently nixed.

    And it’s worth bearing in mind that the index link does not mean that either student maintenance or teaching funding will actually keep pace with inflation in the coming years. For one thing, OBR forecasts have repeatedly underestimated inflation, and there’s no corrective mechanism in the system. For student maintenance, even if predictions come true, other features of the system mean that the average, rather than maximum, maintenance loan continues to be worth less each year.

    For teaching funding, it’s important to stress that Labour has in no way committed to keeping the overall package inflation-proofed. While tuition fees are the major part here, other elements such as high-cost subject funding took a real-terms tumble this year, and no-one is predicting that the reforming the Strategic Priorities Grant means upward movement on how much it’s worth – the reverse is far likelier, given DfE’s commitments elsewhere.

    University staff have had a decade or more of below inflation pay rises, and there doesn’t seem any serious capacity or appetite among higher education employers to do fundamental work here – the year-on-year squabbles will continue, and high levels of inflation over the coming years will eat further into staff remuneration and the attractiveness of higher education careers.

    And inflation-linked rises in tuition fees will also change applicant behaviour. One thing we’ll start getting a sense of on Wednesday will be the likelihood of when fees will cross the (supposedly) psychologically important barrier of £10,000. Back in March, the OBR was expecting RPIX to run at 2.7 per cent in Q1 2027, and 2.8 per cent in Q1 2028, which would lead to tuition fee caps of around £9,790 in 2026–27 and around £10,065 in 2027–28. We won’t know for certain until autumn 2026, but the picture will start to come into focus.

    Now the significance of fees being materially above, rather than roughly equal to, £10k is perhaps overstated. But DfE isn’t really sure – it has reportedly commissioned modelling on how students will respond to rises, but the results aren’t due until the spring.

    All in all, there’s a whole host of reasons why Budget decisions and their effect on inflation, as well as the OBR forecasts themselves, have become heavily intertwined with the future behaviour and wellbeing of higher education staff and students.

    Gilt trips

    Perhaps the most overlooked publication of the last few years for really understanding how the Treasury thinks about higher education is the Institute for Fiscal Studies analysis of how the interplay between interest rates and Treasury gilts affect the cost of student loans.

    In a nutshell, it costs far more for the government to borrow than it used to (the 15-year gilt yield has continued to rise since the IFS did its sums in January 2024), and so it’s very reluctant to allow for too much expansion in the student loan book – it’s a far cry from when the broad strokes of student finance were put in place by the coalition government, and this was basically thought of as free money.

    This goes a long way to explain why the government is so reticent to use the student loan book in any radical way – and thus we see things like a real-terms freeze in tuition fees being presented as if it’s an almost saint-like act of generosity to the sector, or the foundering of DfE’s tepid-but-probably-genuine desire to properly boost maintenance loans.

    We’re waiting for the specifics (hopefully) of maintenance grant implementation on Wednesday, but the cost of government borrowing feels like it has played a role in the last year of behind-the-scenes policy deliberations here. In the run-up to last autumn’s Budget, there was plenty of speculation, and government nods to the press, about the potential for movement on the overall maintenance package and grants in particular. Clearly the battle with the Treasury was lost, and DfE was told to come up with an alternate source of funding – hence the international student levy. What we don’t yet know is to what extent grants will replace, rather than supplement, loans – if what we see is a switch from one to the other, the expense to the public purse of borrowing is a likely primary driver, especially given the hidden costs associated with annual tuition fee rises. While the sector isn’t really getting any more money in real terms, this isn’t to say that the government’s finances are not being stretched by indexing fees.

    What this all means is that, unfortunately, the sector needs to keep an eye on the gilts market. The supposed flip-flop on raising income tax has already done some damage here, and the government repeatedly needing to borrow more than it expected to is another issue. There’s a wider question of perceived government competence around balancing the books that drives behaviour too – confidence is in short supply as it is, and it will get worse if the Starmer era implodes. This all equates to longer-term uncertainty about the use of the student loan book.

