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  • Federal Grants for Area Studies and Foreign Language at Risk

    Federal Grants for Area Studies and Foreign Language at Risk

    For 67 years, the Department of Education has administered grants to universities to create centers devoted to foreign languages and area studies, a field focused on the study of the culture of a particular area or region. Now, those centers are under fire by the Trump administration, which has not released the funding the grantees expected to receive in July.

    The grants support what are known as National Resource Centers, which were originally developed as a national security tool to help the U.S. increase its international expertise in the midst of the Cold War and the aftermath of Soviet Union’s 1957 launch of Sputnik. Since then, their purpose has shifted with the times, now focusing not only on producing scholars but also on community outreach and collaboration with K–12 schools.

    The office responsible for administering the grants—International and Foreign Language Education—was dissolved and its entire staff laid off as part of the March reduction in force at the Department of Education. But it seemed IFLE’s programs, which were authorized under Title VI of the Higher Education Act of 1965, would live on; they were moved under the ED’s Office of Higher Education Programs, according to an internal communication shared with Inside Higher Ed at the time.

    Since then, funding has come through “in fits and starts,” Halina Goldberg, the director of Indiana University’s Robert F. Byrnes Russian and East European Institute (REEI), told Inside Higher Ed in an email, though ultimately, the center received all its promised funds for fiscal year 2024–25. REEI was part of the first cohort of NRCs and has been continuously funded by the program since then.

    But NRC directors, including Goldberg, are concerned the funds for the upcoming year—the final year of the program’s four-year cycle—may not come through, and that the Trump administration may be planning to demolish the program altogether. NRC leaders have received no notice from ED about whether or when the funds are coming, and some say their contacts at the department have expressed uncertainty about the program’s future.

    The funding cuts appear to be caused by the Office of Management and Budget; records show that the agency has not approved appropriations for programs formerly housed in IFLE, including the NRC program, as well as the Foreign Language and Area Studies fellowships, which fund scholarships and stipends for undergraduate and graduate students studying these disciplines. In total, about $85 million was appropriated for IFLE programs for FY 2025–26, including $60 million for NRCs and FLAS.

    “We’re just kind of in this holding pattern to learn whether our funds are going to be released or not. And there is some time pressure, because if that fiscal year 2025 funding is not allocated by Sept. 30, which is when the fiscal year, the government fiscal year ends, then it’s gone and we’re without funding,” said Kasia Szremski, associate director for the Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

    A Discipline in Crisis

    NRC grant recipients worry about what the funding freeze and potential elimination of the program will mean for the disciplines of foreign language and area studies, which have already taken a beating in recent years; many colleges have eliminated such programs as cost-saving measures— including West Virginia University, which gutted nearly all of its language programs in 2023. More recently, the University of Chicago has paused admissions to all its humanities Ph.D. programs, including a slew of language programs, for the coming academic year.

    Emanuel Rota, a professor in the Department of French and Italian at Urbana-Champaign who leads the university’s European Union Center, said he was already worried about the future of area studies and foreign language education, but “now I’m terribly scared.”

    “I think this seems to be, at this point, slightly part of a trend to provincialize the United States in a way that is troubling for the future of this generation of students, who are, at this point, used to learning from other experiences around the world; knowing about ways of teaching, other ways of learning; establishing collaborations early on; and being able to be multicultural and multilinguistic like their peers around the world,” he said. “And all of a sudden they are told, ‘You only speak one language, you only know one culture and you only know your local environment, and you have to live with that.’”

    It also comes amid efforts to quash other forms of cultural education and intercultural exchange. OMB also recently cut funding from a number of State Department exchange programs, according to Mark Overmann, executive director of the Alliance for International Exchange, which represents organizations that administer such programs.

    Larger entities like the Fulbright program are being spared, he said, but the cuts include critical programming aiming at increasing STEM education access for girls around the world, fostering intercultural exchange with students in the Middle East, bolstering the study of foreign affairs in the U.S. and more.

    International students and immigration broadly are also being targeted by the Trump administration, which has recently revoked thousands of student visas and increased barriers for overseas students studying in the U.S.

    “I think international exchange programs, mobility, the presence of international students on our campuses have long been something that is supported in a bipartisan way, and that has been played out for decades in tangible ways,” Overmann said. “One would be increases in funding in both Democrat and Republican administrations, as well as Congresses. This is something we have seen transcend party lines and those across the political spectrum see that the mobility of our students, of our young professionals—both Americans going abroad and international students and professionals coming here—is something that supports our national security, our diplomatic interests, our influence around the world and our economy, down to very local levels.”

    This isn’t the first time Trump has targeted NRCs. In 2018, during his first administration, ED criticized a Middle Eastern studies consortium at Duke University and the University of North Carolina for delivering programs it alleged had “little or no relevance to Title VI.” The programs under scrutiny included a conference about “Love and Desire in Modern Iran” and another focused on film criticism in the Middle East.

    “It was probably a harbinger of what’s happening now,” said Brian Cwiek, a former IFLE program officer who lost his job when the office was dissolved. “I think that’s really where a lot of the same folks became intent on shutting down this same program.”

    Area studies funding is also singled out in Project 2025, an agenda developed by the conservative think tank the Heritage Foundation that the Trump administration is following closely.

