Tag: News

  • Education Department to reduce staff by nearly half

    Education Department to reduce staff by nearly half

    The Department of Education is expected to lay off nearly half its workforce as of Tuesday.

    J. David Ake/Getty Images

    The Education Department is moving to lay off nearly 50 percent of its more than 4,100 employees as of Tuesday evening, according to four sources inside the agency who were told about the plans.

    It’s not yet clear what specific departments or positions were affected, though officials planned to tell affected employees this evening, sources told Inside Higher Ed. The department previously offered employees buyouts to cut down the workforce. The goal to reduce staff by 50 percent includes prior reductions. Those affected will receive 90 days’ severance and will have 10 days to transfer their job duties to another staffer or political appointee, according to a longtime staffer with inside knowledge of the reduction-in-force details.

    The department said in its announcement that the employees will be placed on administrative leave, starting March 21, and that core programs such as distributing student loans and Pell Grants will continue.

    “Today’s reduction in force reflects the Department of Education’s commitment to efficiency, accountability, and ensuring that resources are directed where they matter most: to students, parents, and teachers,” Secretary of Education Linda McMahon said in a statement. “This is a significant step toward restoring the greatness of the United States education system.”

    The Washington Post reported that 1,315 employees would lose their jobs, in addition to the roughly 600 who took the buyouts. The reductions will bring the total workforce down to fewer than 2,200.

    Earlier on Tuesday, the department told staff that D.C. offices will be closed Wednesday and reopen Thursday for “security reasons,” according to an email obtained by Inside Higher Ed. One staffer said they were told by department officials that the closure was due to the reduction in force.

    The email instructed department staff to take their laptops home with them on Tuesday in order to telework Wednesday, and that they would “not be permitted in any ED facility on Wednesday, March 12th, for any reason.”

    Some department staff were notified of the impending layoffs during meetings with top department officials—including an acting deputy secretary—on Tuesday afternoon, according to sources inside the department who spoke with Inside Higher Ed on background.

    Sheria Smith, president of American Federation of Government Employees Local 252, which represents over 2,800 workers at the Department of Education, pledged to fight the cuts in a statement released Tuesday evening. Smith said that the Trump administration “has no respect for the thousands of workers who have dedicated their careers to serve their fellow Americans.”

    “We will not stand idly by while this regime pulls the wool over the eyes of the American people,” Smith added. “We will state the facts. Every employee at the U.S. Department of Education lives in your communities—we are your neighbors, your friends, your family. And we have spent our careers supporting services that you rely on.”

    The expected cuts are part of a governmentwide strategy to reduce the federal workforce. All federal agency officials were told last month to start preparing for a “large scale reduction in force” and to eliminate all “non-statutorily mandated functions.”

    While the government layoffs are far-reaching, President Trump has frequently targeted the Education Department for cuts, even vowing to shut down the agency. That would require congressional action, but Trump and McMahon can make deep cuts to the agency even if they don’t abolish it altogether.

    Trump is reportedly planning to sign an executive order directing McMahon to “take all necessary steps” to return authority over education to the states and facilitate closure of the Department of Education “to the maximum extent appropriate and permitted by law,” according to draft text reviewed by Inside Higher Ed.

    Higher education groups and advocates have warned that cutting staff and programs at the department would be catastrophic for institutions and students, though critics say the agency is in need of a serious overhaul. State higher education officials, university administrators, nonprofit advocacy groups and students depend on the Education Department to oversee federal student aid, manage the student loan portfolio, investigate civil rights complaints and allocate billions of dollars in institutional aid, among other operations. The department, which has an $80 billion discretionary budget, issues about $100 billion in student loans every year and more than $30 billion in Pell Grants.

    The massive personnel cuts—the largest in the department’s history—will likely impact most agencies and offices in the department, including the Office of Federal Student Aid, sources say. Within FSA, the cuts will be most severe among teams that work directly on policy and higher education oversight, including the Ombudsman Office, which investigates complaints into student loan practices and financial aid.

    Staffers at the Education Department have been anticipating the reduction in force for the past week. Last Tuesday, department leaders called a meeting to discuss the impending layoffs but canceled at the last minute. Meanwhile, staff have been awaiting the executive order from Trump to close down the department since last Wednesday.

    “Everyone’s ready,” one exhausted staffer told Inside Higher Ed.

    Other federal agencies have started to lay off thousands of employees via a planned reduction in force, a process that should give them 60 days’ notice. At the Environmental Protection Agency, Trump expects 65 percent of the workforce to go, according to Government Executive, a trade publication tracking the layoffs. Last week, the Veterans Affairs Department said it was laying off 80,000 people.

