Tag: Grants

  • Trump Can’t “Blanket” Deny UC Grants or Demand Payout

    Trump Can’t “Blanket” Deny UC Grants or Demand Payout

    A judge ordered federal agencies Friday to end their “blanket policy of denying any future grants” to the University of California, Los Angeles, and further ruled that the Trump administration can’t seek payouts from any UC campus “in connection with any civil rights investigation” under Titles VI or IX of federal law.

    The ruling also prohibits the Department of Justice and federal funding agencies from withholding funds, “or threatening to do so, to coerce the UC in violation of the First Amendment or Tenth Amendment.” In all, the order, if not overturned on appeal, stops the administration’s attempt to pressure UCLA to pay $1.2 billion and make multiple other concessions, including to stop enrolling “foreign students likely to engage in anti-Western, anti-American, or antisemitic disruptions or harassment” and stop “performing hormonal interventions and ‘transgender’ surgeries” on anyone under 18 at its medical school and affiliated hospitals.

    The administration’s targeting of the UC system came to the fore on July 29. That’s when the DOJ said its months-long investigations across the system had so far concluded that UCLA violated the equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment and Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 in its response to alleged antisemitism at a spring 2024 pro-Palestinian protest encampment.

    Federal agencies—including the National Institutes of Health, National Science Foundation and Department of Energy—quickly began freezing funding; UC estimated it lost $584 million. But UC researchers sued and, even before Friday’s ruling, U.S. District Court judge Rita F. Lin of the Northern District of California ordered the restoration of almost all of the frozen funding.

    Friday’s ruling came in a case filed this fall by the American Association of University Professors, the affiliated American Federation of Teachers and other unions. Lin again was the judge.

    “Defendants did not engage in the required notice and hearing processes under Title VI for cutting off funds for alleged discrimination,” she wrote.

    “With every day that passes, UCLA continues to be denied the chance to win new grants, ratchetting [sic] up Defendants’ pressure campaign,” she wrote. “And numerous UC faculty and staff have submitted declarations describing how Defendants’ actions have already chilled speech throughout the UC system. They describe how they have stopped teaching or researching topics they are afraid are too ‘left’ or ‘woke,’ in order to avoid triggering further funding cancellations by Defendants. They also give examples of projects the UC has stopped due to fear of the same reprisals. These are classic, predictable First Amendment harms, and exactly what Defendants publicly said that they intended.”

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  • Education Department ordered to reinstate mental health grants

    Education Department ordered to reinstate mental health grants

    Dive Brief:

    • The U.S. Department of Education must reinstate, for now, canceled federal grants for student mental health services due to “numerous irreparable harms flowing from the discontinuation decisions,” according to an Oct. 27 order by a federal judge.
    • Sixteen states sued the Education Department in late June after the Trump administration in April canceled the multi-year congressionally approved funding for the School-Based Mental Health Services Grant Program and the Mental Health Service Professional Demonstration Grant. The order only applies to about 50 colleges, school districts and nonprofit entities who received the grants in the plaintiff states.
    • In the order, the judge said grant discontinuations were likely “arbitrary and capricious” because they were not renewed based on individual reasons, but rather were discontinued with a generic message saying that the grants “were not in the best interests of the federal government.”

    Dive Insight:

    On Tuesday, an Education Department spokesperson said the agency stands by its grant decisions and will appeal the order. 

    The Education Department announced in September that their new $270 million grant competition is accepting applications to use the federal funds from the two programs that were canceled in April. The department issued new priorities prohibiting the mental health grant money to be used for “promoting or endorsing gender ideology, political activism, racial stereotyping, or hostile environments for students of particular races.”

    The Education Department spokesperson, in a Tuesday email, said, “Our new competition is strengthening the mental health grant programs in contrast to the Biden Administration’s approach that used these programs to promote divisive ideologies based on race and sex.” 

    Some education organizations said they were concerned that the new competition focuses only on school psychologists and does not include school counselors and social workers who also provide student mental health supports.

    The canceled grants, which were set to expire on Dec. 31, were focused on increasing the pipeline of credentialed school-based mental health professionals working in rural and underserved areas and providing direct services to students in high-needs schools, according to court documents. Court records said that the Education Department valued the canceled grants at about $1 billion. 

    Addressing the discontinuation of the grants, Judge Kymberly Evanson in the U.S. District Court Western District of Washington said in the order that there was no evidence the Education Department “considered any relevant data pertaining to the Grants at issue,” leaving it difficult to determine “whether the Department’s decision bears a rational connection to the facts.”

    Kelly Vaillancourt Strobach, director of policy and advocacy for the National Association of School Psychologists, called the ruling “a win for children, families, and educators across the country.” 