    “Congress should wind down so-called ‘area studies’ programs at universities (Title VI of the HEA), which, although intended to serve American interests, sometimes fund programs that run counter to those interests,” Project 2025 reads. “In the meantime, the next Administration should promulgate a new regulation to require the Secretary of Education to allocate at least 40 percent of funding to international business programs that teach about free markets and economics and require institutions, faculty, and fellowship recipients to certify that they intend to further the stated statutory goals of serving American interests.”

    Outreach at Risk

    Although funding may still come through before the September cutoff date, some centers are already feeling the pressure.

    At the Mario Einaudi Center for International Studies at Cornell University, which is home to two National Resource Centers, Kathi Colen Peck was responsible for administering an NRC-funded program focused on providing faculty development to professors at community colleges in upstate New York. Although the center has funding sources outside of ED, the community college program was almost entirely funded by an NRC grant.

    The program involved bringing international speakers—a dance instructor from Benin, for example—to give workshops in community college classrooms, as well as administering a fellowship for community college professors to create curricular projects.

    Once it became clear this year’s funding wasn’t going to become available when expected, Peck was laid off and the partnerships with community colleges for the upcoming academic year had to be discontinued.

    “The intention of [the outreach program] is really to sort of bridge resources and help the community college faculty have connections to the area studies expertise at, for example, Cornell. They’re able to leverage resources at Cornell where they wouldn’t necessarily have access to that in any other circumstances,” she said. “It’s really about trying to help the community college faculty internationalize their curricula.”

    At other campuses, cultural events and educational programs that NRC leaders say are immensely valuable to their communities could be on the chopping block. Hilary V. Finchum-Sung, the executive director of the Association for Asian Studies, said that the University of Michigan’s Korean Studies center, for example, hosts a free Korean film series at an off-campus theater that is open to members of the public. It’s an opportunity for members of the Ann Arbor community to see a film they likely never would otherwise—and to glean something new about a culture that they might be unfamiliar with.

    On the flip side, NRC programs can sometimes give immigrants a rare chance to connect with their culture on American soil. Szremski, of UIUC’s Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies, said the center has partnered with local libraries to hold a Latin American Story Time Program for about 15 years. At these events, they read children’s stories in English and Spanish, but also in other Latin American languages including Portuguese, Guaraní, Q’anjob’al, and Quechua.

    “This is particularly important in Champaign and Urbana, because even though we’re in central Illinois, we have a very large and very vibrant Latino community, many of whom are native speakers of Indigenous languages,” she said.

    Once, after a Latin American Story Time event, a library worker once told her, an older woman “came up to her in tears because she was a native Guaraní speaker and had never thought [she would] hear her native language again, really, now that she was living in the United States.”

    Cwiek noted that some faculty positions may also be at risk without NRC funding; though the grants usually cover only a small portion of a professor’s salary, that portion may be the difference that allows a college to offer certain world languages.

    Scholarship Uncertainty

    Students are also in imminent danger of losing scholarships due to the funding pause. Graduate students relying on Foreign Language and Area Studies Fellowships to fund their education in the new academic year still don’t know whether they will receive that money. Szremski said on Friday that one incoming fellow recently made the choice to withdraw from UIUC and instead study in Colombia for the upcoming academic year due to funding fears. With UIUC’s academic year beginning this week, others were forced to make the decision about whether to come to campus without knowing if they would receive the scholarships they’d been promised. Across the university’s NRCs, 53 students are awaiting FLAS funds.

    Other universities are in a similar position. At Cornell, 18 students will be impacted if the money doesn’t come through, according to Ellen Lust, the director of the Einaudi Center for International Studies and a government professor.

    These fellowships provide the cultural awareness, understanding and skills that the U.S. “has relied on to be a world leader. Students who benefited from NRC support have gone on to join the US Foreign Service, engage in international business, and educate new generations of global citizens. They have conducted international collaborations and research that that ultimately benefit Americans,” she wrote in an email to Inside Higher Ed.

    While the stipends allocated to undergraduate students are not as sizable as those for graduate students, Szremski said those recipients have told her they may have to take out private loans or start part-time jobs to fill the gap created by the missing FLAS money.

    The future of these grants remains unclear. The Senate’s appropriations bill maintains funding for IFLE programs, so even if the funding doesn’t come through this year, the program may be able to resume the following year.

    But if the NRC and FLAS programs are shuttered permanently, the effects will “be felt for generations to come,” wrote Lust.

    “Our current and future students are the foreign service officers, intelligence analysts and CEOs of the future,” she wrote. “Within a generation, US citizens will be ill-equipped to live, work and lead in a global world. They will be outmatched by those from other countries, who speak multiple languages, understand diverse cultures and have built relationships across borders. Ultimately, these policies weaken the US’ global position and will make America less secure and prosperous.”

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  • SCOTUS Ruling Has “Bleak Implications” for Researchers

    SCOTUS Ruling Has “Bleak Implications” for Researchers

    Researchers will have to challenge grant terminations in federal claims court.

    Photo illustration by Justin Morrison/Inside Higher Ed | SDI Productions/E+/Getty Images

    Hope is fading that federally funded researchers whose grants were terminated by the National Institutes of Health earlier this year will be able to resume their work as planned.

    On Thursday, the United States Supreme Court ruled 5 to 4 that any legal challenges to the grant terminations should be litigated in the Court of Federal Claims, not the federal district court system they’ve been moving through for months.