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  • How standardized tests became part of the DEI debate

    How standardized tests became part of the DEI debate

    In the Education Department’s sweeping Dear Colleague letter last month, acting assistant secretary for civil rights Craig Trainor wrote that colleges must eliminate all race-conscious programs and policies, from scholarships and admissions practices to campus cultural groups and DEI training.

    One surprising mention: standardized testing policies.

    Trainor wrote that test-optional policies could be “proxies for race” to help colleges “give preference” to certain groups.

    “That is true whether the proxies are used to grant preferences on an individual basis or a systematic one,” he wrote. “It would, for instance, be unlawful for an educational institution to eliminate standardized testing to achieve a desired racial balance or to increase racial diversity.”

    Higher education leaders and researchers have long debated the pros and cons of standardized testing in admissions: Some believe they’re a meritocratic predictor of academic success, while others say they’re more aligned with family wealth. In recent years, those debates have become entangled with discussions of systemic racism in the American education system.

    During the COVID-19 pandemic, the vast majority of colleges waived test requirements for applicants. Five years later, most have retained their test-optional policies—though a year ago some selective institutions began returning to score requirements, reigniting a charged debate about the role of standardized tests in admissions.

    After the Supreme Court banned affirmative action in 2023, experts said test-optional policies could serve as race-neutral measures to help colleges maintain diversity in their applicant pools. They cited research showing that colleges with test-optional policies enrolled 10 to 12 percent more students from underrepresented racial backgrounds; other studies found that doing away with test requirements simplified the application process and thus removed barriers for first-generation and other underserved students. The Biden administration even included test-optional policies in its guidance for colleges adjusting to the court ruling.

    If colleges cited such research in keeping their test-optional policies, Trainor’s letter implied it could be grounds for a civil rights investigation.

    In a Frequently Asked Questions document meant to clarify the broad scope of the Dear Colleague letter, OCR made no mention of testing policies. But in response to multiple questions from Inside Higher Ed about how the department views test-optional policies, Trainor left the door open to federal scrutiny.

    “This isn’t complicated,” he wrote. “When in doubt, every school should consult the [Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard] legal test contained in the [Dear Colleague letter]: ‘If an educational institution treats a person of one race differently than it treats another person because of that person’s race, the educational institution violates the law.’”

    Harry Feder, executive director of FairTest and an outspoken critic of standardized testing, said assessments like the SAT have long been embroiled in debates about racial equity in education, but the discourse grew more prominent as attacks on DEI and affirmative action intensified.

    “The SAT has racial bias baked into it from its origins as an early IQ test to keep out the riffraff,” he said. “What Republicans are now saying is, that’s an objective measure of merit, and if white and Asian kids do better on them over all, then colleges not considering those scores is a form DEI run amok.”

    John Friedman, an economics professor at Brown University, has published numerous influential studies on the effects of standardized testing policies, including those cited by the majority of Ivy League institutions that decided to return to test requirements. He said he understands where the Education Department’s skepticism comes from.

    “Schools might be tempted to continue test-optional policies to make it easier to maintain diverse classes, even if that makes it harder to assess students’ academic preparation,’” Friedman said. “I think that’s where some of the angst comes from, as part of a larger concern about higher education moving away from the traditional sense of meritocracy.”

    At the same time, he said the department should consider how institutions use test scores in admissions, which can vary widely.

    “The point is not that you can’t go test-optional. It’s that you shouldn’t if your goal is an end run around the SFFA decision,” Friedman said. “It would be bad to force institutions that decided thoughtfully that test requirements are not best for them to adopt those policies anyway.”

    Dominique Baker, associate professor of education and public policy at the University of Delaware, said she doesn’t believe it should matter whether colleges are considering racial diversity in deciding on their testing policies. The truth, she said, is that research on how testing policies affect applicant diversity is murky, and many of the colleges where the policies could have a demonstrable impact have already returned to requiring scores.

    For her, the mention of testing policies alongside other DEI initiatives is “head-scratching.”

    “The places the administration cares about have largely already returned to testing, or are certainly poised to do so soon. So who is this for?” Baker said. “It’s bananas that testing is even in here.”

    Reversing the Test-Optional Tide?

    So far, the letter hasn’t had any effect on institutions’ testing policies. But colleges are starting to respond to the Dear Colleague letter’s guidance in other ways, changing the names of student service offices, scrubbing mentions of race and equity from their websites, eliminating race-conscious programs, and canceling affinity group events.

    “It would be naïve to believe that certain institutions wouldn’t, at the very least, strongly consider changing their testing policies in order to fly under the radar with the administration,” Baker said.

    Some colleges are pushing ahead with their test-optional policies regardless. Last Thursday the University of Vermont announced that its test-optional policy, put in place during the pandemic, would become permanent.