    Vaillancourt Strobach said in an email Tuesday that the grants “have proven essential in addressing nationwide shortages of school psychologists and other school mental health professionals.”

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  • Funding technology initiatives in uncertain times

    Funding technology initiatives in uncertain times

    Key points:

    Recent policy shifts have caused significant uncertainty in K-12 education funding, especially for technology initiatives. It’s no longer business as usual. Schools can’t rely on the same federal operating funds they’ve traditionally used to purchase technology or support innovation. This unpredictability has pushed school districts to explore creative, nontraditional ways to fund technology initiatives. To succeed, it’s important to understand how to approach these funding opportunities strategically.

    How to find funding

    Despite the challenges, there are still many grants available to support education initiatives and technology projects. Start with an online search using key terms related to your project–for example, “virtual reality,” “virtual field trips,” or “career and technical education.”

    Explore national organizations like the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation or Project Tomorrow and consider potential local funding sources. Local organizations such as Rotary or Kiwanis clubs can be powerful allies in helping to fund projects. The local library and city or county government may also offer grants or partnership opportunities. Schools should also reach out to locally-headquartered businesses, many of which have community outreach or corporate social responsibility goals that align with supporting local education.

    Colleges and universities are another valuable resource. They may be conducting research that aligns with your school’s technology project. Building relationships with these institutions and organizations can put your school “in the right place at the right time” when new funding opportunities arise.

    Strategies to win the grant

    Once potential funding sources are identified, the next step is crafting a compelling proposal. Consider the following strategies to strengthen your application.

    1. Focus on the “how and why,” not just the “what.” If your school is seeking funds to buy hardware, don’t simply say, “Here’s what we want to buy.” Instead, frame it as, “Here’s how this project will improve student learning and why it matters.” Funders want to see the impact their support will have on outcomes. The more clearly a proposal connects technology to learning gains, the stronger it will be.

    2. Highlight the research. Use evidence to validate your project’s value. For example, if a school plans to purchase virtual reality headsets, cite studies showing that VR improves knowledge retention, engagement, and comprehension compared to traditional instruction. Demonstrating that the technology is research-backed helps funders feel confident in their investment.

    3. Paint a picture. Bring the project to life. Describe what students will experience and how they’ll benefit. For example: “When students put on the headset, they aren’t just reading about ancient civilizations, they’re walking through them.” Vivid descriptions help reviewers visualize the impact and believe in your vision.

    Eight questions to consider when applying for a grant

    Use these guiding questions to sharpen your proposal and ensure a strong foundation for implementation and long-term success.

    1. What is the goal? Clearly define what students will be able to do as a result of the project. Use action-orientated language: “Students will be able to…”
    2. Is the technology effective? Support your proposal with evidence such as whitepapers, case studies, or research that can demonstrate proven impact.
    3. How will the technology impact these specific students? Emphasize what makes your school or district unique, whether it’s serving a rural, urban, or high-poverty community and how this technology addresses those specific needs.
    4. What is the scope of the application? Specify whether the project involves elementary school, secondary school, or a specific subject or program like a STEM lab.
    5. How will success be measured? Too often schools reach the end of a project without a plan to track results. Plan your evaluation from the start. Track key metrics such as attendance, disciplinary data, academic performance, or engagement surveys, both before and after implementation to demonstrate results.
    6. What are your budgetary needs? Include all associated costs, including professional development and substitute coverage for teacher training.
    7. What happens after the grant is over? If you plan to use the technology for multiple years, apply for a multi-year grant rather than assuming future funding will appear. Sustainability is key.
    8. How will success be celebrated and communicated to stakeholders? Share results with the community and stakeholders. Host events recognizing teachers, students, and partners. Invite local media and highlight your funding partners–they’re not just donors, but partners in student success.

    Moving forward with confidence

    Education funding will likely remain uncertain in the years ahead. However, by being intentional about where to look for funds, how to frame proposals, and how to measure and share impact, schools can continue to implement innovative technology initiatives that elevate teaching and learning.

    Latest posts by eSchool Media Contributors (see all)

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  • Week In Review: Mental health grants return and FCC rolls back E-rate expansion

    Week In Review: Mental health grants return and FCC rolls back E-rate expansion

    We’re rounding up last week’s news, from the government shutdown’s impact on schools to differentiated teacher compensation.

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  • Making grants and the levy work

    Making grants and the levy work

    Opinions vary about the desirability of the levy on international student fees, and the value of the promised return of targeted maintenance grants.