    It’s the latest twist in federally funded researchers’ legal fight to claw back nearly $800 million in medical research grants—though accounting for the multiyear grants that the NIH is refusing to fulfill puts that figure closer to $2 billion—the NIH terminated for running afoul of the Trump administration’s ideological priorities. Many of the grants funded programs that advanced diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives and research projects focused on topics such as LGBTQ+ health, vaccine hesitancy and racial disparities.

    Researchers sued the NIH in April and got a win in June when a federal district court judge in Massachusetts ordered the agency to reinstate the grants immediately. Although the NIH has since reinstated many of those grants, Scott Delaney, an epidemiologist at Harvard University and former lawyer who’s been tracking grant cancellations, told Inside Higher Ed that after Thursday’s ruling those reinstated grants will “almost certainly” be re-terminated. If that happens, “I don’t think they’ll get their money back.”

    That’s in part because the Supreme Court said researchers will have to re-file their lawsuits in federal claims court, which generally doesn’t have the power to issue injunctive relief that could keep grant money flowing during the litigation process. And it could take months or even years for the claims court to decide if researchers are owed damages.

    “Nobody has that kind of time. The nature of research is that you can’t just stop and restart it many months later,” said Delaney. “Folks have already had to do that once and many aren’t able to—they’ve had to lay off staff and lost contact with study participants. This additional delay probably renders the research unviable going forward.”

    Trump ‘Always Wins’

    Delaney is among numerous experts and advocates who say the decision is both a blow to the scientific research enterprise and the latest evidence that the Supreme Court is inclined to interpret the law to favor the Trump administration’s whims.

    “Make no mistake: This was a decision critical to the future of the nation, and the Supreme Court made the wrong choice,” the Association of American Medical Colleges said in a statement. “History will look upon these mass NIH research grant terminations with shame. The Court has turned a blind eye to this grievous attack on science and medicine, and we call upon Congress to take action to restore the rule of law at NIH.”

    Jeremy Berg, who served as director of the National Institute of General Medical Sciences from 2003 to 2011, said in an email to Inside Higher Ed that while “many (but not all) grants from the lawsuits that had been terminated have been reinstated at this point,” the big question the Supreme Court’s ruling raises now “is whether NIH will start to re-terminate them.”

    Although a 5-4 majority did agree on Thursday that the district can review NIH’s reasoning for the terminations and kept in place a court order blocking the guidance that prompted the cancellations, Berg said the mixed ruling is “potentially very damaging” because redirecting the case to a different court means “the stay blocking the required reinstatements could go into effect.”

    He added that Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson’s dissent sums up his interpretation of the ruling’s implications. “This is Calvinball jurisprudence with a twist,” Jackson wrote. “Calvinball has only one rule: There are no fixed rules. We seem to have two: That one, and this Administration always wins.”

    That’s how Samuel Bagenstos, a professor of law and public policy at the University of Michigan and former general counsel to the Department of Health and Human Services, interpreted the decision, too.

    “The message the courts sent yesterday is very strong that they are going to let the Trump administration shut down the grants right now and remit grantees to the really uncertain process of going to the Court of Federal Claims and potentially getting damages in the future,” he said in an interview with Inside Higher Ed Friday.

    “But that’s really cold comfort for the grantees,” Bagenstos added. “If they can’t get the grants restarted right now, they probably can’t continue their research projects, and the prospect of maybe getting damages in the future doesn’t keep those research projects alive. It’s a bad sign for the entire research community.”

    The NIH is far from the only federal agency that has canceled federal research grants that don’t align with the Trump administration’s ideologies. The National Science Foundation, the Education Department and the National Endowment for the Humanities are all facing legal challenges in federal district courts after freezing or canceling grants.

    And the Supreme Court’s ruling on the NIH’s terminations has implications for those cases, as well.

    “The message seems to be pretty clear that if you have an ongoing grant that’s been terminated and you want to go to court to keep the money flowing, you’re out of luck,” Bagenstos said. “It’s got very bleak implications for all researchers who are depending on continuing the flow of federal grants.”

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  • Federal Judge Rules in Favor of Religious Colleges in Minn.

    Federal Judge Rules in Favor of Religious Colleges in Minn.

    Religious colleges that require students to sign a faith statement cannot be shut out of a Minnesota program that funds the dual enrollment of high school students in the state’s public and private postsecondary institutions, a federal judge ruled Friday.

    U.S. District Judge Nancy Brasel’s ruling overturns a Minnesota law prohibiting Christian colleges that participate in the state’s 40-year-old Postsecondary Enrollment Options program from forcing students to pass a religious test. The state Education Department and LGBTQ+ advocates had sought such legislation for years on the grounds that faith statements discriminate against students who are not Christian, straight or cisgender. It finally passed in 2023, under a Democratic State Legislature.

    The families of several high school students seeking to earn credits at two Christian institutions in the state, Crown College and the University of Northwestern, then sued, arguing that the law violated their First Amendment right to religious freedom. The ban on faith statements was suspended while the legal battle played out.

    “This dispute requires the court to venture into the delicate constitutional interplay of religion and publicly-funded education,” Judge Brasel said in her 70-page ruling. “In doing so, the court heeds the Supreme Court’s instruction that the First Amendment gives special solicitude to the rights of religious organizations.”

    Brasel noted in her ruling that the two Christian colleges have received nearly $40 million to cover the costs of the PSEO program since the 2017–18 academic year; she wrote that the University of Northwestern admits about 70 percent of dual-enrollment applicants. Over all, some 60,000 high school students have benefited from PSEO, The Minneapolis Star Tribune noted.