    Jay Jacobs, vice president for enrollment management at Vermont, told Inside Higher Ed the decision was based on years of research that found that removing test requirements not only had little effect on students’ academic performance and persistence, but also helped UVM achieve its goal of enrolling more local and first-generation students.

    He said the university did not take racial diversity into account when measuring the policy’s enrollment impact—“we didn’t want that to be construed as the reason,” he explained—but said that whatever the rationale, he doesn’t believe the Education Department’s guidance should have any influence.

    “No external party should have a say in dictating institutional policy,” Jacobs said.

    Meanwhile, leaders in the assessment industry have remained largely silent about the Trump administration’s promotion of their exams as part of the war on DEI.

    The College Board, which owns and administers the SAT, did not release a public statement about the letter, nor did ACT, Educational Testing Services or any other major assessment organization.

    College Board communications director Holly Stepp wrote in an email to Inside Higher Ed that the organization believes testing can promote college access, but it does not usually comment on policy matters.

    “College Board provides access and opportunity to millions of students from every background through programs that are mission-driven, evidence-based, and nonpartisan,” Stepp wrote. “We do not set policies around how our exam is used by higher education institutions and scholarship providers.”

    Juan Elizondo, ACT’s strategic communications director for government and public relations, told Inside Higher Ed that the company stands behind institutions’ freedom to set their own testing policies.

    “ACT respects the authority of our higher education partners to decide the admission standards that are right for their institutions,” he wrote.

    Failing the Logic Test

    As colleges like Yale, Harvard and MIT returned to test requirements last year, many cited the same new research: a study from Opportunity Insights that found that test-optional policies made it more difficult for selective institutions to admit students who could succeed academically—and to find qualified applicants from diverse racial and economic backgrounds. Statements from both Yale and Dartmouth said that test scores could “help expand access” for underrepresented groups, including students of color.

    So if both test-optional and test-mandatory policies can promote racial diversity depending on the institution, how will the Trump administration enforce its guidance?

    When asked this question, Trainor did not respond directly but implied that any institution using racial diversity as a justification for any policy, or even citing it as a potential benefit, could be in violation of the current Education Department’s views on civil rights law.

    Friedman, one of the researchers who produced the Opportunity Insights study, said his research showed that for some highly selective colleges, requiring test scores could help “a little bit” with diversity in the selection process. The argument is that by providing a standardized measure of academic preparedness, selective colleges can find a “diamond in the rough”—applicants from underresourced high schools who would struggle to stand out otherwise.

    “For some schools, going back to requiring testing may help improve diversity, but my sense is that improving diversity is not the primary motivation behind this policy change,” he said.

    Feder agreed but had a different prediction.

    “If I’m at the OCR and an Ivy League college is saying, ‘We went back to test requirements because it’s good for diversity,’ even if that’s not really the case, I’d go investigate them,” he said. “By their own logic, they’d have to.”

    Baker said there hasn’t been enough research to determine whether test-optional policies make a huge difference in promoting diversity. Many of the colleges that have kept them in place, she said, have also made more holistic changes to their admissions process that could account for diversity gains. But she believes ending the experiment early by government coercion would be a major step backward.

    “Researchers in the field are doing some real deep dives to better understand the effects of test-optional policies themselves. The people writing the [Dear Colleague] letter have no clue about any of that; they just read about how these policies are part of an anti-white war on meritocracy,” she said. “They’re just throwing spaghetti at the wall.”

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  • Higher ed must be proactive

    Higher ed must be proactive

    Sonny Ramaswamy retired from his role as president of the Northwest Commission on Colleges and Universities in February, concluding an almost seven-year run at the accrediting body.

    His retirement comes after a lengthy career in higher education, which included stints at Cornell University, Mississippi State University, Kansas State University, Purdue University and Oregon State University before former president Barack Obama appointed him as director of the National Institute for Food and Agriculture in 2012. Ramaswamy also served for roughly 18 months during Donald Trump’s first presidential term before returning to higher education as the head of NWCCU, a post he held from July 2018 until earlier this year, when he stepped down.

    In his retirement, he plans to continue serving on nonprofit boards, particularly those in the world of food and agriculture, an area where much of his career was focused. Ramaswamy also plans to write, starting with an illustrated book of poetry to help children learn about the environment.

    Ramaswamy spoke with Inside Higher Ed about his retirement plans, his experience as an accreditor, the challenges facing the sector and the need for a robust defense of higher education.

    This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

    Q: First, tell me about your retirement. What prompted you to step down early?

    A: I came on board in 2018 and had a five-year agreement. June 2023 is when the agreement would have ended, and then our commissioners pleaded with me, saying, “You’ve got to stay on with all the uncertainties with the impending elections next year, etc., etc.” Plus we were going through our [National Advisory Committee on Institutional Quality and Integrity] recognition process. Well, another year comes and goes and they asked if I could stay for some more time, past the elections. We were all expecting the elections to go in a certain way, but who would have thought that the Democrats would self-destruct? But that’s another story.

