Tag: layoffs

  • University of Southern California signals layoffs amid $200M budget gap

    University of Southern California signals layoffs amid $200M budget gap

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    Dive Brief: 

    • The University of Southern California plans to use layoffs and other budget austerity measures to tackle a $200 million operating deficit and gird against a massive blow to federal funding, Interim President Beong-Soo Kim said in a community message on Monday. 
    • On top of USC’s growing budget shortfall, which ballooned from $158 million in fiscal year 2024, officials are now grappling with federal headwinds affecting the outlook for research support, student financial aid and international enrollment, Kim said.
    • Lower federal research funding could cost the highly selective private university $300 million — or more — each year, Kim said. “To deal decisively with our financial challenges, we need to transform our operating model, and that will require layoffs,” he said. 

    Dive Insight: 

    Kim pointed out that USC isn’t alone in making painful budget decisions — but said that didn’t make the news any easier to hear. Indeed, many other well-known research universities have also been tightening their budgets and signaling layoffs amid the Trump administration’s widespread federal grant terminations. 

    That includes Stanford University, a fellow California college, and Brown University, in Rhode Island, which have both signaled potential staff reductions as they contend with federal funding shifts. Boston University, another private nonprofit, recently cut 120 employees and eliminated an equal number of vacant positions to deal with those challenges. 

    Kim did not disclose how many employees the university plans to lay off, and a USC spokesperson did not provide more details in response to questions Tuesday. But Kim said in his message to faculty and staff that USC has also taken other measures to shore up its budget. 

    The university will forego merit raises for the 2026 fiscal year, has ended certain services from third parties, and tightened discretionary and travel spending. It’s also planning to sell unused properties, streamline operations and adjust pay for the most highly compensated employees. 

    Kim, however, said it wasn’t feasible to bank on increased tuition revenue, drawing down more on the university’s endowment or taking out additional debt. 

    “Each of these ‘solutions’ would simply shift our problem onto the backs of future generations of Trojans,” Kim said, referring to the university’s mascot and student body nickname. 

    He also noted that the university could not likely count on federal funding returning to prior norms. “While we will continue to advocate for the vital importance of research and our academic mission, we cannot rely on the hope that federal support will revert to historical levels,” he said. 

    Kim’s message comes just two weeks into his tenure as the college’s interim leader, making it one of his first acts. 

    USC depends heavily on federal research funding. In fiscal 2024, the university received $569 million for federally funded research, according to a recent FAQ posted to its website. Overall, the university brought in nearly $7.5 billion in operating revenue that year and had $7.6 billion in operating expenses.

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  • SCOTUS Allows Mass Layoffs at Education Department

    SCOTUS Allows Mass Layoffs at Education Department

    Before Trump took office, the Education Department had 4,133 employees. After the mass layoffs, the department will have fewer than 2,200 staffers.

    Photo illustration by Justin Morrison/Inside Higher Ed | Tierney L. Cross/Getty Images | Matveev_Aleksandr and raweenuttapong/iStock/Getty Images

    The Supreme Court gave Education Secretary Linda McMahon the go-ahead Monday to proceed in firing half the department’s staff and transferring certain responsibilities to other agencies.

    The unsigned, one-paragraph order does not explain why a majority of justices decided to overturn a lower court injunction that an appeals court upheld. It did, however, explain that the injunction will remain blocked as lawsuits challenging mass layoffs at the department continue. The high court order represents a major step forward in President Donald Trump’s effort to dismantle the 45-year-old agency.

    “Today, the Supreme Court again confirmed the obvious: the President of the United States, as the head of the Executive Branch, has the ultimate authority to make decisions about staffing levels, administrative organization, and day-to-day operations of federal agencies,” McMahon said in a statement about the decision. The department will now “promote efficiency and accountability and to ensure resources are directed where they matter most—-to students, parents, and teachers.”

    The American Federation of Government Employees, the union representing the department’s staff, said the ruling was “deeply disappointing” and would allow the Trump administration to continue implementing an “anti-democratic” plan that is “misalign[ed] with the Constitution.” Sheria Smith, president of AFGE Local 252, added that just because McMahon can dismantle the department, that doesn’t mean she has to.

    “Let’s be clear,” Smith wrote, “despite this decision, the Department of Education has a choice—a choice to recommit to providing critical services for the American people and reject political agendas. The agency doesn’t have to move forward with this callous act of eliminating services and terminating dedicated workers.”

    The original ruling from a Maryland district judge required McMahon to reinstate more than 2,000 employees who were laid off in March. (As of July 8, 527 of those employees had already found other jobs.)