    The Becket Fund for Religious Liberty, which represented the plaintiffs, applauded the decision.

    “Minnesota tried to cut off educational opportunities to thousands of high schoolers simply for their faith. That’s not just unlawful—it’s shameful,” said Becket senior counsel Diana Thomson, according to the Associated Press. “This ruling is a win for families who won’t be strong-armed into abandoning their beliefs, and a sharp warning to politicians who target them.”

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  • George Mason Must Not Comply With the Government’s Demands (opinion)

    George Mason Must Not Comply With the Government’s Demands (opinion)

    The Department of Education is demanding a personal apology from George Mason president Gregory Washington.

    Bill O’Leary/The Washington Post via Getty Images

    On Aug. 22, the U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights announced that George Mason University, led by President Gregory Washington, violated Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. The agency demanded an extraordinary remedy—President Washington must issue a personal apology, to be posted “prominently on the University website,” retract statements supporting diversity and abandon practices that even hint at equity-focused hiring. The message to George Mason, where I was a professor of public policy for nearly two decades, is clear: Equity is now presented as a civil rights violation.

    Title VI was meant to prevent discrimination, not to penalize institutions for recognizing that diversity matters. With courts allowing the consideration of diversity as one factor among many in holistic decisions, OCR’s stance appears to be a politically motivated shift away from long-standing interpretations—not a clear enforcement of the law. Just last week, a federal judge “struck down two Trump administration actions aimed at eliminating diversity, equity and inclusion programs at the nation’s schools and universities,” the Associated Press reported.

    Most alarming in OCR’s proposed resolutions is the demand for a personal apology from the university’s first Black president. Washington, who called for eliminating racist legacies on campus, is now being compelled to apologize for doing just that. This isn’t simply an institutional issue—it’s a deeply symbolic act that resembles public shaming of a leader of color for advocating inclusion. It evokes the disturbing history of targeting minority leaders through law and policy.

    This move against Mason is not an isolated incident; it is part of a broader effort to reshape public institutions. Consider the Trump administration’s recent attacks on the Smithsonian Institution. The president criticized the Smithsonian for highlighting slavery’s brutality and diversity in its exhibits, calling the museums “out of control” and “too woke.” He ordered a comprehensive review of Smithsonian content to align it with his vision of “American exceptionalism,” demanding changes to exhibits begin within 120 days.

    Here again, ideology replaces impartial curation. A common thread emerges: Whether in higher education or national museums, diversity and sincere historical reflection are viewed not as civic strengths but as transgressions. Institutional autonomy and academic governance are being subordinated to partisan narratives.

    Should we dismiss the department’s findings as another part of the culture wars? I worry the consequences are much more serious. If OCR’s interpretation of Title VI holds, even referring to diversity as a priority could trigger federal enforcement. Schools are feel compelled to eliminate inclusive programs, silence voices advocating for equity and adhere to a limited historical perspective—all out of fear of losing funding.

    That chilling effect would cripple higher education when it needs vibrancy most. Universities must remain havens of reasoned inquiry, honest history and inclusive excellence. When federal agencies start dictating not only policy but the exact language leaders must use, we enter coercive territory.

    GMU’s faculty, students, alums and board members must unite in opposition to OCR’s unjustified demands. The proposed resolution is not genuine compliance; it’s forced capitulation driven by intimidation. Institutions should not be compelled to apologize for standing up for the principles of true equal opportunity.

    This moment is a clarion call for universities. Yesterday, it was the University of Pennsylvania and Harvard, dragged through headline-grabbing investigations. It was New College of Florida, where political appointees dismantled DEI programs and faculty governance. It was the University of Virginia, accused by the Department of Justice of defying federal antidiscrimination laws. Today it is Mason. Tomorrow, it could be UCLA, Michigan, Wisconsin or any other institution that values diversity, equity and academic freedom. No campus—public or private, flagship or regional—should assume it is immune.

    George Mason should reject the department’s findings and oppose this injustice. Capitulation is not compliance; it’s surrender. If Mason yields, it will damage its credibility and encourage more attacks on higher education nationwide. When universities submit to politically motivated demands disguised as enforcement, they legitimize them and invite more. Silence will be perceived as complicity. Resistance is crucial to protecting the fundamental principles of higher education: autonomy, fairness and the freedom to teach and learn without political interference.

    This is not the first time universities have faced pressure to abandon their commitments to equity and truth. In the 1960s, Southern universities used “law and order” to oppose desegregation. In the 1980s and 1990s, Black faculty and administrators pushing for fair representation often faced vilification and political retaliation. Today, the same tactics are being used, only now they are masked in the language of “civil rights enforcement.”

    What is happening at Mason is part of that history. Title VI, a law born of the civil rights movement to expand opportunity, is being distorted into a tool to silence leaders of color and dismantle diversity initiatives. President Washington’s commitment to pursuing equity should be celebrated, not criminalized. Twisting Title VI into an instrument of ideological punishment and racial scapegoating should alarm everyone who values a democracy that depends on honest history, inclusive leadership and academic freedom.

    And let’s be honest: Coercing a university president to issue a scripted public apology isn’t enforcement—it’s extortion. It’s the same tactic organized crime always uses: Demand submission, humiliate and make an example of one victim to scare others. That has no place in a democracy, much less in higher education.