    Even if you’ve given up on the Labour government in its current form, and are pinning hopes on a future government being more receptive to calls for support and investment in both universities and students, Number 10 and the current Treasury team are still setting the economic weather. While much of the sector will be waiting for the moment Rachel Reeves stops speaking on Wednesday to see the fee levy policy paper – assuming there is one, and the can doesn’t get kicked – there are many reasons to think the wider public finances are a much more important determinant of the future of higher education. And it’s one that isn’t painting a particularly cheery picture at the moment.

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  • Where the Ed Dept. Stands After Longest Government Shutdown

    Where the Ed Dept. Stands After Longest Government Shutdown

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

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

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

    LEAD IN

    PITHY STATEMENT FROM SPEAKER JOHNSON OR WHITE HOUSE

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

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

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

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

    The 4 Parts of the Stopgap Bill

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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  • Higher Education Inquirer : The US Government Shutdown: “Let Them Eat Cheese”

    Higher Education Inquirer : The US Government Shutdown: “Let Them Eat Cheese”

    The stock market is up. Politicians beam on cable news about “economic resilience.” But on the ground, the picture looks very different. Jobs are scarce or unstable, rents keep rising, and food insecurity is back to 1980s levels. The government shutdown has hit federal workers, SNAP recipients, and service programs for the poor and disabled. And what does Washington offer the hungry? Cheese—literally and metaphorically.

    Government cheese once symbolized a broken welfare system—a processed product handed out to the desperate while politicians preached self-reliance. Today’s version is digital and disembodied: food banks filled with castoffs, online portals for benefits that don’t come, “relief” programs that require a master’s degree to navigate. People are told to be grateful while they wait in line for what little is left.

    Meanwhile, the headlines celebrate record-breaking stock prices and defense contracts. Billions flow abroad to Argentina, Ukraine, and Israel—especially Israel, where U.S. aid underwrites weapons used in what many describe as genocide in Palestine. Corporate media downplay it, politicians justify it, and dissenters are told they’re unpatriotic.

    In the U.S., the old cry of “personal responsibility” masks the reality of neoliberal economics—a system that privatizes profit and socializes pain. When the government shuts down, it’s the poor who feel it first. The “educated underclass”—graduates burdened by debt, adjuncts working without benefits, laid-off professionals—are just a few missed paychecks away from standing in the same line for government cheese.

    Yet many Americans don’t see who the real enemy is. They turn on one another—Democrats versus Republicans, urban versus rural, native-born versus immigrant—while the architects of austerity watch from gated communities. The spectacle distracts from the structural theft: trillions transferred upward, democracy traded for debt, justice sold to the highest bidder.

    “Let them eat cheese” is no longer a historical joke. It’s the bipartisan message of a political class that rewards Wall Street while abandoning Main Street. And as long as the public stays divided, hungry, and distracted, the pantry of power remains locked.

    Sources

    • U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA). “Household Food Insecurity in the United States in 2024.”

    • Gary Roth. The Educated Underclass. 

    • Congressional Budget Office (CBO). “Economic Effects of a Government Shutdown.”

    • Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis. “Wealth Inequality and Stock Market Concentration.”

    • The Intercept. “How U.S. Weapons and Aid Fuel the Assault on Gaza.”

    • Associated Press. “Food Banks Report Record Demand Amid Inflation.”

    • Jacobin Magazine. “Neoliberalism and the Return of American Austerity.”

    • Reuters. “U.S. Sends Billions in Loans and Aid to Argentina.”

    • Economic Policy Institute (EPI). “Wage Stagnation and the Cost of Living Crisis.”

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  • A shuttered government was not the lesson I hoped my Texas students would learn on a trip to Washington D.C

    A shuttered government was not the lesson I hoped my Texas students would learn on a trip to Washington D.C

    After decades serving in the Marine Corps and in education, I know firsthand that servant leadership and diplomacy can and should be taught. That’s why I hoped to bring 32 high school seniors from Texas to Washington, D.C., this fall for a week of engagement and learning with top U.S. government and international leaders.  

    Instead of open doors, we faced a government shutdown and had to cancel our trip. 