    Rightly so. The announcement and the descriptions of policies within, were political in nature. They were made at a party conference rather than a ministerial statement or consultation document – they were designed to please some, challenge others, and above all to start a debate.

    And as such, all these opinions are valuable. The government will listen to representations, seek commentary and challenge, and eventually start to spell out some more of the detail and implementation.

    Implementation couldn’t care less about opinions or political expediency. Implementation is a matter of whether something can actually be done, and how.

    My number one priority

    Let’s take the simplistic approach, and call the income the government gets from the levy something around £620m (more on that later).

    In the grand scheme of things that’s not a huge amount of money – we paid out more than £8bn on maintenance loans in 2023-24. However, the much-maligned magic money twig (the OfS’ funding for student access and success) is currently just £273m, and it is ostensibly doing part of the same job as the proposed grants – helping non-traditional students access and succeed in higher education. Of course, it mostly goes on hardship grants these days, which is neither what it is designed for nor any meaningful remedy for a student maintenance system that is not fit for purpose. But that makes the parallel even clearer.

    Any extra money going to students, in this economy and with this level of unwillingness to do anything truly radical about student hardship, is welcome. But the kicker is that it is not enough to be from a deprived background to get the new money – you also need to be studying the right subjects. As we’ve already noted, these are the same “priority subjects” as have been set within the Lifelong Learning Entitlement: vaguely STEMish, but with no medicine but added architecture and economics.

    You survived all you been through

    At the end of every cycle UCAS published data on acceptances using a fine-grained (CAH level 3) subject lens, separated by level of deprivation – which in England means the IMD quintile. From this we learn that in the most recent data (2024 cycle) just under 42 per cent of all England domiciled accepted applicants from IMD quintile 1 (the most deprived group) were accepted onto a “priority subject”.

    [Full screen]

    This is a substantially higher proportion than in any other IMD quintile – it is also a substantially higher number: 39,870. We don’t get quite the same level of subject fidelity for offers and applications, but it appears that quintile 1 applicants are also much more likely to apply to priority subjects than any other group, and slightly more likely to receive an offer.

    In other words, as far as we can tell with the available data, there is not really a problem recruiting disadvantaged young people onto courses in subjects that the government is currently keen on.

    It is possible ministers may be thinking that adding the grants into the mix would drive these already encouraging numbers up even higher (and away from mere dilettante whims like, er, studying medicine, law, or biology). This would appear to ignore a rather expensive and lengthy experiment that has demonstrated that financial concerns (in the form, back then, of the sticker price) do not actually affect applicant behavior all that much, and when applicant behaviour is already trending in the way you might hope there’s maybe not a lot needs to be done.

    But if you assume that the entire annual levy covers a single year of grants for everyone in IMD quintile 1 in a priority subject – and let’s use the exact numbers here – we get 39,870 students sharing £620.52m: £15,560 each.

    That is baking in a bunch of assumptions around the way the levy is implemented, the way grant allocations are determined (is IMD, an area based measure, really the best way to allocate individual grants?), and even whether the entire levy is to be spent directly on grants and nothing else. But if these rather optimistic assumptions are right, we’re slightly above the current maximum loan (£13,762), and beginning to approach the government’s National Living Wage for those aged 18 to 20 (currently just under £18k). It’s not quite enough to live as a student for a year without working at all, but it would mean someone without any other means of support might not have to “work every hour god sends.”

    I’ll let you be my levy

    Let’s say you are an international student looking to study an integrated (4-5 year) Masters’ course in biomedical engineering at the University of Leicester. You’d be charged £25,100 a year (plus £6,275 if you do a year overseas, or £3,765 if you do a year in industry). As you are resident outside of the UK, you’d pay a deposit of £3,000 up front to secure your place. These figures will vary vastly depending on your choice of course and provider, but that gives you an idea of a ballpark figure.

    If you secured your place via an agent, you may have paid a fee up front to them. Your chosen university would also pay a fee to the agent for each successful application – these vary hugely, but let’s say it is 20 per cent of your first year of fees. In some cases, your university would also pay a direct fee to the agent, over and above their percentage of fee income. Combined, these can get pretty intense – far into the millions for providers that use agents, with some pushing £30m

    If you don’t quite meet some of the academic or English language requirements for your course, you may be accepted onto an international foundation year – often offered by another provider, either on behalf of your university or as a stand alone course. There will be fees for this too.

    Of course, before you are accepted onto your course, you’ll need a Tier 4 Student Visa. For all but a handful of countries, you’ll need evidence (the example given by the Foreign Office is a bank statement) that you currently have enough money to cover your fees for your first year plus nine months of living costs. Your visa will cost £524, plus you need to pay a healthcare surcharge (each year) of £776 each year.