    The struggle now is the same as it was then: whether our universities will stay places of truth, inclusion and independent thought, or whether they will become tools of partisan control. Mason must choose the first. And the rest of us—in Virginia and across the country—must support it.

    James Finkelstein is professor emeritus of Public Policy at George Mason University

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  • The jobs gen AI will change the most – Campus Review

    The jobs gen AI will change the most – Campus Review

    A new report has found that clerical and administrative workers, telemarketers, salespeople, receptionists and programmers are the most likely to face work changes caused by generative artificial intelligence (gen AI).

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  • DOJ Deems Definition of HSIs Unconstitutional, Won’t Defend

    DOJ Deems Definition of HSIs Unconstitutional, Won’t Defend

    Arizona State University (left) and the University of California, San Diego, are two HSIs.

    Photo illustration by Justin Morrison/Inside Higher Ed | InnaPoka and yongyuan/iStock/Getty Images

    The country’s roughly 600 Hispanic-serving institutions are in peril of losing hundreds of millions of dollars annually from the federal government, after the Department of Justice said it won’t defend the program against a lawsuit alleging the way HSIs are currently defined is unconstitutional. The suit challenges the requirement that a college or university’s undergraduate population must be at least a quarter Hispanic to receive HSI funding.

    U.S. solicitor general D. John Sauer wrote to House Speaker Mike Johnson July 25 that the DOJ “has determined that those provisions violate the equal-protection component of the Fifth Amendment’s Due Process Clause.” Federal law requires DOJ officers to notify Congress when they decide to refrain from defending a law on the grounds that it’s unconstitutional.

    Citing the 2023 U.S. Supreme Court ruling that banned affirmative action in student admissions, Sauer wrote that “the Supreme Court has explained that ‘[o]utright racial balancing’ is ‘patently unconstitutional’” and said “its precedents make clear that the government lacks any legitimate interest in differentiating among universities based on whether ‘a specified number of seats in each class’ are occupied by ‘individuals from the preferred ethnic groups.’” 

    The Washington Free Beacon, a conservative outlet, first reported on the letter Friday. The DOJ subsequently provided Inside Higher Ed with the letter but gave no further comment or interviews.

    The Free Beacon wrote that “the letter likely spells the end for the HSI grants, which the Trump administration is now taking steps to wind down.” The Education Department wrote in an email, “We can confirm the Free Beacon’s reporting,” but didn’t provide Inside Higher Ed an interview or answer further written questions. 

    Just because the executive branch has given up defending the program doesn’t necessarily mean it’s over—or that the group Students for Fair Admissions and the state of Tennessee have won the lawsuit they filed in June. The Hispanic Association of Colleges and Universities moved to intervene in the case late last month, asking U.S. District Court judge Katherine A. Crytzer to add the group as a defendant. She has yet to rule, but the Education Department and education secretary Linda McMahon, the current defendants, didn’t oppose this intervention. 

    The legal complaint from Students for Fair Admissions and Tennessee  asks Crytzer to declare the program’s ethnicity-based requirements unconstitutional, but not necessarily to end the program altogether. Students for Fair Admissions is the group whose suits against Harvard University and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill yielded the 2023 Supreme Court decision banning affirmative action in admissions. In the suit over the HSI program, that group and Tennessee’s attorney general, Jonathan Skrmetti, now argue that the admissions ruling means Tennessee colleges and universities can’t use affirmative action to increase Hispanic student enrollments in order to qualify for HSI funding. 

    Deborah Santiago, co-founder and chief executive officer of Excelencia in Education, which promotes Latino student success, said Friday that the Education Department in June “opened a competition to award grants for this fiscal year for HSIs.”

    “There are proposals to the Department of Education right now that they said they were going to allocate,” Santiago said, noting that the program was set to dole out more than $350 million this fiscal year—money that institutions use for faculty development, facilities and other purposes. 

    “The program doesn’t require that any of the money go to Hispanics at all,” she said. For a college or university to qualify for the program, at least half of the student body must be low-income, in addition to the requirement that a quarter be Hispanic. 

    “The value of a program like this has really been investing in institutions that have a high concentration of low-income, first generation students,” Santiago said. 

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  • Ed Dept. Says George Mason Violated Civil Rights Law

    Ed Dept. Says George Mason Violated Civil Rights Law

    The Virginia university has been under investigation since early July.

    John M. Chase/iStock Unreleased/Getty Images

    Gregory Washington, president of Virginia’s George Mason University, must apologize to the university community for “promoting unlawful discriminatory practices” in order to resolve allegations that the institution violated civil rights law, the Department of Education announced Friday.

    The department claims that the university has illegally factored race and “other immutable characteristics” into hiring, promotion and tenure practices since at least 2020.

    Acting Assistant Secretary for Civil Rights Craig Trainor said the unlawful practices began shortly after the murder of George Floyd, when Washington called on faculty and administrators to expunge campus of “racist vestiges” by “intentionally discriminat[ing] on the basis of race.” 

    “You can’t make this up,” Trainor said in the statement. “Despite this unfortunate chapter in Mason’s history, the university now has the opportunity to come into compliance with federal civil rights laws by entering into a Resolution Agreement with the Office for Civil Rights.”