    Higher education policy advocates and laid-off staffers warned that the department was already struggling to keep up with the overload of civil rights complaints and financial aid applications. With half the workforce, they said, fulfilling those statutory duties would be nearly impossible.

    In addition to the layoffs, the lower court order prevented McMahon from carrying out Trump’s executive order to close the department to the “maximum extent appropriate and permitted by law.” Department officials later revealed in court filings that the order blocked a plan to send funding for career and technical education programs to the Department of Labor.

    The departments reached an agreement in May regarding the CTE programs, but neither said anything about it publicly. CTE advocates worry that putting Labor in charge of about $2.7 billion in grants could sow confusion and diminish the quality of these secondary and postsecondary career-prep programs. Others see the shift as the beginning of the end of the Education Department. Democrats in Congress have objected to the plan, which can now move forward.

    After news of the Supreme Court order dropped Monday, education policy experts sounded the alarm and took issue with the lack of explanation.

    “The president can’t close down ED by fiat but Congress and SCOTUS sure can facilitate it,” Dominique Baker, an associate professor of education and public policy at the University of Delaware, wrote on BlueSky.

    Daniel Collier, an assistant professor of higher education at the University of Memphis, also chimed in, asking, “Am I in the minority by believing that all SCOTUS rulings should have a well detailed and written rationale attached and there should be no exceptions?”

    The Supreme Court’s order included a scathing 18-page dissent from Justice Sonia Sotomayor. Justices Ketanji Brown Jackson and Elena Kagan joined in full. Sotomayor noted that the department plays “a vital role” in the nation’s education system by “safeguarding equal access” and allocating billions of dollars in federal funding. Knowing this, she added, “only Congress has the power to abolish the department.”

    “When the executive publicly announces its intent to break the law, and then executes on that promise, it is the judiciary’s duty to check that lawlessness, not expedite it,” Sotomayor wrote. “Two lower courts rose to the occasion, preliminarily enjoining the mass firings while the litigation remains ongoing. Rather than maintain the status quo, however, this court now intervenes, lifting the injunction and permitting the government to proceed with dismantling the department. That decision is indefensible.”

    Others, however, said the Supreme Court made the right call.

    “There is nothing unconstitutional about the executive branch trying to execute the law with fewer people, which is what the Trump administration is doing,” said Neal McCluskey, director of the Center for Educational Freedom at the Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank, who also contributed an opinion piece to Inside Higher Ed today. If the Trump administration wanted to eliminate the Department of Education unilaterally, he said, “It would have fired everyone. Not only did it not do that, but members of the administration have stated that it is ultimately Congress that must eliminate the department.”

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  • Supreme Court green-lights Education Department layoffs

    Supreme Court green-lights Education Department layoffs

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    The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday allowed the Trump administration to proceed with laying off nearly half the U.S. Department of Education’s staff — a significant victory for the administration’s mission to dissolve the department to the greatest extent possible. 

    The decision in New York v. McMahon green-lights the department’s reduction in force initiated in March as the original question of the layoffs’ legality works its way through the lower courts. The layoffs closed department offices and spurred concerns from public school advocates that the education system would descend into chaos with little federal oversight. 

    The Monday order allowing the reduction in force to continue was met with dissent from liberal justices Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson, who called the majority’s decision “indefensible” in their 18-page dissent. 

    “When the Executive publicly announces its intent to break the law, and then executes on that promise, it is the Judiciary’s duty to check that lawlessness, not expedite it,” they said. 

    U.S. Secretary of Education Linda McMahon, who was tasked with shutting down the department to the greatest extent “permitted by law,” celebrated the decision.

    “Today, the Supreme Court again confirmed the obvious: the President of the United States, as the head of the Executive Branch, has the ultimate authority to make decisions about staffing levels, administrative organization, and day-to-day operations of federal agencies,” McMahon said in a statement.

    Until now, the department’s RIF had left staff — who were technically still employed but had been on administrative leave since March — in limbo. The Trump administration had planned to lay off employees June 9, but U.S. District Judge Myong Joun ruled in May that the layoffs left the department as “a shell of itself” and required that staff remain employed in a preliminary injunction.

    The layoffs leave the department with only about 2,183 employees out of its previous approximately 4,133.

    “A department without enough employees to perform statutorily mandated functions is not a department at all,” Joun wrote. In a separate case, the same judge last month also ordered that the department’s Office for Civil Rights be restored to its former self.

    Joun’s May order required the department to routinely report to the district court the steps it was taking to restore its staff — which it did by sending out multiple surveys to employees on administrative leave as a way of “actively assessing how to reintegrate you back to the office in the most seamless way possible.” At the same time, the department was appealing its case to the Supreme Court, hoping its RIF would be allowed through.