    Let’s imagine for a moment that you never made a name for yourself

    If you are looking to design a levy, the first decision that you make will be what constitutes international fee income. Should it be the sticker price – as promoted to students? Should it, for example, include the fees an institution pays to an international agent? Should it include fees that the student pays to another institution for a co-branded international foundation year? Should you factor in that students are already paying a levy of sorts to cover the cost of issuing a visa or of providing access to the NHS? Should it include accommodation fees (or additional course fees) when these are paid directly to the provider?

    Or should a provider pay a proportion of everything it declares as (and auditors agree that is) international student fee income? At what point – when the fee is paid, when the course starts, when it is declared? And is there not a case to look at a levy on agents fees – there is big money to be made by agents, and unlike with providers no counter arguments about the student experience?

    The modelling I’ve done so far is deliberately simplistic – 6 per cent (or whatever is decided on) of declared fee income in the most recent HESA Finance Data. That’s a valid answer, but it is limited – it is not the same effect as you would get if a university had to pay 6 per cent of every international student’s fee at one of the points above. The Home Office modelling noted that in some cases fees themselves may rise to cover the levy, which may have a knock on effect on recruitment – and that in other cases providers themselves would swallow the cost.

    If you think about it like that – and also bear in mind the Public First angle on the types of students more likely to be dissuaded by higher fees – it is difficult not to see the regressive nature of the levy: well-off providers, who recruit well-heeled middle class students from countries where salaries are high, will pay more but will be able to pass the costs on to students. Providers newer to international recruitment, at the price sensitive end of the market, will lose out either way, and will have to work out whether the recruitment drop of a 6 per cent fee hike is worth more than 6 per cent of their current income.

    Such a funny thing for me to try to explain

    What if we don’t take the accountant’s way out? What if we calculate a levy based on what individual students actually pay?

    As noted above we don’t know – either generally or individually – what international students pay as fees. We also don’t really know how many students are currently paying them – HESA student data turns up after a quite considerable lag, and not all undergraduates (and no postgraduates!) show up in UCAS data.

    The closest we get to international student numbers, at all levels, in-year has historically been OfS’ HESES collection (which it uses to allocate OfS grant funding). I say historically because, from 2025-26 the information on domicile (previously used “for planning purposes”) will no longer be collected.

    If you want a levy based on what students actually pay, you need a new data collection covering the students involved and how much they have paid that year (perhaps separated out into qualifying and non-qualifying payments – with all of the early iteration problems that such things bring. Data Futures may eventually get there, but not for a good few years yet.

    Designing a new data collection is not for the faint of heart – we scrapped an entire section of the Higher Education (Freedom of Speech) Act (the bit dealing with income from overseas) primarily because it is a million times easier to torturously audit other data than to collect something new. It would be expensive, both centrally and for individual providers – and it would be commercially sensitive (not all international students pay the same fee for the same course at the same university).

    Know we’re jumping the gun

    At every point in this article, I’ve tried to get across just how broad brush the current details of this policy are. As my colleague Michael notes elsewhere, there is not even clarity that these two halves of an announcement are a part of the same policy, or that it is possible to irrevocably link an income stream with an outgoing like this in the public accounts.

    It is a political announcement, and as such leaping straight to implementation slightly misses the point – like with the “scrapping” of the “fifty per cent participation target” it might well be that how it lands is more important than how it works.

    But as I’ve also tried to show, implementation has no time for political expediency. Real decisions need to be taken, and the current configuration of the sector, of the application cycle, and of the various data collections need to be taken into account. And there’s a need to consider whether the behavioural changes you are trying to make would undermine the funding flows that you are intending will do so – the more parts to a policy the more unintended consequences there could be.

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  • NIH temporarily restores UC grants under court order

    NIH temporarily restores UC grants under court order

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    Dive Brief:

    • The National Institutes of Health has temporarily restored the University of California system’s research funding it abruptly revoked under President Donald Trump, officials from the U.S. Department of Justice said in court filings this week.
    • A federal judge issued a preliminary injunction last month ordering NIH, along with the U.S. departments of Defense and Transportation, to reinstate the canceled funding for the university system and its researchers while a related lawsuit proceeds. 
    • Trump administration officials said Monday the three agencies were complying but reported some administrative difficulties that would take until mid-October to resolve.

    Dive Insight:

    Researchers and faculty from the University of California’s Berkeley and San Francisco campuses filed a class-action lawsuit against the Trump administration in June, alleging its mass termination of research grants was illegal and jeopardized U.S. advancement. At the University of California, Los Angeles alone, NIH reportedly cut some 500 research grants worth over $500 million. 