    The Education Department first announced in early July that it would investigate GMU for potentially violating Title VI of the Civil Rights Act, which bars discrimination based on race and national origin. Later that month, the Department of Justice announced it would investigate the institution’s Faculty Senate after the panel passed a resolution in support of Washington, who had been quick to push back on the Trump administration and defend the university’s commitment to addressing social injustice. Many conservatives called for Washington—the institution’s first Black president—to be fired. But the university’s Board of Visitors spared him at a meeting Aug. 1, at least for now, and gave him a raise.

    Trainor said in the statement that “the Trump-McMahon Department of Education will not allow racially exclusionary practices—which violate the Civil Rights Act, the Equal Protection Clause, and Supreme Court precedent—to continue corrupting our nation’s educational institutions.”

    In addition to an apology, the Education Department is demanding that GMU post that statement “prominently” to the university’s website, remove any contrary statements from the past and revise campus policies to prevent future race-based programming. It also wants the institution to begin an annual training session for all individuals involved in recruitment, hiring, promotion or tenure decisions to emphasize the ban on racial consideration and provide records documenting compliance whenever they are requested moving forward.

    George Mason officials have 10 days to respond to the department’s proposed resolution agreement.

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  • A Look at WashU’s Continuing Education Program

    A Look at WashU’s Continuing Education Program

    Continuing-education programs are one way for colleges and universities to provide targeted offerings and credentialing opportunities for alumni, adults in the region lacking postsecondary education and the local workforce. They also provide flexible support offerings, recognizing the competing identities and responsibilities adult learners hold.

    The School of Continuing and Professional Studies at Washington University in St. Louis houses certificate programs, undergraduate and graduate degrees, prison education initiatives, and lifelong learning courses for adults in retirement.

    In the most recent episode of Voices of Student Success, host Ashley Mowreader speaks with Sean Armstrong, dean of the School of Continuing and Professional Studies, to talk about the program’s goals and ways the school uplifts adult learners of all types.

    An edited version of the podcast appears below.

    Q: Most people know WashU; it’s a pretty well-known institution in the U.S. But what is CAPS and what is the mission, and [who are] some of the students that you’re serving?

    Sean Armstrong, dean of the school of continuing and professional education at Washington University in St. Louis

    Washington University in St. Louis

    A: Let me start with definitions. First, Washington University in St. Louis, we’ll call WashU. Continuing and Professional Studies, we’ll call CAPS. Nontraditional or adult learners, we call modern learners here—those for whom school is not their only priority. And then noncredit, we call professional credit because we don’t like “nons.” I think calling anything a “non” is just a negative, and it seems to say it doesn’t matter. So those are the terms that we use.

    The program itself is an opportunity for modern learners to access Washington University in a way that they may not have been able to before. This university started out close to 100 years ago, and it was kind of a niche type of school, accessible to certain individuals but not broadly accessible. So our goal is to make this school broadly accessible. Many of our programs are based on regional workforce needs and, of course, [are for] those who find themselves in the category of some college, no degree, and they would like to return and complete their degree.

    Q: Can you talk a little bit more about the students who enroll? When it comes to demographics or general trends that you see among the people who enroll in CAPS, what are those?

    A: Over 80 percent of our students are employed full-time; I think over 50 percent have multiple jobs. Over 90 percent have families, whether that means they have children or they’re caring for an adult, a parent or older age demographic. I would say 80 percent of our students fall in the 25 to 49 age range. We do have some that are younger, and of course, we have some that are older, but [most] fall squarely in that range. Many of them are looking to find a way back because they want to advance or shift gears and enter another career. The bedrocks [of industry] here in St. Louis are health care, emerging technologies like data, and leadership and management.

    Q: I like the focus that you placed on career. One, these students are already working—they know what it’s like to be in the workforce and be employed—compared to maybe some of our traditional undergraduate students. But two, they have a very clear career goal, and they’re looking to do something different with their lives.

    I wonder if you can talk about that paradigm where it’s not that they need a job, it’s that they want a different job, or that they’re looking to do something maybe tangential or in a higher-paid role.

    A: I think being aspirational doesn’t stop when you’re 22 years old. That’s why we have lifelong learning, and our role is to meet people where they are and to create pathways that lead them to their goals.

    We call ourselves partners in student success. We don’t see ourselves as necessarily the educator or the school; we want to be a partner. We want to talk about what your goals are, what your motivations are, and then try to use the resources within the university and within the community to build that pathway to where you want to go.

    Q: I just want to say it’s been great listening to the word choice that you all are using, like a “partner,” a “modern learner” and not using “noncredit.” Is that an institutional initiative or is that something you’re passionate about, the idea of using asset-based language?

    A: I am super passionate about it. I think the institution has adopted it as well. I can’t say what the language was before I arrived, but I’ve been using a lot of it here.

    A lot of it has been to change the perception of the students who enroll within CAPS and the perception of the individuals in our community who are coming to us. I don’t want anybody to be viewed in a negative light, one, and I don’t think there needs to be a comparison between learners, right? They’re all learners, they all have aspirations and we’re all here to support them. I think of all of this as “We are all in this.”

    Q: Let’s talk about some of the programs. What’s the most popular degree offering that you all have, or nondegree offering?

    A: The bachelor of science in integrated studies is a degree program that has many different areas of study and certificate options. That is a popular program because this is really dedicated as a some college, no degree type of program. We accept up to 85 transfer credit hours in this program, which is super generous. It’s not something I want to change, and hope I don’t have to, for various reasons, but it allows us to really be open to students.