    The Monday order from the Supreme Court means those employees can be terminated even as the case over the legality of the layoffs proceeds in the lower court.

    The Supreme Court’s decision to allow the layoffs was preceded by another decision from the high court in April that also bolstered the Trump administration’s attempts to close the department. That ruling maintained a freeze on over $600 million in teacher training grants that the administration called “divisive.”

    It also follows a Supreme Court decision last week allowing mass terminations to move forward across other federal agencies.

    Are statutory obligations impacted?

    The department argued that depleting its staff by almost half — including closing down civil rights offices and leaving only a handful of employees in the office that administers the National Assessment of Educational Progress — does not impact its statutory obligations. McMahon has told concerned lawmakers that NAEP is administered through contracts that remain in place.

    In the meantime, however, former employees and Democratic lawmakers allege the department has already missed key deadlines on tasks that are required by law, and that no one remains in place to oversee the contracts and ensure the quality of the work.

    The annual Condition of Education report, for example, was due to Congress by June 1 — an obligation that the department missed “for the first time ever,” according to Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash.

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  • George Washington University hints at layoffs amid federal policy upheaval

    George Washington University hints at layoffs amid federal policy upheaval

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    Dive Brief:

    • Faced with an “unsustainable compounding deficit,” George Washington University is freezing hiring and could lay off employees down the road, the private Washington, D.C.-based institution said in a community message Tuesday. 
    • The hiring freeze applies to positions funded directly by the university and is set to last at least until Oct. 1. GWU also plans to review large procurement contracts, cut back on capital spending, and tighten budgets for travel, events and entertainment, among other moves. 
    • Despite earlier budget-tightening measures, senior university leaders said the outlook for the upcoming fiscal year has deteriorated since April. Officials plan to present a full fiscal 2026 budget to the university’s governing board in early September.

    Dive Insight:

    In their announcement, university President Ellen Granberg, Interim Provost John Lach and other officials cited political, economic and demographic challenges that are exacerbating GWU’s budget pressures.

    On the policy front, they pointed to the Trump administration’s ongoing efforts to limit funding for indirect research costs, such as facilities, utilities and other overhead, to federal grant awardees. While federal courts have paused or struck down those moves at four federal agencies, they have created deep financial uncertainty for many universities. 

    The officials also pointed to “significant changes in the overall federal research landscape,” which has big implications for the university, a major nexus for federal grants. In fiscal 2024, GWU spent a total of $471.6 million in federal grants from a wide array of federal agencies and other grantors. 

    Along with research funding disruption, officials pointed to a slowdown in visa processing and President Donald Trump’s recent move to ban or restrict travel from 19 countries. They described these changes as “constraints on our ability to enroll international students.” In 2024, GWU enrolled 3,661 international students, according to institutional data.

    Moreover, the university, with its deep ties to the D.C. area, is beginning to see domestic enrollment impacts from the Trump administration’s massive slashes to federal agency workforces, as well as general financial uncertainty among American consumers.

    Even more pressure on graduate enrollment could come amid the elimination of Grad PLUS loans and caps on total student borrowing, brought on by the massive budget bill passed by Republicans and signed by Trump last week. 

    But GWU had financial challenges before Trump took office. As Granberg, Lach and other officials noted, revenue growth averaged 6.1% from fiscal 2022 through 2024 while expenses grew 6.8%. 

    “While this difference might not seem significant, its cumulative effect is an unsustainable compounding deficit,” they said. 

    That budget gap resulted from pre-Trump structural challenges in the higher education world, including rising costs and declining master’s degree enrollments.

    Between 2018 and 2023, GWU’s total fall graduate student enrollment declined 9.2% to 14,181 students, according to federal data. The officials pointed to declines in international student enrollment, which began at the university before Trump’s newest travel bans and “at this point can no longer be viewed as temporary.”

    University leaders in April announced a pause on merit-based salary increases and a 3% budget cut across units. But the challenges have only deepened since then. 

    Now officials aim for deeper budget cuts for fiscal 2026, “which we recognize will likely lead to some reductions in the number of staff and certain faculty positions, a step we have tried to avoid but cannot any longer,” they said Tuesday.

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  • Trump Education Department Delays Return of Laid-Off Workers Over Logistics – The 74

    Trump Education Department Delays Return of Laid-Off Workers Over Logistics – The 74


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    Parking permits. Desk space. Access cards.

    Ordered to bring back roughly 1,300 laid-off workers, the U.S. Department of Education instead has spent weeks ostensibly working on the logistics. Meanwhile, the Trump administration wants the U.S. Supreme Court to decide they don’t have to restore those jobs after all.