    I reluctantly said OK. We had talked about staying on the whole year, but they left it to me to make the determination of when I would step out. Then the 2024 elections happened and we started seeing the handwriting on the wall, and it concerned me tremendously. I thought, “I can do a lot more being outside of the system as a spokesperson for education.”

    Q: What initially interested you in the NWCCU job?

    A: This was not something on my radar. My life has been about food and agriculture. I’m an entomologist. My passion is hunger, being that I was hungry growing up in India at a time when India could not feed itself. And my path was through academics, food and agricultural sciences.

    I was headhunted [while director of the National Institute of Food and Agriculture] and went through some interviews with a couple of land-grant universities for the presidency. I was all set to become president of a land-grant university, then I was headhunted by the Northwest Commission, and [their recruiter] said, “You’ve got to do this—you bring exquisite leadership skills, and that’s what they’re looking for. I said, “But I’ve not done anything related to accreditation,” and she said, “That’s not the point—what they want is somebody that can be a leader.” What they were looking for was somebody to set the ship in the right direction and create a compelling vision.

    Q: What was the hardest part about the job?

    A: The hard part was the complaints that we would receive about our colleges and universities. On some of those, there’s egregiousness on the part of the institutions, ignoring their own policies and things like that. We also got complaints that basically were frivolous. We created, I think, an excellent way to handle the complaints with the processes and procedures that we put together. But the hardest part was to see policies and procedures being ignored. I don’t know if those were ignored purposefully and wantonly, or it was just that some institutions are so huge, and that the bureaucracy is so huge that the left hand does not know what the right hand is doing.

    Q: What was the most rewarding aspect of the job?

    A: What surprised me the most was how archaic the system was [at NWCCU]. It was thousands of pages of documentation being printed. I thought, “We need to come up with a way to use data to inform decisions, to look at how institutions are making progress and hold them accountable based on evidence and data, and not just the fact that they write these hundreds of pages of narrative.” It’s like the old adage that if you can’t bedazzle them with brilliance, baffle them with bullshit. So I worked with our commissioners and our staff and went around America, listening to what needs to be done [to revise] our standards. My gosh, we had eight standards and 142 substandards, and the word “student” was invoked in the very last standard. It was pathetic.

    So I said, “We have to focus on the students.” We did listening sessions and people gave us an earful [including think tanks], so we brought that back and went through the listening sessions and surveys, and we went from eight standards and 142 substandards to two standards. No. 1: Students, that’s where they’re supposed to be. And No. 2 is all the other stuff about compliance and governance and other issues. We changed all of that to focus on students.

    The most rewarding piece was to see those changes take place.

    Q: There seems to be a changing of the guard at accrediting bodies, with turnover at the top. What advice do you have for anyone stepping into that job in the current political climate?

    A: Go into it thinking, “What is the value proposition we want to demonstrate?” I’m paraphrasing Pogo: I have seen the enemy and he is us. Accreditors are as much to blame as the institutions in that we have never been able to provide that compelling value proposition. To be accused by various individuals that there’s an accreditation cartel, that everything is done behind closed doors like the Wizard of Oz, that we impose diversity, equity and inclusion on these institutions—it’s all a false narrative. None of us have imposed critical race theory on our institutions. It’s a false narrative that has been grabbed by [anti-DEI activists] like Chris Rufo and Scott Yenor.

    We pat ourselves on the back, saying, “We’re holding universities accountable.” But when a bit more than one out of every two students graduate, there’s something wrong with that picture.

    Use your critical thinking and problem-solving skills and put the students at the core of your mission and demonstrate that value proposition, demonstrate why education is critically important for America, and the accountability piece of it that the accreditors bring to the effort.

    Q: What do you think the near future holds for accreditation? Do you expect any big changes?

    A: I’m reading the tea leaves, and it’s like our investment advisers tell us: Past results have no bearing on future returns. I worked in the Trump administration for a year and a half, and I saw a lot of things in there. But it means nothing, because now they’ve come in with a much better thought-out process, a blueprint. Hope springs eternal, but there’s going to be some changes.

    But before whatever it is that’s coming down the pike, let us as educators, let us as accreditors demonstrate that value proposition [and] tell the story. Don’t wait. Get college presidents, students and alumni to speak to the value of higher education. All these companies—the people that are hiring our graduates—should be extolling America’s higher education system, which is why people like me came to this country from overseas. There has to be a concerted effort by everybody. The accreditors have a secondary role, since the primary role is going to be institutional leadership and alumni and board members and others to speak to why the accountability system that we have is important. Be proactive, don’t be reactive, don’t wait for the winter or fall to go to work.