    WashU is a writing school. It is a school that wants you to be able to communicate clearly, either through writing or speaking. And so our writing and communication courses, there is an assessment that we do to see where individuals are, and then to help them build the skill to be able to be successful in our courses. So that’s a really popular one.

    Our certificates, you know, I try to put my finger on which ones [are popular], because I think our certificate enrollments have doubled in the last year, and we’re trying to understand why.

    Our certificates serve two purposes. One, they’re skill-based, so they’re an opportunity for someone to learn a skill within a year and then have that credential and move on. But they’re also stackable to a bachelor’s degree, so if somebody has some college, no degree, or maybe they have an A.A. [associate of arts] degree, they want to earn their certificate because they’re not feeling too confident about entering into a bachelor’s degree program, this is a really good way for them to be able to do that. We’ll begin to uncover this year as to why that’s so popular, but it’s been going gangbusters.

    And then I have to tell you about our “heart” programs. We market them as our community programs, but they’re programs that are central to our heart. They’re our prison education program, our English language program, our master of arts in teaching and learning, and our OSHA Lifelong Learning Institute program.

    The four of those are really community-based. Prison education, we offer face-to-face degree programs in two prisons in Missouri and re-entry support for individuals who are returning home. In our English language program, we offer opportunities for individuals who are international students to communicate clearly, present clearly. But we also had an opportunity to turn that program towards the community, for individuals who lack the English skills to be a good fit for a job—you have to communicate clearly on any job. So we had individuals who were here that had medical degrees and wanted to work in the medical field, and so we’re helping them to be able to bridge that gap.

    I mentioned our master of arts in teaching and learning; teaching is just necessary. So we’re trying to do all that we can to be helpful, especially here in the St. Louis region. And then our OSHA Lifelong Learning Program offers opportunities for individuals who are over 50 to continue learning for the rest of their lives.

    Q: That’s awesome. I have a personal passion for lifelong learner classes because they’re so niche and there are so many different ways to engage the community there.

    You talked a little about the community engagement piece of CAPS, but I wonder if we can dig into that a bit more. You know, WashU has historically been very selective in who it admits and how it relates to the St. Louis community as a whole. How does this further that town-and-gown relationship and encourage St. Louisans to see themselves as part of WashU?

    A: Our focus is on the region and on individuals who really don’t have the option of being a residential student. They have to be either part-time, some of them are three-quarter time, but they cannot live on campus. That’s not an option, because they just have other things going on. And so that’s our niche. That’s kind of the gap that we’ve been able to fill.

    I am happy to say that WashU has been very supportive, very enthusiastic about that population of students. Again, we don’t compare. I think the WashU residential students are probably some of the brightest students I’ve met in my career, probably top 1 or 2 percent from around the world. And I’m not trying to say our students are not, but you know that they’re not 18, either.

    They’re 30 years old with two children and other obligations. Household operations is a real thing, trying to figure out what needs to get paid and what doesn’t. That’s not to say our residential students don’t have those types of concerns, but for our [CAPS] students, it is something that can sometimes challenge how they appear in our setting.

    Q: There was a study by Trellis Strategies that found a majority of community college students or those enrolled part-time were more likely to consider themselves workers who are students and not necessarily students who are workers. It sounds like that’s the population you’re talking about, where their education is important to them, but there are other things that are ranking towards the top first.

    You serve a variety of adults in a variety of different contexts. What is that like for you, as the dean of a school like this, to wear all these hats and engage with all these different types of programs and support mechanisms to encourage student success?

    A: I’ve always liked the full-spectrum model of adult education. We’ve seen bits and pieces—the community college, of course, has a piece. Typically, school districts will have a piece, universities will have a piece. I’ve always liked, “OK, there’s really no job too small if there’s a need in the region. So let’s attack all of it.”

    I think that vision starts with me, and of course, I’m kind of the mad scientist sometimes, but the support and the passion for the individuals that I work with are really what makes this happen. It’s interesting because we were talking the other day in a leadership team meeting, and I said, “I think one of the questions I am going to ask in interviews from now on is, ‘How does it make you feel to help somebody? Does it make you feel good, or is it just you’ve checked the box?’” And I think, for the most part, in our organization, it makes people feel good to do this type of work.

    Q: Absolutely. What are some of the challenges in the work that you do?

    A: Time is our biggest challenge. There are things that people needed yesterday, and we’re just unable to create a program as quickly as the need arises or has arisen. There are people who are finding out about us and wish they had known about us a year ago, and so we’re behind the gun on that. But really, it’s time for us. I think we are ready to do, as I think my daughter would say, we’re ready to do the most in any given circumstance.

    Q: One initiative that we didn’t talk too much about that I want to highlight is Extend(Ed) and this idea of equipping professionals to advance in their career. Can you talk a little bit about that initiative and how it works?

    A: Sure. Extend(Ed) is the professional credits—the noncredit space is what it’s typically called, but we call it professional credits. I call it creative solutions for workforce needs. It’s a model that I see us offering 100-plus short-term courses or programs in within the next, I’d say, 18 months.

    We’re looking at synchronous opportunities, asynchronous opportunities, and they’ll be online mostly. I think there’ll be some that’ll be based on an employer’s needs. We’re working with a few employers on creating programs that they asked for. And they’ll be co-created, which is key, because I never want somebody to leave and say, “We didn’t really get what we wanted.” It was like, “Oh, we discussed this.”