    The legal argument over the job status of Education Department workers is testing the extent to which President Donald Trump and Education Secretary Linda McMahon can reshape the federal bureaucracy without congressional approval.

    The employees, meanwhile, remain in limbo, getting paid for jobs they aren’t allowed to perform.

    An analysis done by the union representing Education Department employees estimates the government is spending about $7 million a month for workers not to work. That figure does not include supervisors who are not part of the American Federation of Government Employee Local 252.

    “It is terribly inefficient,” said Brittany Coleman, chief steward for AFGE Local 252 and an attorney in the Office for Civil Rights. “The American people are not getting what they need because we can’t do our jobs.”

    McMahon announced the layoffs in March, a week after she was confirmed by the Senate, and described them as a first step toward dismantling the Education Department. A few days later, Trump signed an executive order directing McMahon to do everything in her legal authority to shut down the department.

    The Somerville and Easthampton school districts in Massachusetts, along with the American Federation of Teachers, other education groups, and 21 Democratic attorneys general sued McMahon over the cuts. They argued the layoffs were so extensive that the Education Department would not be able to perform its duties under the law.

    The layoffs hit the Office for Civil Rights, Federal Student Aid, and the Institute of Education Sciences particularly hard. These agencies are responsible for federally mandated work within the Education Department. By law, only Congress can get rid of the Education Department.

    U.S. District Court Judge Myong Joun agreed, issuing a sweeping preliminary injunction in May that ordered the Education Department to bring laid off employees back to work and blocked any further effort to dismantle or substantively restructure the department.

    The Trump administration sought a stay of that order, and the case is on the emergency docket of the Supreme Court, where a decision could come any day.

    In the administration’s request to the Supreme Court, Solicitor General John Sauer argued that the harms the various plaintiffs had described were largely hypothetical, that they had not shown the department wasn’t fulfilling its duties, and that they didn’t have standing to sue because layoffs primarily affect department employees, not states, school districts, and education organizations.

    Sauer further argued that the injunction violates the separation of powers, putting the judicial branch in charge of employment decisions that are the purview of the executive branch.

    “The injunction rests on the untenable assumption that every terminated employee is necessary to perform the Department of Education’s statutory functions,” Sauer wrote in a court filing. “That injunction effectively appoints the district court to a Cabinet role and bars the Executive Branch from terminating anyone.”

    The Supreme Court, with a conservative 6-3 majority, has been friendlier to the administration’s arguments than lower court judges. Already the court has allowed cuts to teacher training grants to go through while a lawsuit works its way through the courts. And it has halted the reinstatement of fired probationary workers.

    The Education Department did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

    Last week, Joun issued a separate order telling the Education Department that it must reinstate employees in the Office for Civil Rights. The Victims Rights Law Center and other groups had described thousands of cases left in limbo, with children suffering severe bullying or unable to safely return to school.

    Meanwhile, the Education Department continues to file weekly updates with Joun about the complexities of reinstating the laid-off employees. In these court filings, Chief of Staff Rachel Oglesby said an “ad hoc committee of senior leadership” is meeting weekly to figure out where employees might park and where they should report to work.

    Since the layoffs, the department has closed regional offices, consolidated offices in three Washington, D.C. buildings into one, reduced its contracts for parking space, and discontinued an interoffice shuttle.

    In the most recent filing, Oglesby said the department is working on a “reintegration plan.”

    Coleman said she finds these updates “laughable.”

    “If you are really willing to do what the court is telling you to do, then your working group would have figured out a way to get us our laptops,” she said.

    This story was originally published by Chalkbeat. Chalkbeat is a nonprofit news site covering educational change in public schools. Sign up for their newsletters at ckbe.at/newsletters.


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  • Layoffs at Southern New Hampshire University

    Layoffs at Southern New Hampshire University

    Southern New Hampshire University (SNHU), long hailed as a leader in online education and a symbol of institutional reinvention, laid off approximately 60 employees on June 27, 2025. The move came without warning to staff, according to an anonymous source close to the situation.

    Employees reportedly received a generic email from Lisa Marsh Ryerson, SNHU’s newly installed president, delivering the news of their termination. There was no video call, no face-to-face meeting, and no meaningful explanation beyond the cold language of corporate HR.

    “There was no sincerity,” the source said. “No real communication. Just a robotic email. No opportunity for questions, no acknowledgment of people’s service.”

    The layoffs have sent shockwaves through the university’s workforce—many of whom had believed that SNHU’s image as a student-centered and employee-friendly institution translated into job security. That assumption, it appears, was misplaced.