    And if we don’t do it, shame on us and we deserve what we get.

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  • College campus counseling center usage and staffing

    College campus counseling center usage and staffing

    Counseling services are a key element of student retention in higher education due to elevated numbers of students reporting mental health conditions, but creating a sustainable practice that addresses students and staff needs remains a challenge, according to survey data from the Association for University and College Counseling Center Directors (AUCCCD).

    The association’s annual report, published Feb. 25, highlights a tapering off of the increased demand for mental health services from students, but continued pressure to support clinician and nonclinical staff members through challenging work conditions.

    Methodology

    The survey includes responses from 367 counseling center directors from the U.S. and its territories and 14 from other countries. The majority of respondents work at four-year institutions and urban campuses. The reporting period ranges from July 1, 2023, to June 30, 2024.

    Student engagement: While students continue to report high levels of mental health concerns, some counseling centers are seeing a decline in student demand.

    The majority of respondents at four-year institutions reported a decline or no change in the number of unique clients seen (68 percent) and the number of appointments provided (58 percent). Among two-year colleges, 33 percent reported a decrease in the number of unique clients seen and 43 percent reported a decrease in overall appointments provided.

    One in four counseling center directors (24 percent) indicated their centers did not have trouble meeting demand for services.

    Around 11 percent of students at four-year institutions accessed counseling services, and just under 5 percent of students at community colleges received counseling center support. “Centers at smaller schools served, on average, much larger proportions (8 to 19 percent) of their enrolled populations than centers at larger schools (7 to 8 percent),” according to the report.

    Student data indicated a correlation between student success and counseling center usage: 73 percent of clients reported that counseling services positively impacted their academic performance, and 71 percent said it helped them stay in school.

    Staffing: The four-year college had 9.2 full-time-equivalent clinical employees, while the average for community colleges was 4.5 employees. Around 2 percent of centers were staffed by only one person, but this was a decline compared to the year prior, when 3.5 percent of directors indicated they were a one-person center.

    Diversity of directors who completed the survey continues to rise, with 30 percent of respondents identifying as a person of color, up from 16 percent in the 2012–13 survey.

    Staff turnover remains a concern for college counseling centers, with 12 percent of all nontrainee clinical positions and 10 percent of all nontrainee positions turning over in the past fiscal year. The top reasons staff left their roles were low salary (48 percent) and work conditions (32 percent), though fewer staff cited leaving the field as a reason for departure this year, compared to prior surveys.

    Embedded counseling services remain limited, with around 30 percent of institutions utilizing counselors assigned to work within other departments. Athletics was the most frequently reported area where embedded clinicians work, followed by a specific school, student affairs office and residence life.

    Services: Most clinical sessions were delivered in person (81 percent), followed by video (15 percent) and phone (3 percent). This mirrors the Center for Collegiate Mental Health’s data, published earlier this year, which found 64 percent of clients received exclusively in-person counseling and 13 percent received video-only care.

    While a slight majority of centers do not have formal session limits (55 percent), 43 percent of institutions limit the number sessions a student can access by year, with some flexibility in the model. Only 0.6 percent of respondents indicated their campus has a hard session limit with no exceptions.

    Teletherapy continues to be a popular offering among institutions, with 53 percent of four-year institutions and 35 percent of community colleges employing a third-party vendor to provide services. Use by students varies widely, even among similarly sized institutions, but the average number of participating students was 453.

    “Overall, regardless of the type of service provided by a third-party vendor, the majority of directors reported utilization was less than hoped for or met their expectations,” according to the report.

    The number of unique students who attended a crisis appointment averaged across centers was 125, and the average number of crisis appointments was 166. A majority (65 percent) offered psychiatric services within the counseling center, elsewhere on campus or in both locations.

    In addition, a majority of respondents indicated their center provides formal or informal consultation services to the community.

    Looking ahead: While the report focuses on the previous fiscal year, there remains a need to continue to provide accessible and high-quality counseling services, says Cindy M. Bruns, survey coordinator for AUCCCD. “By fostering a supportive campus culture and ensuring that mental health resources are available, colleges can help students navigate political and social environments while promoting resilience and well-being.”

    Some counseling directors have noticed students are experiencing “elevated levels of anxiety, uncertainty, threats to their sense of safety and belonging on campus” due to federal action under the second Trump administration, Bruns says, which could prompt an increase in the number of students seeking services.