    The shutdown impacts government employees, members of the military and their families who are serving overseas and all Americans who depend on government being open to serve us — in businesses, schools and national parks, and through air travel and the postal service.  

    Our trip was not going to be a typical rushed tour of monuments, but a highly selective, long-anticipated capstone experience. Our plans included intensive interaction with government leaders at the Naval Academy and the Pentagon, discussions at the State Department and a leadership panel with senators and congressmembers. Our students hoped to explore potential careers and even practice their Spanish and Mandarin skills at the Mexican and Chinese embassies.  

    The students not only missed out on the opportunity to connect with these leaders and make important connections for college and career, they learned what happens when leadership and diplomacy fail — a harsh reminder that we need to teach these skills, and the principles that support them, in our schools. 

    Related: A lot goes on in classrooms from kindergarten to high school. Keep up with our free weekly newsletter on K-12 education.  

    Senior members of the military know that the DIME framework — diplomatic, informational, military and economic — should guide and support strategic objectives, particularly on the international stage. My own time in the Corps taught me the essential role of honesty and trust in conversations, negotiations and diplomacy. In civic life, this approach preserves democracy, yet the government shutdown demonstrates what happens when the mission shifts from solving problems to scoring points.  

    Our elected leaders were tasked with a mission, and the continued shutdown shows a breakdown in key aspects of governance and public service. That’s the real teachable moment of this shutdown. Democracy works when leaders can disagree without disengaging; when they can argue, compromise and keep doors open. If our future leaders can’t practice those skills, shutdowns will become less an exception and more a way of governing. 

    Students from ILTexas, a charter network serving over 26,000 students across the state, got a lesson in failed diplomacy after the government shutdown forced cancellation of their long-planned trip to the nation’s capital. Credit: Courtesy International Leadership of Texas Charter Schools

    With opposing points of view, communication is essential. Bridging language is invaluable. As the adage goes, talk to a man in a language he understands, that goes to his head. Speak in his own language, that goes to his heart. That is why, starting in kindergarten, we teach every student in our charter school network English, Spanish and Mandarin Chinese.  

    Some of our graduates will become teachers, lawyers, doctors and entrepreneurs. Others will pursue careers in public service or navigate our democracy on the international stage. All will enter a world more fractured than the one I stepped into as a Marine. 

    While our leaders struggle to find common ground, studies show that nationally, only 22 percent of eighth graders are proficient in civics, and fewer than 20 percent of American students study a foreign language. My students are exceptions, preparing to lead in three languages and through servant leadership, a philosophy that turns a position of power into a daily practice of responsibility and care for others.  

    Related: COLUMN: Students want more civics education, but far too few schools teach it 

    While my students represent our ILTexas schools, they also know they are carrying something larger: the hopes of their families, communities and even their teenage peers across the country. Some hope to utilize their multilingual skills, motivated by a desire to help the international community. Others want to be a part of the next generation of diplomats and policy thinkers who are ready to face modern challenges head-on.  

    To help them, we build good habits into the school day. Silent hallways instill respect for others. Language instruction builds empathy and an international perspective. Community service requirements (60 hours per high school student) and projects, as well as dedicated leadership courses and optional participation in our Marine Corps JROTC program give students regular chances to practice purpose over privilege. 

    Educators should prepare young people for the challenges they will inherit, whether in Washington, in our communities or on the world stage. But schools can’t carry this responsibility alone. Students are watching all of us. It’s our duty to show them a better way. 

    We owe our young people more than simply a good education. We owe them a society in which they can see these civic lessons modeled by their elected leaders, and a path to put them into practice.  

    Eddie Conger is the founder and superintendent of International Leadership of Texas, a public charter school network serving more than 26,000 students across the state, and a retired U.S. Marine Corps major. 

    Contact the opinion editor at [email protected].  

    This story about the government shutdown and students was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for Hechinger’s weekly newsletter.  

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  • NACIQI Meeting Delayed by Government Shutdown

    NACIQI Meeting Delayed by Government Shutdown

    The Department of Education has delayed the semiannual convening of its accreditation advisory committee for the second time this year, according to an email sent to committee members and obtained by Inside Higher Ed.