    SNHU, which once garnered praise from the Obama administration for its innovative online learning model, has undergone significant changes in recent years. Under the leadership of former president Paul LeBlanc, the university expanded its online programs rapidly and became one of the largest nonprofit providers of online degrees in the United States. But as the market for online education becomes increasingly competitive and enrollment pressures mount across the country, even big players like SNHU appear to be tightening their belts.

    What’s striking about this latest round of cuts is not just the numbers—but the tone. At a university that prides itself on personalization and student engagement, employees describe the layoff process as abrupt, impersonal, and dehumanizing.

    “They preach empathy to students,” the source noted. “But when it came to their own staff, there was none.”

    It’s unclear which departments or roles were affected. SNHU has yet to issue a public statement, and no mention of the layoffs could be found on the university’s website or social media accounts at the time of publication.

    The layoffs at SNHU follow broader trends in the higher education sector, where institutions—both public and private—are increasingly resorting to staff reductions amid enrollment declines, demographic shifts, and uncertain funding landscapes. But even in this context, the lack of transparency and empathy stands out.

    The Higher Education Inquirer will continue to monitor developments at Southern New Hampshire University and invites current and former employees to share their experiences confidentially.

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  • Duke University offers buyouts and signals future layoffs as federal cuts hit

    Duke University offers buyouts and signals future layoffs as federal cuts hit

    Dive Brief:

    • Duke University is offering voluntary buyouts for employees and has frozen hiring as it braces for federal funding cuts, the institution said Wednesday. 
    • The North Carolina institution signaled that layoffs were likely in the coming months, but said it is “pursuing several employment actions now in hopes of reducing the scale of involuntary separations later this summer.”
    • The moves are in response to federal cuts and policy shifts, which could translate into funding losses for Duke between $500 million and $750 million, university officials said during an internal webinar Wednesday, according to media reports.

    Dive Insight:

    Historically, much of Duke’s research enterprise has been devoted to work on behalf of the government. Federal grant support made up nearly three-quarters of the $1.5 billion in sponsored research funds that Duke received in fiscal 2024, much of it going toward health science.

    The university, in its latest financial statement, described its medical school as “one of the largest biomedical research enterprises in the country.” And funding just from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services — which houses the National Institutes of Health — accounted for 58% of all of Duke’s sponsored research funding. 

    The National Science Foundation and U.S. Department of Energy also accounted for tens of millions of dollars in the university’s funding. 

    Since President Donald Trump retook office, those agencies and others have been cutting and delaying grant awards at a frantic pace, including moves to cap reimbursement for indirect research costs at NIH and the Energy Department. Both funding caps have been blocked in courts — at least for now — but the Trump administration is continuing to fight the legal cases against the policies. 

    Uncertainty over the funding will likely loom for some time to come. 

    For Duke, the NIH indirect cost cap would mean $194 million in lost funding each year, President Vincent Price and other leaders said in February. 

    “Much is at stake,” the officials said then. “Our nation’s world-leading research enterprise has been enabled by — and will only be sustained by — partnership and co-investment from both the government and higher education.” 

    They also signaled at the time that “careful planning and difficult decisions” could lie ahead. 

    Today, Duke is trying to cut $350 million from its budget, according to reports of the university’s presentation, as it grapples with funding gaps under the Trump administration. 

    As it trims down, Duke has paused capital spending on buildings, renovations and other projects that are “not fully funded or deemed essential,” the university said Wednesday. 

    It’s also reviewing universitywide programs — such as technology adoption, off-campus real estate and on-campus space consolidation — for potential cost-savings.  

    Employee benefits could also be on the chopping block. 

    “A study is also under way to assess how certain changes to the university’s benefits may generate savings while protecting the program’s strong competitive position,” Duke said.

    However, Executive Vice President Daniel Ennis told employees Wednesday that the university still plans to give out merit raises and will not change its tuition grant program for children of employees. 

    Universities around the country have been scrambling in recent months to open breathing room in their budgets to cope with the uncertainty and disruption created by cuts and delays at federal agencies. Many have frozen hiring and budgets to maintain financial flexibility while others have laid off employees to cope with cuts.

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  • Despite layoffs, NAEP to continue as planned in 2026

    Despite layoffs, NAEP to continue as planned in 2026

    Despite massive layoffs that left the U.S. Department of Education with a skeleton crew in charge of administering and analyzing the Nation’s Report Card, the agency said on Thursday the assessment will continue as planned next year.

    “The Department will ensure that NAEP [the National Assessment of Educational Progress] continues to provide invaluable data on learning across the U.S,” said U.S. Secretary of Education Linda McMahon in a statement on Thursday. “The 2026 NAEP assessments in reading and math are on track for administration in January 2026.” 