    So we’ll be on-site delivering that particular program. Extend(Ed) allows us to be really creative and really responsive to the needs of industry or even community organizations. And they’re affordable. We’re trying to make them as affordable as possible.

    Q: Who are the faculty in this work?

    A: They’re subject-matter experts, so they are working in the field. They’re doing the work on a day-to-day basis, so they’re able to link what students are learning in the text with real life and what they’re doing at work, and I think our students really appreciate that.

    We’ve had students who have enrolled with us, who were our residential students, who also appreciate the perspective of the faculty that teach for us, and also the students and their real-world experiences also. It creates a different dimension of diversity, I think, within the classroom, and maybe an elevated level of conversation when you’re talking about, “I do this on a daily basis.”

    One question I like to ask students—our students in particular—is “Is there anything that you learned in the classroom last week that you were able to apply recently?” And they all say yes, and they’ll say, “this thing,” so it’s pretty cool.

    Q: What’s next for CAPS? What are some of your goals for this upcoming academic year?

    A: I mentioned one with Extend(Ed). I think we want to deepen partnerships. Partnerships are central to what I do. It’s in my background; a really deep knowledge of how to create partnerships has been what my career has been all about for the past 25 years, and so I want to continue to do that in St. Louis. And then we always strive to improve student success and student service. So that’s another area that we’d like to ensure that we keep top of mind.

    Q: Are your student support services similar to those for residential students or how do they look different?

    A: It’s slightly different. Our model is based on the coaching model, and so there is more of the directive “Here are the courses that you will need to take in order to graduate.” But where the traditional student affairs or student support for a residential student would be based on a living and learning community, ours is more based on the how-to.

    Our students are more confronted with, “I don’t know if this is the right time to go back, but I need to.” And then there might be some impostor syndrome also. So we’re focused on how to be successful—What was your motivation for doing all of this?—and then reminding students of that motivation as we guide them along that path.

    Q: I wonder if you have any advice or insight for others who work in this space, either in higher education broadly or in continuing education spaces, encouragement on how to do this work well or a lesson you’ve learned doing this work.

    A: One lesson that I’ve learned is to talk to all of your surrounding organizations to understand what their role is in the space. When we talk about some college, no degree [students], the first thing I say is “There’s no competition among us, because that population is so large that if we ran at double our capacity, we wouldn’t be able to meet the need.” So it might be better for us to look at what we all are doing. If we want to establish swim lanes, we can. If there are ways that we can collaborate, we should. And that would be the one advice that I’d give people who are, depending on the population, some college, no degree is definitely one of those, but really to partner with one another, collaborate on student success.

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  • Most Students Affected by OBBBA Student Loan Changes

    Most Students Affected by OBBBA Student Loan Changes

    Thirty-five percent of those surveyed don’t think they’ll be able to finish college because of the changes.

    Photo illustration by Justin Morrison/Inside Higher Ed | Feverpitched/iStock/Getty Images

    The majority of current college students—61 percent—surveyed recently say that several changes to the federal student loan system that became law earlier this summer will directly impact them, according to a new poll from U.S. News & World Report.

    The key changes that students expect to affect them include caps on how much students can borrow, the elimination of some income-based repayment plans and the end of Grad PLUS loans.

    The poll, which surveyed 1,190 graduate and undergraduate students earlier this month, asked students about what various provisions in the One Big Beautiful Bill Act would mean for them. Many respondents (38 percent) said they would have to take out private loans to balance the effects of the law, while others (35 percent) said they may not be able to finish college at all. About a quarter said they were even considering joining the military to help pay for college.

    “I wanted to go to medical school, but now I won’t,” one student wrote, according to U.S. News.

    At the same time, one in five students said they were unaware of the changes to students loans, while another 39 percent said they were “fuzzy on the details” of the OBBBA. Twenty-two percent said they understood the law but not how they will personally be affected.

    Some students also reported supporting the bill’s provisions; about one in five students said they approved, respectively, of loan caps for graduate students, caps for medical and law students, and the elimination of certain income-based repayment plans. Slightly fewer, 17 percent, approve of eliminating Grad PLUS loans.

    About 63 percent of students said they reached out to their financial aid offices for help navigating the bill’s effects, and three-quarters of those students found their financial aid offices helpful. About half of students (51 percent) also reported that their universities had been transparent about the effects of the OBBBA.

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  • Survey Shows High Graduation and Employment Rates

    Survey Shows High Graduation and Employment Rates

    College Possible’s latest alumni survey shows strong outcomes for participants in its coaching program, including a 93 percent five-year graduation rate for those who attended a four-year college and high rates of employment and job satisfaction.

    According to the report, which is based on a survey of 1,300 of the college access nonprofit’s more than 100,000 graduates, 95 percent are employed, 83 percent are employed full-time and more than four in five respondents said they felt fulfilled by their jobs.

    The salaries of College Possible graduates are also high, with half reporting salaries over $60,000. The median salary for those working in STEM fields is $101,650, while those in non-STEM careers made a median income of $46,680. Sixty-eight percent of respondents indicated they feel at least somewhat financially secure.

    The report also highlights that most of College Possible’s graduates say they benefited significantly from the coaching program, with nine in 10 saying they would recommend College Possible to others and 17 percent returning to coach other students or work for the organization in another capacity.

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