    The meeting of the National Advisory Committee on Institutional Quality and Integrity, originally slated to take place in July, had already been pushed back to Oct. 21. Now, as a result of the government shutdown, it’s been rescheduled for Dec. 16.

    “As many of you know, most department staff, including those supporting NACIQI, have been furloughed and the Department has suspended operations except for specific excepted activities,” Jeffrey Andrade, deputy assistant secretary for policy, planning and innovation, wrote in the email. “The Department will be publishing a notice in the Federal Register shortly announcing this change of meeting date.”

    Inside Higher Ed reached out to the department for direct comment on the delay but did not get a response prior to publication.

    The meeting was slated to include Under Secretary Nicholas Kent’s first comments on accreditation since he took office, as well as compliance reports from five different accreditors. Three of those agencies are institutional: the Middle States Commission on Higher Education, the New England Commission of Higher Education, and the Western Association of Schools and Colleges Senior College and University Commission. The other two are programmatic: the Accreditation Commission for Midwifery Education and the Commission on Accreditation in Physical Therapy.

    And while it wasn’t formally listed on the committee’s agenda, this meeting also likely would have served as the unveiling of six new Trump-appointed committee members.

    When department officials announced the first delay in July, observers noted that by the time the rescheduled meeting took place, the terms of six of the committee’s 18 members would be over. With key decisions about the future of higher education accreditation looming, many policy experts took this as a sign that the Trump administration was trying to stack the panel in its favor.

    Now, the new appointees will likely go unnamed for another two months, and the compliance reports will remain unchecked until the next meeting. And though neither of these agenda items is quite as high-stakes as a recognition review—the process by which independent accrediting agencies are granted the power to gate-keep federal student aid—one expert feared it could lead to a backlog in future evaluations.

    “While [the accreditation agencies] are coming up before NACIQI on this compliance report, they are also likely in the process of having their regular recognition reviewed again,” said Antoinette Flores, the director of higher education accountability and quality at New America, a left-leaning think tank. “So it adds to the burden and could lead to compounding issues.”

    Flores, who served in the same role as Andrade during the Biden administration, is worried that the delay could not only slow down future reviews but also hamper current ones, putting certain agencies and the institutions they serve at risk. When an agency is placed under compliance review, it has 12 months to fix the problem and prove it is meeting the committee’s criteria, she explained. So, if it hasn’t proven it’s meeting those criteria within that period, technically the agency’s authorization could be at stake.

    Flores said she’s particularly worried for Middle States Commission and the New England Commission, because they each received letters from the Trump administration earlier this year pressuring them to take action against member institutions’ alleged noncompliance with civil rights laws. Neither accreditor has done so, and they won’t be able to present their compliance reports before the 12-month deadline.

    “So is the agency in compliance? Is its recognition going to continue? … That’s kind of the underlying question,” Flores said.

    Others are far less concerned.

    Kyle Beltramini, a policy research fellow at the American Council of Trustees and Alumni, a right-leaning policy organization, said that to his knowledge there’s never been a time when NACIQI failed to meet and review an agency’s compliance or recognition before the deadline.

    So while it remains unclear what would happen if the meeting never took place or the agencies were unable to present their compliance reports before deadline, Beltramini believes that any consequences of the delay will be minimal.

    “I don’t think what we’re going to see is the nuclear option of an accreditor losing their authorization,” he said. “It’s partially because of the fact that even if that’s what the administration wanted to do—which I don’t think that that’s the case—they just don’t have the full majority on the committee.” (Although, technically, the under secretary and secretary of education do not have to follow the committee’s guidance.)

    Either way, if and when the meeting occurs, Beltramini anticipates that it will set the tone for how the Trump administration plans to approach accreditation moving forward.

    “There is a broad and bipartisan agreement that there needs to be change to the system, and what you’re going to see, more and more often, is NACIQI attempting to hold the accreditors accountable by asking them questions and getting them on the record in ways that may make them uncomfortable,” he said.

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  • Rural Americans support more government spending on child care

    Rural Americans support more government spending on child care

    Hello! This is Christina Samuels, the early education editor here at Hechinger.