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  • Trump doesn’t rule out recession as tariffs roil market (ABC News)

    Trump doesn’t rule out recession as tariffs roil market (ABC News)







    Higher Education Inquirer : Trump doesn’t rule out recession as tariffs roil market (ABC News)




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  • What Republican voters want for higher ed

    What Republican voters want for higher ed

    Republican voters believe in the value of college degrees but harbor concerns about accountability and affordability, according to a new national survey conducted by Third Way, a center-left think tank, and GS Strategy Group, a Republican polling group.

    The survey of 500 Republican voters found that most respondents, 63 percent, view four-year degrees as valuable—including 60 percent of voters who have “very favorable” perceptions of President Trump. Trade schools and community colleges enjoy particularly robust support; 91 percent and 87 percent of respondents, respectively, view them favorably. By comparison, 69 percent hold favorable views of four-year colleges and universities, and 37 percent feel positively toward for-profit universities.

    At the same time, Republicans surveyed believe the most needed reforms in higher ed today are greater accountability and greater affordability.

    Most respondents, 87 percent, support increased accountability for higher education institutions. And many believe the government should play various roles to ensure that principle is upheld. Seventy-one percent agree that the federal government should require transparency from institutions and accredit them based on their value to students. The same share believe there should be federal guardrails to prevent “bad actors” from charging students for low-quality degrees. And nearly half agree taxpayer dollars should be withheld from colleges that don’t offer a sufficient return on students’ investment.

    Toward that end, 83 percent of Republicans support the financial value transparency rule, which requires colleges to report program-level information like the total cost of attendance and the amount of private education loans disbursed to students. To make college more affordable, 81 percent of Republicans are in favor of Pell Grants, federal financial aid for low-income students, and 79 percent support the Public Service Loan Forgiveness program and income-driven repayment for student loans. Almost 70 percent favor borrower defense to repayment, allowing students who attended fraudulent institutions to have their student loans discharged.

    The report notes that many of these same policies “are being considered for cuts as budget reconciliation heats up.”

    “As Congress considers where to trim the budget this year, it’s important to remember that Republican voters aren’t looking for higher education cuts but rather a renewed emphasis on making it more affordable and holding institutions to the line for delivering a return on investment,” the report concludes.

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  • Ohio University puts Black alumni reunion weekend on hold

    Ohio University puts Black alumni reunion weekend on hold

    Ohio University has postponed its annual Black alumni reunion weekend while it reviews the event in light of the Office for Civil Rights’ Feb. 14 Dear Colleague letter, which declared illegal virtually all race-based activities at public institutions.  

    While the Black alumni reunion “has always been open to all individuals who have an interest in the event,” read a statement from the university, “based on OCR’s recent guidance related to Title VI compliance, some of the programming historically included in the event may need to be reimagined. The University is obligated to follow OCR’s guidance in order to protect our access to critical federal funding, including students’ continued access to federal financial aid.”

    The statement also cited the impact of “proposed State of Ohio legislation,” without specifically mentioning SB 1, a bill the Senate has passed that calls for the elimination of DEI statements, offices and trainings.

    “Without question, should this bill pass the House in its current form and be signed into law by the Governor, it will bring changes for all of us,” university president Lori Stewart Gonzalez wrote in an earlier message to the campus community. “However, to define today the specific changes we might make would preempt the legislative process on a bill that is not finalized.”

    Still, all signature events planned for Black alumni reunion weekend, which was scheduled for April 10–13 in Athens, were canceled.

    “While this is difficult news to share, we remain committed to honoring the legacy and accomplishments of Ohio University’s Black alumni,” said planning committee co-chairs Terry Frazier and Jillian Causey in the statement. “We will continue working with the University to develop a plan that aligns with evolving federal and state guidelines while preserving the significance of this gathering.”

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  • ADL, other pro-Israel groups condemn AAUP Palestine webinar

    ADL, other pro-Israel groups condemn AAUP Palestine webinar

    The Anti-Defamation League and four other pro-Israel groups accused the American Association of University Professors of “demonizing Israel” in its framing of and publicity around a webinar titled Scholasticide in Palestine.

    Scholasticide is the intentional eradication of an education system. In a joint letter Thursday, the same day as the webinar, the ADL, the Academic Engagement Network, Hillel International, the American Jewish Committee and the Jewish Federations of North America condemned the event’s use of this term.

    “Language used in the event’s description—including ‘scholasticide’ and ‘exterminationist’—suggests the adoption and promotion of a one-sided and inflammatory narrative which deviates from the mission of the AAUP,” the letter said. The groups said there’s “no evidence of any intent by Israel to ‘systemically destroy’ the education system in Gaza or elsewhere. The destruction of institutions, including educational ones, is a tragic byproduct of war, exacerbated when terror groups like Hamas embed their operations within school buildings and other civilian centers.”