    In September, U.S. District Judge Rita Lin temporarily ordered three agencies to reinstate the grants and barred them from making further cuts en masse against the system for the duration of the court case.

    NIH has now restored the bulk of that funding to comply with the order. But the agency is running into issues verifying if the grants it canceled are held by University of California researchers who work at institutions outside of their home system, federal officials told the court on Monday.

    In total, NIH identified 61 grants that likely meet this parameter, all but nine of which have been reinstated.

    Officials are trying to verify that the researchers on the remaining nine grants are still employed by the University of California, a process challenged by potentially out-of-date agency files, court documents said.

    As of Monday, NIH anticipated completing that work by the end of the week, though the shutdown of the federal government has likely altered that timeline.

    The Defense Department also declared a successful return of funds to University of California institutions. But the agency reported administrative difficulties on behalf of its components, such as the National Security Agency, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency and the branches of the military.

    Simply identifying relevant awards issued through those groups has been a challenge, officials said, “because of the number of DoD Components and the variety of grants systems involved.”

    “Reinstatement has been particularly complicated, as a fiscal matter, where funding has already been deobligated,” the court filing said. “In most cases, DoD Components have contacted UC institutions so that they can work together to modify awards and restore funding.”

    Prior to the government shutdown, the Defense Department gave an estimated completion date of Oct. 10.

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  • HHS moves to cut Harvard off from all federal grants and contracts

    HHS moves to cut Harvard off from all federal grants and contracts

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    Dive Brief:

    • Harvard University could lose access to all federal grants and contracts under proceedings initiated by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services on Monday.
    • The agency’s Office for Civil Rights has referred the university for suspension and debarment, the process by which the agency can cut off entities from federal grants and contracts if it determines that wrongdoing renders them “not responsible enough to do business” with the government.
    • The move represents the latest federal effort to bend Harvard to the Trump administration’s will through financial pressure. The administration has sought to use multiple federal agencies to gain increased influence over the higher education sector, singling out Harvard as a prime target.

    Dive Insight:

    On Monday, HHS’ OCR recommended excluding Harvard from federal funding, arguing the move would protect the public interest. The agency cited its June notice that formally accused Harvard of being in “violent violation” of Title VI by being “deliberately indifferent” to harassment of Jewish and Israeli students on its campus.

    Title VI forbids institutions that accept federal funds from discriminating based on race, color or national origin.

    HHS can pursue the debarment process when an entity — in this case Harvard — does not voluntarily agree with the agency’s terms to return to compliance with Title VI, according to Paula Stannard, director of HHS’ OCR. HHS and three other federal agencies on the Trump administration’s Joint Task Force to Combat Anti-Semitism in June called for Harvard to “institute adequate changes immediately” but did not publicly detail what those changes should be.

    Stannard said Monday that Harvard has the right to a formal hearing during the suspension and debarment process.

    “An HHS administrative law judge will make an impartial determination on whether Harvard violated Title VI by acting with deliberate indifference towards antisemitic student-on-student harassment,” Stannard said. 

    Harvard has 20 days to request the hearing. The university did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Tuesday.

    Suspension and debarment applies to all federal grants and contracts, not just those from HHS. And agencies across the federal government can initiate suspension and debarment proceedings. If sustained, debarment is not permanent and typically lasts under three years, according to a 2022 HHS report.

    Monday’s announcement is unrelated to HHS’ joint civil rights investigation with the U.S. Department of Education into Harvard and the Harvard Law Review. The agencies opened the probe in April, citing allegations of “race-based discrimination permeating the operations” of the student-run journal.

    Months before HHS formally determined Harvard had violated Title VI, the Trump administration’s antisemitism task force froze over $2.2 billion of the university’s grants and contracts. 

    The halt came after Harvard President Alan Garber publicly rebuked the Trump administration’s call for increased federal control of the institution. Its demands included that the university hire a third party to audit the viewpoints of Harvard students and employees, halt all diversity, equity and inclusion efforts, and reduce the power of certain faculty and administrators involved in activism.

    A federal judge ruled in early September that the Trump administration violated the university’s First Amendment rights and didn’t follow proper steps when it suspended the funding. No evidence indicated that “fighting antisemitism was Defendants’ true aim in acting against Harvard,” the judge wrote. 

    The judge’s decision barred the Trump administration from cutting off Harvard’s federal funding in retaliation for the university exercising its free speech rights or without following the procedural requirements of Title VI. However, the judge noted that her ruling didn’t prevent the Trump administration from “acting within their constitutional, statutory, or regulatory authority.”

    Trump administration officials appealed the decision and said it would keep Harvard “ineligible for grants in the future.”