    In addition to assessing math and reading in 4th and 8th grades in January 2026, a letter sent to states Thursday shows U.S. history and civics will be administered for 8th graders as planned prior to the March layoffs.

    NCES is preparing for the 2025-26 cycle now and will administer the assessments between Jan. 26 and March 20, 2026, according to the letter. Math and reading results for the nation, states, and districts participating in the Trial Urban District Assessment, which tracks academic progress in urban districts, will be released in early 2027.

    National results for civics and U.S. history are expected to be released later in 2027. District and state-level data for those assessments will not be released. 

    Melissa McGrath, chief of staff for the Council of Chief State School Officers, said in a statement that NAEP “offers an important measure of student achievement and we are pleased that it will be administered in reading and math in 2026.”

    The department’s update on testing in all subject areas — including optional ones — partially addresses concerns that have been stewing for over a month among education and testing experts that cuts to the agency would sacrifice the integrity of the Nation’s Report Card.

    Former employees of the National Center for Education Statistics, which oversees the Nation’s Report Card, had worried that the mass layoffs would result in a “barebones” assessment that produced lower-quality data. 

    The Education Department has maintained that most of NAEP’s work was done through contracts, which it said remain in place.

    “Despite spending hundreds of millions in taxpayer funds annually, IES has failed to effectively fulfill its mandate to identify best practices and new approaches that improve educational outcomes and close achievement gaps for students,” Madi Biedermann, the department’s deputy assistant secretary for communications, told sister publication Higher Ed Dive in March. Biederman said the Institute of Education Sciences is going to be restructured “to improve student outcomes while maintaining rigorous scientific integrity and cost effectiveness.” 

    In her statement Thursday, McMahon said NAEP is “a critical tool for parents, educators, and experts to assess our students’ preparedness and advise on necessary interventions.”

    McMahon said that while the “final mission” — to close the department to the maximum extent possible as ordered by President Donald Trump in a March executive order — continues, she is still “committed to providing states with the tools and best practices to advance the educational achievement of our nation’s students.” 

    Modernizations of the assessment, which have been in the works for years, will also continue, the Thursday letter to states said — including pilot assessments in mathematics and reading in grades 4, 8, and 12 to help the assessment transition to updated mathematics and reading frameworks.

    It is still unclear whether plans for other innovations such as remote, device-agnostic and adaptive administrations of the exam will still roll out.

    In 2022, NCES Commissioner Peggy Carr — who was put on administrative leave as part of March’s layoffs — told K-12 Dive that assessments were set to become device agnostic in 2026, meaning students were going to be able to eventually test on any device. The Education Department had also planned to pull out most of its field administration staff, relying instead on school staff to administer assessments where possible, Carr said.

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  • Students and Institutions in Limbo After Mass Layoffs at OCR

    Students and Institutions in Limbo After Mass Layoffs at OCR

    A month after the Department of Education closed seven of its 12 regional civil rights offices and laid off nearly half the staff in the Office for Civil Rights, there’s still uncertainty about how the agency will perform its functions with such reduced numbers.

    OCR was founded to ensure equal access to education for all students and is responsible for investigating claims that schools and institutions of higher education failed to protect their students from discrimination. But under the current administration, the office has shifted gears to focus on President Donald Trump’s top priorities: removing trans women from women’s sports teams, protecting against alleged discrimination against white students, and protecting students against alleged antisemitism.

    Back in February, the office’s acting head, Craig Trainor, told employees to pause all investigations except for a handful that aligned with those priorities, according to ProPublica. Trainor quickly told investigators they could once again begin investigating disability-related complaints, which made up the largest share of the pending complaints, but not those related to race- or sex-based discrimination.

    Tracey Vitchers, the executive director of It’s On Us, a nonprofit advocacy organization focused on combating campus sexual violence, says this harks back to the first Trump administration: At the time, a large number of complaints were “quietly ignored” by OCR, leading to a massive backlog for former president Joe Biden’s administration to handle when he came into office in 2021.

    “That was the playbook during the first administration, and it was just that they just sat on shelves, essentially—digital shelves. Those cases were put on the digital shelf, ignored, not opened, not investigated,” she said.

    When Trump took office, more than 12,000 cases were open with OCR, including over 3,000 at institutions of higher education, according to a database of open OCR cases.

    Over half of all OCR cases were being handled by a regional office that is now closed, according to a report from Sen. Bernie Sanders, a Vermont Independent who is the ranking member on the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee. Following the layoffs, each investigator’s caseload—which was already at an all-time high of 42 cases—is expected to skyrocket to 86 cases as a result of the cuts, significantly reducing investigators’ ability to resolve each complaint, per the report.