    Six months into the latest war in Gaza, a group of independent United Nations experts said in a news release, “It may be reasonable to ask if there is an intentional effort to comprehensively destroy the Palestinian education system.” By then, the release said, the last Gazan university had already been destroyed and “more than 5,479 students, 261 teachers and 95 university professors have been killed in Gaza, and over 7,819 students and 756 teachers have been injured.”

    Miriam Elman, the Academic Engagement Network’s executive director, provided Inside Higher Ed with an email from Donna Murch, a member of the AAUP’s elected national council, inviting members to the webinar. Murch said the event would feature “academics and right-to-education organizers who have experienced, documented and challenged Israel’s ongoing and systematic destruction of the education system in Palestine.”

    An AAUP spokesperson told Inside Higher Ed, “We are not aware that anyone who is objecting to AAUP’s programming actually attended the event, which is part of an extended series of conversations about diverse topics of interest to our members. We take antisemitism very seriously and plan our programming consistent with the principles of academic freedom and academic responsibility that AAUP vigorously defends.”

    The pro-Israel groups also criticized the AAUP event’s promotional material for not mentioning Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israelis. The letter says, “We note with dismay that this divisive event is taking place within a wider context of the AAUP being perceived as increasingly moving in a virulently anti-Israel direction.”

    The AAUP has received criticism for its council’s August decision to abandon the group’s nearly 20-year categorical opposition to academic boycotts—such as those often called for against Israel.

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  • Trump’s upheavals worry job-hunting postdoctoral researchers

    Trump’s upheavals worry job-hunting postdoctoral researchers

    Julia Barnes, a National Science Foundation postdoctoral research fellow, was watching President Donald Trump’s speech to Congress last week when she heard him refer to her work as an “appalling waste” that needs to end.

    In a list of expenses he called “scams,” Trump mentioned a $60 million project for Indigenous peoples in Latin America.

    “Empowering Afro-Indigenous populations in Colombia, South America, is exactly what I do,” Barnes said. “My project is explicitly DEI, and it is DEI-focused in a foreign country.” The Trump administration has targeted both foreign aid and diversity, equity and inclusion.

    Even before the speech, she knew her work helping such communities, which have faced atrocities, was under threat. Barnes said officials at the University of Tennessee at Knoxville, where she’s based, last month asked her not to travel to Colombia for a planned research trip. She’s taken further precautions herself out of fear that she’ll be forced to repay any NSF grant money she uses, she said.

    She’s not using the money at all—even to pay herself, she said. “I’m drawing on my savings right now to pay rent and pay for groceries,” Barnes said. She’s also teaching at another university and freelancing for a nonprofit. (An NSF spokesperson pointed Inside Higher Ed to an agency webpage that says activities such as travel “are permitted to proceed in accordance with the terms and conditions of existing awards.”)

    “It’s pretty devastating,” she said. “This is the highest position I’ve ever gotten in my career. This is my dream job to do this research; it’s a cause that I care about very deeply.” She said, “It really breaks my heart to see this shift in values away from what I had initially hoped would become a tenure-track professorship and something—something greater.”

    Postdocs like Barnes are worried about their careers amid the tumult of the Trump administration, which has frozen federal funding; canceled grant review meetings; slashed National Institutes of Health payments for indirect research costs; targeted diversity, equity and inclusion activities without clearly defining DEI; and laid off swaths of federal research agency employees.

    Many of those actions have been in flux as judges block and unblock the administration’s orders amid courtroom fights, and as federal officials walk back terminations and other cuts. But university officials nonetheless appear unnerved, with some restricting Ph.D. program admissions and pausing hiring.

    “There’s a very complicated feeling in spending close to a decade of time and energy pursuing this type of career,” said Kevin Bird, who’s on the job hunt. He’s nearing the expiration of his stint as an NSF biology postdoc research fellow at the University of California, Davis, and said he’s always tried to work at public universities because he values their mission.

    “The whole process of striving for this for so long and making the sacrifices—to think it’s worth it—and then kind of having the entire system be attacked and sort of collapse in uncertainty has really been an unpleasant thing to experience,” Bird said.

    The White House didn’t provide an interview or statement last week.

    Looking Overseas

    Counting her undergraduate days, Amanda Shaver said she’s spent 19 years building a science career. Now an NIH postdoc fellow at Johns Hopkins University, she said she feels “so close to the finish line of trying to do everything right for so many years to get a faculty position”—only for it to now “feel unattainable.”

    Shaver said meetings to consider the career transition NIH award she applied for have been postponed, and she wonders whether Trump officials actually axed the program because they considered it a DEI initiative. The NIH didn’t respond to Inside Higher Ed’s requests for comment last week about the program’s status.

    Looking at the overall future of research and higher education in the U.S., Shaver said, “Things are not good.” She’s applying to positions in other countries.