    By now, I hope you’ve had a chance to read my colleague Jackie Mader’s story about the important role that Head Start plays in rural communities. While Jackie set her story in western Ohio, she also interviewed Head Start parents and leaders in other parts of the country and collected their views for a follow-up article.

    In a fortunate bit of timing, the advocacy group First Five Years Fund published the results of a survey it commissioned on rural Americans and their feelings on child care access and affordability. Like the people Jackie interviewed, the survey respondents, more than half of whom identified as supporters of President Donald Trump, said they had very positive views of Head Start. The federally funded free child care program received positive marks from 71 percent of rural Republicans, 73 percent of rural independents and 92 percent of rural Democrats.

    The survey also found that 4 out of 5 respondents felt that finding quality child care is a major or critical problem in their part of the country. Two-thirds of those surveyed felt that spending on child care and early education programs is a good use of taxpayer dollars, and a little more than half said they’d like to see more federal dollars going to such programs.

    First Five Years Fund was particularly interested in getting respondents to share their thoughts on Head Start, said Sarah Rubinfield, the managing director of government affairs for First Five Years Fund. The program has been buffeted by regional office closures and cuts driven by the administration’s Department of Government Efficiency. 

    “We recognize that these are communities that often have few options for early learning and care,” Rubinfield said.

    In the survey, rural residents said they strongly supported not just the child care offered by Head Start, but the wraparound services such as healthy meals and snacks and the program’s support for children with developmental disabilities. Though Head Start programs are federally funded, community organizations are the ones in charge of spending priorities.

    “Rural voters want action. They support funding for Head Start and for child care. They want Congress to do more,” Rubinfield said. Though the “big beautiful bill” signed into law in July expands the child care tax credit for low-income families, survey respondents “recognized that things were not solved,” she added.

    The First Five Years Fund survey was released just a few days before a congressional standoff led to a government shutdown. The shutdown is not expected to touch Head Start immediately, said Tommy Sheridan, the deputy director of the National Head Start Association, in an interview with The New York Times. The 1,600 Head Start programs across the country receive money at different points throughout the calendar year; eight programs serving about 7,500 children were slated to receive their federal funding on Oct. 1, Sheridan told the Times. All should be able to continue operating, as long as the shutdown doesn’t last more than a few weeks, he said. 

    “We’re watching with careful concern but trying not to panic,” Rubinfield said. “We know the impacts may not be immediate, but the longer this goes on, the harder the impacts may be for families and programs.”

    This story about rural Americans was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for the Hechinger newsletter.

    The Hechinger Report provides in-depth, fact-based, unbiased reporting on education that is free to all readers. But that doesn’t mean it’s free to produce. Our work keeps educators and the public informed about pressing issues at schools and on campuses throughout the country. We tell the whole story, even when the details are inconvenient. Help us keep doing that.

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  • Government Shutdown Could Delay ED Rule Making

    Government Shutdown Could Delay ED Rule Making

    All rule-making sessions for the Department of Education were held online from the start of the COVID pandemic to the beginning of the second Trump administration.

    J. David Ake/Getty Images

    If the government shuts down Wednesday, it’s not clear whether the Department of Education will be able to continue with the meetings it had planned to iron out a batch of regulatory changes this week.

    The advisory rule-making committee began its work Monday and was originally slated to continue through Friday. But at the start of Monday’s meeting, department officials noted that if the government runs out of funding Oct. 1, the remainder of the session would be delayed and the plan would be to resume virtually in two weeks. (This was consistent with a pending notice that was posted to the Federal Register in the morning.) 

    That all changed once again moments before Monday’s meeting ended when Jeffrey Andrade, the deputy assistant secretary for policy, planning and innovation, said the department was reconsidering its earlier statement and that the negotiated rule-making committee might be able to continue operating in person through the end of the week.

    “There is a possibility that we can work through this,” Andrade said, adding that he had just received word of the possibility himself. 