    The data in the report reflects concerns from former OCR staffers who warned that the layoffs would make protecting students’ civil rights more difficult.

    Experts say that OCR complaints going unresolved can be a serious impediment to a student’s ability to learn.

    “At the postsecondary level, common complaints are refusals to accommodate,” said Paul Grossman, an attorney who worked at OCR for 41 years and is now executive counsel for the Association for Higher Education and Disability. “A student wants a particular kind of accommodation, and the school says, ‘No, that’s a fundamental alteration or an undue burden,’ and the student, as a result, may get dismissed because they don’t meet the academic standards, may get dismissed because they don’t meet conduct standards, whatever the case may be. Or the student may just be unhealthy—they may not be well enough to continue, because they don’t get the accommodation.”

    The public repository of open OCR cases, which used to be updated weekly, has not been updated since Jan. 14, just before Inauguration Day. But ProPublica reported in late February that only about 20 new cases have been opened since Trump took office, whereas about 250 cases were opened in the same period last year.

    That most likely comes down to OCR’s decisions about what to investigate. But Vitchers also noted that, since even before Trump’s second term began, she hasn’t been as eager to advise students to open a case with OCR in response to their institutions mishandling Title IX complaints. After the Biden administration finalized its Title IX regulations, which offered protections to transgender students and which organizations like It’s On Us said were much more sympathetic to victims of sexual violence than Trump’s previous regulations, in the summer of 2024, numerous states sued to block the regulations. The legal tussle made for a complicated environment for students seeking justice for sexual harassment or assault through Title IX, and the Biden rule was eventually vacated just over a week before Inauguration Day.

    “Very honestly, with the back-and-forth on Title IX, and particularly once we saw the Biden rule get challenged, we sort of, somewhat quietly, encouraged students to really pause and take a hard look at, what was the outcome that they were looking for? And help them assess, is the OCR complaint going to get you the outcome that you’re actually looking for here?” she said. “If it is, then we will support you in finding an attorney and filing a case. But with so many of the students that we work with, many of them made the decision to, essentially, protect their own peace.”

    ED did not respond to a request for comment.

    Mediation, Digital Accessibility and More

    On top of concerns about the backlog of complaints going unanswered, experts are also worried about other, lesser-known functions of OCR that likely are not currently happening.

    In some cases, complainants can opt for early mediation, a type of resolution that is more informal and generally quicker than an investigation. But it is unclear if such mediations are happening currently; Grossman said he has heard one example of a planned mediation being canceled, and ED did not respond to a question from Inside Higher Ed about the issue. Grossman also noted that OCR is responsible for continuing to monitor the aftermath of investigations that have already been resolved.

    Jamie Axelrod, director of disability resources at Northern Arizona University and a past president of AHEAD, pointed out that OCR is responsible for conducting digital compliance reviews, in-depth surveys of whether a school or university’s digital resources, such as its website and learning management systems, are accessible to students with disabilities. During the previous Trump administration, Axelrod said, ED stood up a specialized team to complete these reviews and provide technical assistance to institutions to help them make their digital resources more accessible. Now, that team has been reduced significantly, according to Axelrod.

    He also noted that OCR is supposed to be a tool schools and universities can turn to in order to answer any questions about how to appropriately accommodate their students.

    “The point of that is to avoid circumstances that wind up causing discrimination against students with disabilities, and so that’s a key role,” he said. “And it’s hard to really calculate how many instances of discrimination [that prevented from] happening in the first place. It’s hard to count what you prevented, but that is an important role, and I’m sure it leads to resolution of lots of complicated circumstances.”

    The impacts of the cuts are likely to go even deeper than the individual cases that have been displaced to new investigators and the specific programs that will likely fall by the wayside.

    “Like any postsecondary educational institution, there’s a lot of institutional memory that’s developed,” Grossman said. “You have to develop connections, relationships, understandings, insights, experience, and all these people who are going out the door, you’re just lighting a match to all that expertise and experience. And to me, that’s a really sad thing.”

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  • What do the massive Education Department layoffs look like? See for yourself.

    What do the massive Education Department layoffs look like? See for yourself.

    President Donald Trump’s promise to dismantle the U.S. Department of Education was long heralded. Dating back to his first term, the vow was loudly and oft-repeated by candidate Trump on the campaign trail in 2024.

    But while the plan went nowhere during his first time in the White House, it has come to fruition through a slew of executive actions since his inauguration in January.