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  • Grants return, the levy stays

    Grants return, the levy stays

    Speaking at the Labour Party conference, Secretary of State for Education Bridget Phillipson announced the (limited) return of student maintenance grants by the end of this Parliament:

    I am announcing that this Labour government will introduce new targeted maintenance grants for students who need them most. Their time at college or university should be spent learning or training, not working every hour god sends.

    As further details emerged, it became clear that these would be specifically targeted to students from low-income households who were studying courses within the same list of “government priority” subject areas mentioned in plans for the lifelong learning entitlement. As a reminder these are:

    • computing
    • engineering
    • architecture, building & planning (excluding landscape gardening)
    • physics & astronomy
    • mathematical sciences
    • nursing & midwifery
    • allied health
    • chemistry
    • economics
    • health & social care

    These additional grants will be funded with income from the proposed levy on international student fees, of which little is known outside of the fact that the immigration white paper’s annex contained modelling of its effects were it to be set at six per cent of international student fee income. The international student levy will apply to England only.

    There will be further details on the way the new grants will work, and on the detail of the levy, in the Autumn Statement on 26 November. This is what we know so far – everything else is based on speculation.

    Eligibility

    A whole range of questions surround the announcement.

    How disadvantaged will a student have to be – and will it be based on family income in the same way that the current system is? Imagine if entitlement was set at below the current threshold for the maximum loan – disadvantaged enough to get the full loan, not enough for a grant.

    If it’s set anywhere near the current threshold – £25,000 residual family income since 2007 – there’s a lot of “disadvantage” going on above that figure. If it’s set above that figure, that will beg the question – why assume a parental contribution in the main loan part of the scheme?

    Will it be on top of, or simply displace some of the existing loan? If it’s the latter, that won’t help with day to day costs, and as the Augar review noted – those from the most disadvantaged backgrounds are least likely to pay back in full anyway, which would make the “grant” more of a debt-relief scam.

    The distribution in the apparent hypothecation will be fascinating. It does mean that international students studying at English universities will be funding grants for English domiciled students wherever they are studying. Will devolved nations now follow suit?

    If international student recruitment falls, will that mean that the amount of money available for disadvantaged student grants falls too or is the Treasury willing to agree a fixed amount for the grants that doesn’t change?

    Restricting grants to those on the lowest incomes does mean that the government intends to relieve student poverty for some but not others, based on course choice. Will that shift behaviour – on the part of students and universities – in problematic ways?

    With the LLE on the way, will grants be chunked up and down by credit? See Jim’s piece from the weekend on the problematic incentives that this would create.

    The hypothecation also raises real moral questions about international student hardship being exacerbated to fund home student hardship relief – if, as many will do, universities put fees up to cover the cost of the levy. The possibility of real resentment from international students, who already know they’re propping up the costs of lower and subsidised fees, is significant.

    For LLE modular tuition fee funding, under OfS quality proposals Bronze/Requires improvement universities will have to apply for their students to access it – they will need to demonstrate that there is a rationale for them doing IS-8 courses. Will that apply for these grants too?

    Phillipson’s speech also referenced work– students’ time at college or university should be “spent learning or training, not working every hour god sends”. By coincidence, Jim worked up some numbers on how much “work” the current loan scheme funds earlier. Whether we’ll get numbers from Phillipson on what she thinks “every hour god sends” means in practice, and how many hours she thinks students should be learning or training for, remains to be seen.

    We might also assume that the grant won’t be increased for those in London, and reduced for studying at home in the way that the maintenance loan is now. And if this is all we’re going to get in the way of student finance reform, all of the other myriad problems with the system may not get touched either.

    The levy

    There’s a certain redistributive logic in using tuition fee income from very prestigious universities to support learners at FE colleges or local providers, though it is unlikely that university senior managers will see it in quite those terms.

    A six per cent levy on international fee income in England for the 2023–24 financial year would have yielded around £620m, with half of that coming from the 20 English providers in the Russell Group. Of course, this doesn’t mean that half of all international students are at the Russell Group – it means that they are able to charge higher tuition fees to the international students they do recruit.

    [Full screen]

    Of course, the levy applies to all providers – and, as we saw back when the idea was first floated there are some outside of the Russell Group that see significant parts of their income come from international fees, and would see their overall financial sustainability adversely affected by the levy. In the main these tend to be smaller specialist providers, but there are some larger modern universities too. Some universities don’t even have undergraduate students, but will still see their fees top-sliced to fund undergraduate-level grants elsewhere.