    The department is planning to furlough nearly 87 percent of its employees, according to its shutdown contingency plan. But officials are planning to keep employees who are working on the rule-making process on board as well as those working to implement Congress’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act, which passed in July.

    This rule-making session is focused on clarifying the details of new graduate loan caps and a consolidated version of the multiple existing income-driven repayment plans.

    Going into this week’s meetings, multiple higher education experts said that finalizing new regulations before the caps and repayment plans take effect July 1, 2026, would be difficult no matter what. A government shutdown, one added, could throw a wrench into the already tight timeline.

    “With such a crunched timeline for finishing the rules in the first place, this makes the department’s job much more challenging,” said Clare McCann, managing director of policy for the Postsecondary Education and Economics Research Center at American University. 

    One of this week’s rule-making committee members, who spoke with Inside Higher Ed on the condition of anonymity, said that while they were still uncertain how the rest of the week will play out, Andrade’s last-minute announcement gave them hope.

    “I’m not sure what to make of it and will be waiting for clearer answers in the morning,” the committee member said. “But I know the department is working hard to get as much done as possible.”  

    That said, if the session does end up moving online, it wouldn’t be too out of the ordinary for department staff members. All sessions prior to the start of the second Trump administration were held online since the COVID-19 pandemic broke out in 2020.

    The real challenge, McCann noted, would likely be having enough staff to facilitate the session, regardless of its modality. 

    “Certainly the department will be able to keep some of this moving, but they will undoubtedly also have some employees who are not considered essential and are furloughed during a shutdown,” McCann said. “It takes many people at the department to make a rule making happen, and so any loss of personnel is going to present a challenge, even if they’re able to keep some of the core team that’s involved.”

    Under the contingency plan, student aid distributions will not be paused and loan payments will still be due. The department will, however, pause civil rights investigations and cease grant-making activities, though current grantees will still be able to access funds awarded by Sept. 30.

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  • ED Rule Making Will Move Online if Government Shuts Down

    ED Rule Making Will Move Online if Government Shuts Down

    All rule-making sessions for the Department of Education were held online from the start of the COVID pandemic to the beginning of the second Trump administration.

    Screenshot/Alexis Gravely

    The Education Department’s current rule-making session, in which committee members are determining how to implement new student loan policies, will be delayed by two weeks if Congress fails to pass legislation to keep the government open, Trump officials announced Monday morning.

    “There is the possibility—which seems to be growing by the hour—of a lapse in appropriations,” one department official said during the rule-making session’s commencement Monday. “Have no fear, however,” he added, “we do have a contingency plan for that.”

    The official, Jeffrey Andrade, deputy assistant secretary for policy, planning and innovation, went on to explain that if the government does shut down Oct. 1, the remainder of the session would take place online from Oct. 15 to 17. (The plans were also posted to the Federal Register on Monday.)

    Managing a virtual negotiated rule-making session, however, would be nothing new to the department staff, as all sessions prior to the start of the second Trump administration have been held online since the COVID-19 pandemic broke out in 2020.

    “Again, fingers crossed,” Andrade said. “But the oddsmakers, when I last checked, were in the high 60s in favor of them not passing a continuing resolution in time. So that’s a plan.”

    The department was already facing a tight timeline to negotiate the various regulatory changes, and some are worried that the two-week delay could further complicate the effort.

    “A government shutdown throws a wrench into the rule making,” said Clare McCann, managing director of policy for the Postsecondary Education and Economics Research Center at American University. “Even assuming a shutdown is over in two weeks, as the department hopes, almost all of the Education Department’s staff will be furloughed in the meantime and unable to continue working on the draft regulations. With such a crunched timeline for finishing the rules in the first place, this makes the department’s job much more challenging.”

    If the government were to shut down, about 87 percent of the Education Department’s nearly 2,500 employees would be furloughed, according to the agency’s contingency plan. The department is planning to keep on employees who are working on the rule-making process and to carry out other provisions in the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, which was signed into law over the summer.

    Student aid distributions will not be paused and loan payments will still be due, but the department will cease grant-making activities and pause civil rights investigations. Grantees, though, can still access funds awarded over the summer and before Sept. 30.

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