    What began with abruptly canceled education grants in February escalated with the confirmation of U.S. Education Secretary Linda McMahon on March 3 and her promise of “our department’s final mission” that same day. The culmination came in massive layoffs on March 11 and a Trump executive order a week later instructing McMahon to close the department “to the maximum extent appropriate and permitted by law.”

    A handful of the Trump administration’s actions — including last week’s order — have already been challenged in court. But in the meantime, their impacts are tangible in everything from students’ civil rights protections to funding for teacher grants. 

    K-12 Dive obtained an organizational chart from the Education Department detailing the offices impacted by the March 11 layoffs, as well as a list of about 970 union employees out of 1,300 employees who were let go, which offices they had been employed in and their positions. While the list of employees isn’t comprehensive, it gives a general idea of where cuts were concentrated — and what that might mean for education in the long run. 

    Based on those documents, here are eight visuals to help understand Trump’s multiphased gutting of the Education Department and its widespread impact: 

    By the numbers

     

    $600 million

    Cut to “divisive” teacher training grants

     

    $900 million

    Cut to multiyear research contracts

    The March 11 layoffs were preceded by cuts to over $1 billion in grant funding. Research grants housed in the National Center for Education Statistics were on the chopping block, as were teacher training grants that the administration called “divisive.” 

    The teacher grants impacted include the Supporting Effective Educator Development Grant Program, the Teacher Quality Partnership Program, and the Teacher and School Leader Incentive Program. These cuts would later be successfully challenged through at least two lawsuits. This week, Trump filed an emergency application with the U.S. Supreme Court challenging the lower court ruling and seeking the immediate cancellation of $65 million in teacher training grants it says advances diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives. 

    Former National Center for Education Statistics employees also confirmed to K-12 Dive that research grants related to student assessments were cut — a move that will likely result in a “barebones” approach to congressionally mandated tests like the Nation’s Report Card.

    By the numbers

     

    4,133

    number of employees prior to department’s gutting

     

    600

    number of employees that take buyouts prior to layoffs

     

    1,300

    number of staff fired on March 11

     

    2,200

    approximate number of employees following layoffs

    After the initial cuts to grants — and on the night of McMahon’s March 3 confirmation — employees were given an 11:59 p.m. ET deadline to voluntarily accept a $25,000 separation agreement in an effort to downsize the agency’s workforce. According to a later announcement by the department, about 600 employees took that offer leading up to the March 11 layoffs. 

    The layoffs would bring the total number of employees impacted by the reduction in force — part of McMahon’s “final mission” for the Education Department — to 1,900, or nearly half of its 4,133 count.

    FSA, OCR, and IES hit hard in March 11 layoff

    The data represents the 970 union workers laid off on March 11, 2025, and excludes non-union workers.

    On March 11, the administration laid off nearly 1,300 employees across various offices within the Education Department. Among offices losing the most people were Federal Student Aid, which students depend on to determine their eligibility for federal grants and loans for college. The move is the opposite of a recommendation made by the Government Accountability Office last year — following a botched FAFSA rollout — to “plan for and ensure hiring of sufficient staff to increase capacity” in the FSA office.

    The Institute for Education Sciences, home to the National Center for Education Statistics and oversight for the Nation’s Report Card, was cut down by over a hundred staff and left NCES with a skeletal staff of a handful.

    And the English Language Acquisition office was completely decimated, with all of its some dozen unionized employees laid off, according to the Education Department’s organizational chart. That move came less than two weeks after Trump signed an order making English the official language of the United States.

    Another Education Department arm significantly impacted was the Office for Civil Rights, which enforces laws that protect students’ civil rights. The reduction there comes after the Biden administration pleaded to Congress for an increase in funding and staff to address a case backlog, escalated by Title VI complaints based on shared ancestry or ethnicity in light of the Israel-Hamas war. The Trump administration has acknowledged the backlog but halved the office’s headcount rather than increasing staff.

    7 OCR regional offices closed, affecting half the nation

    The civil rights arm also lost seven of its dozen regional office. 

    OCR is responsible for keeping schools in compliance with civil rights laws and handles investigations that in the past often took months or even years to complete. Those investigations, among other things, ensure equal access to education for sexual assault survivors, students with disabilities and students from all races and ethnicities.

    Attorneys and equal opportunity employees were most common positions cut

    The data represents the 970 union workers laid off on March 11, 2025, and excludes non-union workers.

    Out of hundreds of OCR employees fired, a significant number were civil rights attorneys and equal opportunity employees, leaving the office with a skeletal crew to oversee more than 12,000 currently open investigations. At least 200 employees in total were let go. 

    These attorneys carried out the majority of OCR’s work, including determining case outcomes and sometimes helping to develop policy guidance. 

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