    [Full screen]

    There has been a concerted lobbying effort by various university groups aimed at getting the government to abandon the levy plan – as it appears that this effort has failed you would expect the conversations to turn to ensuring the levy is not introduced at six per cent as the Home Office previously modelled, or mitigating its impact for some or all providers. Certainly, as Phillipson chose the same speech to remind us she had taken “the decisive steps we needed on university finances” it would feel like it is not her intention to add to the woes of higher education providers that are genuinely struggling.

    DfE has said that the new grants will be “fully funded” by an international student levy. It’s worth noting that this is not the same as saying that all the levy money will go towards the grants.The tie between the grants and the levy is politically rather astute – it will be very difficult for Labour backbenchers to argue against grants for students on low income, even if they are committed to making arguments in the interests of their local university. But legislatively, establishing a ring fence that ensures the levy only pays for these grants will be very difficult – other parts of government will have their eye on this new income, and the Treasury is famously very resistant to ringfencing money that comes in.

    It also opens up the idea of the government specifically taxing higher education with targeted levies. It is notable that there has been no indication that the levy will be charged on private school fees, or fees paid to English language colleges, where these are paid by non-resident students. DfE itself suggests that £980m of international fees go to schools, and a further £850m goes to English language training – why leave a certain percentage of that on the table when it can be used to support disadvantaged young people in skills training?

    What would it achieve?

    In the end, even grants at the maximum level of £3,000 a year that were recommended by the Augar review wouldn’t have made much difference to student poverty, and there’s been a lot of inflation since.

    And a part of the idea of the levy was to reduce (albeit slightly) the number of study visas granted – if you recall, the Home Office report emerged in a month that everyone became concerned about students claiming asylum. If that part of the plan works (if that was ever really the plan, rather than a fortunate coincidence) then surely there would be less money to play with for maintenance – and any future government that attempts to reduce international higher education recruitment would be accused of taking the grants away from working class students on priority courses?

    The real value in the reintroduction of the grant is that it is politically totemic for Labour. But if it encourages more disadvantaged students to go into HE because of a perception of better affordability when they will still struggle, there will be both a financial and political cost in the long term.

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  • Judge Restores Another Batch of Frozen Grants to UCLA

    Judge Restores Another Batch of Frozen Grants to UCLA

    The court order was issued late Monday evening.

    A federal court order issued late Monday evening provides significant financial relief to the University of California, Los Angeles, restoring about $500 million in federal research grants amid an ongoing lawsuit with the Trump administration over alleged instances of antisemitism on campus.

    The preliminary injunction, first reported by CalMatters and Politico, is temporary. But for now it reinstates more than 500 grants from the National Institutes of Health, the Department of Defense and the Department of Labor, allowing hundreds, if not thousands, of university researchers to resume their work. That’s on top of a previous order in August from the same court that unfroze about 300 grants from the National Science Foundation.

    Between the two rulings, almost all of UCLA’s federal research grants have been restored.

    The funds were first withheld in late July, less than a week after the Justice Department accused the university of tolerating discrimination against Jewish students, faculty members and staff, in violation of federal civil rights law. The Trump administration later said UCLA could resolve the situation by paying $1.2 billion and agreeing to lengthy list of policy changes.

    But university researchers pushed back, using an existing broader lawsuit and injunction to challenge the grant freeze.

    In the end, District Judge Rita F. Lin, a Biden appointee, ruled in favor of the faculty members, saying the indefinite suspensions of grants was “likely arbitrary,” “capricious” and a violation of the Administrative Procedure Act.

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  • ED Wants Grants to Advance “Patriotic Education”

    ED Wants Grants to Advance “Patriotic Education”

    The Trump administration has made another move that historians say is an attempt to sanitize American history, but one the administration argued is necessary to ensure students have respect for the country.

    On Wednesday, Education Secretary Linda McMahon outlined a new plan for how her department would promote “patriotic education” by adding it to the list of priorities that can drive decisions for discretionary grants, including those that support programs at colleges and universities.

    “It is imperative to promote an education system that teaches future generations honestly about America’s Founding principles, political institutions, and rich history,” McMahon said in a statement about the new proposal. “To truly understand American values, the tireless work it has taken to live up to them, and this country’s exceptional place in world history is the best way to inspire an informed patriotism and love of country.”

    According to the proposal, which is open for public comment until Oct. 17, “patriotic education” refers to “a presentation of the history of America grounded in an accurate, honest, unifying, inspiring, and ennobling characterization of the American founding and foundational principles”; examines “how the United States has admirably grown closer to its noble principles throughout its history”; and advances the “concept that commitment to America’s aspirations is beneficial and justified.”

    McMahon’s other priorities for grant funding include evidence-based literacy, expanding education choice, returning education to the states and advancing AI in education.

    With this latest proposal, the department wants to focus “grant funds on programs that promote a patriotic education that cultivates citizen competency and informed patriotism among and communicates the American political tradition to students at all levels.” That could include projects geared toward helping students understand the “founding documents and primary sources of the American political tradition, in a manner consistent with the principles of a patriotic education,” according to the proposal.

    ‘Narrow Conception of Patriotism’

    However, professional historians who have read the proposal told Inside Higher Ed that the department’s patriotic education push is a politically motivated power grab.

    “I agree that American history should be presented with accuracy and honesty, based on solid historical evidence, and doing so does inspire people,” said Sarah Weicksel, executive director of the American Historical Association. “But the department’s priority statement has a narrow conception of patriotism and patriotic education.”

    She said that’s especially evident given the Trump administration’s numerous other policy changes aimed at presenting a version of American history that downplays or ignores the darkest parts of the country’s past, such as race-based slavery, the disenfranchisement of women and African Americans, and codified racial segregation.

    “That context tells us that the administration is interested in telling an uncomplicated celebration of American greatness,” Weicksel said. “Doing that flattens the past into a set of platitudes that are not rooted in the broader historical context, conflicts, contingencies and change over time that are central to historical thinking.”

    In March, Trump issued an executive order entitled “Restoring Truth and Sanity to American History,” prohibiting federal funding for exhibits or programs that “degrade shared American values, divide Americans based on race, or promote programs or ideologies inconsistent with Federal law and policy.” That prompted a review of all exhibits hosted by the Smithsonian Institution and the National Park Service, both of which have since removed multiple artifacts that don’t support Trump’s patriotic history push, including several that underscore the brutality of slavery.

    And as the 250th anniversary of the nation’s founding approaches, the government is in the process of planning commemorative civic education initiatives that advance its definition of patriotic history. To make that happen, it’s largely drawing on the input and expertise of conservative scholars and groups.

    The Education Department recently awarded $160 million in American history and civics grants for seminars for K–12 educators and students related to the Declaration of Independence anniversary next year. The agency didn’t specify which institutions got the money but previously said it would give priority to colleges and universities with “independent academic units dedicated to civic thought, constitutional studies, American history, leadership, and economic liberty,” which critics describe as conservative centers.

    In remarks at an event hosted by the Federalist Society and the Defense of Freedom Institute on Wednesday, McMahon criticized the state of civics education for students, citing a statistic that only 41 percent of young people say they love America.

    “That means the balance doesn’t love America,” she said. “Why don’t they love America? Why aren’t they proud to be Americans? It’s because they don’t know America. They don’t know the foundations, they don’t know the real history of our country … It’s really important that we teach respect for our flag, that we teach respect for our country.”

    While she did acknowledge that the Education Department can’t directly control curriculum, she noted that the department can use funding to encourage the types of education or programs it wants to see.

    The Education Department also announced Wednesday that it’s launching a coalition of 40 groups—including the conservative Heritage Foundation, Turning Point USA, Hillsdale College and the American First Policy Institute—to spearhead the America 250 Civics Education Coalition, which is “dedicated to renewing patriotism.” (McMahon chaired the American First Policy Institute before she became secretary.)

    “We celebrate Lincoln for his greatness in recalling the nation to the principles of its birth, the principles of the Declaration of Independence, the most beautiful political document in history,” Hillsdale president Larry Arnn said in a statement about the coalition. “It is time to repeat his work and the work of Jefferson and the Founders. We will work together to learn those principles, and for the love of them we will have a grand celebration.”

    ‘Pure Politics’

    But Weicksel with AHA said the government’s directives to omit parts of American history in classrooms, museums and other public spaces will undermine the public’s agency. “If citizens don’t have access to a historically accurate understanding of the past, how will they use that past to chart a new path for the future?”

    David Blight, a professor of history and Black studies at Yale University, said he interprets the department’s emphasis on patriotic education as “pure politics.”

    “It’s the politics of trying to use history to control people, including children, young people, the people who teach it, the people who write curriculum and the state legislatures that will design this stuff,” he said. “The government is trying to be a truth ministry.”

    While there have been other movements to control how the country remembers its history—including by U.S. senator Joseph McCarthy in the 1950s and the United Daughters of the Confederacy in the late 19th and early 20th centuries—Blight said these moves by the Trump administration are more powerful.

    “We’ve never had this come right from the White House, with the power of the executive branch and their control over so much money,” he said, urging educators to voice their opposition. “When federal money depends on pure ideology, we’re in very deep trouble, and that’s what they’re saying. That’s not even close to a democratic society.”

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