    In the meantime, she awaits word on what’s happening with her NIH Pathway to Independence Award application. This award—also known as K99/R00—provides recipients money to finish work during their postdoc stints and then start labs at new institutions, Shaver said. “It really sort of elevates you in the candidate pool” for faculty jobs, she said.

    But Shaver—who describes herself as from a low-income family and a disadvantaged school district—said she applied for a version of the award known as MOSAIC, which is meant to keep talented people from underrepresented groups in the biomedical sciences field. That makes it a potential target of Trump’s anti-DEI crusade.

    Shaver said the MOSAIC website disappeared temporarily, “and people thought that they just weren’t in existence anymore, and people were told to not submit those.” But she had already applied; a study section of faculty was supposed to meet in February to consider the application, she said. That was postponed once, and last week she received an email saying it’s been postponed again until May, she said.

    “I don’t know if they will actually meet or not,” Shaver said. She might apply for the regular version of the award in the future but will then have lost an application cycle and can only keep applying until the fourth year of her postdoc stint, she said.

    “The NIH is the worldwide leader in biomedical research,” she said. “And canceling different types of grants or delaying funding and firing people that are really qualified at the NIH, cutting the indirect costs at universities—all these things collectively are really harming the research industry.”

    She added, “It doesn’t make any sense—I think to any voter—to want to dismantle biomedical research … it’s like a degradation of an entire system that is built on facts and knowledge.”

    Amid the upheaval, it can be hard to tell whether university job cuts stem from Trump’s actions or other factors. Bird, the NSF postdoc at UC Davis, said searches for two tenure-track faculty positions he applied for have been canceled since Trump took office. One of the institutions he mentioned, North Carolina State University, told Inside Higher Ed the search is now progressing, and the other, Clemson University, said its search was canceled to “attract a broader and more qualified candidate pool” and the position will be reposted soon.

    Whatever the reasons for those cuts, “many people I’ve talked to now at institutions are feeling the crunch or feeling the concern about what the next few years might hold if the NIH cuts go through, if any aspect of the indirect rate shifts happen,” Bird said. “It’s kind of forcing a lot of universities to really plan for the worst, I think.” So far, a federal district court judge has blocked the NIH from implementing such cuts.

    He lamented the attacks on efforts to recruit into science more first-generation students and students from historically excluded groups. These attacks change “what the job I could even have would be like—if part of the job isn’t taking that mindset of broadening participation and bringing people into the career path like I was,” said Bird, who comes from a small town and a low-income family.

    All this turmoil is pushing him to start “broadening my horizons,” including looking at positions in Europe or other parts of the world that hopefully “will have more stable science institutions and stable higher education,” he said.

    Job cuts at federal research agencies and universities may increase competition-—and uncertainty—among those trying to take the next step in their careers. Julia Van Etten said, “I have a lot of friends who’ve lost their jobs” as early-career researchers in federal agencies.

    Van Etten, an NSF postdoc research fellow at Rutgers University at New Brunswick, said she’s looking for faculty jobs. But “it’s uncertain how many of those jobs will exist going forward.”

    “There’s a lot more people on the job market here,” Van Etten said. “There’s a lot of uncertainty on the job market here. There seems to be a general feeling that the overseas job markets—if they’re not already—are going to become saturated.”

    “It just feels like the job market is kind of bleak,” she said.

    Van Etten said the government—through funding from the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, the Department of Energy and other agencies—has already invested much in her education and work. And she’s invested time that might have been wasted.

    “I spent my entire 20s in grad school and working to get my Ph.D.,” she said. “And no one gets a doctorate just for the pay, right? I really love what I do, and I think my work in basic research is really important. And, for the first time in my entire life, I’ve had to start thinking about what I would do if I wasn’t a scientist anymore.”

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  • DOGE Education Cuts Hit Students with Disabilities, Literacy Research – The 74

    DOGE Education Cuts Hit Students with Disabilities, Literacy Research – The 74


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    When teens and young adults with disabilities in California’s Poway Unified School District heard about a new opportunity to get extra help planning for life after high school, nearly every eligible student signed up.

    The program, known as Charting My Path for Future Success, aimed to fill a major gap in education research about what kinds of support give students nearing graduation the best shot at living independently, finding work, or continuing their studies.

    Students with disabilities finish college at much lower rates than their non-disabled peers, and often struggle to tap into state employment programs for adults with disabilities, said Stacey McCrath-Smith, a director of special education at Poway Unified, which had 135 students participating in the program. So the extra help, which included learning how to track goals on a tool designed for high schoolers with disabilities, was much needed.

    Charting My Path launched earlier this school year in Poway Unified and 12 other school districts. The salaries of 61 school staff nationwide, and the training they received to work with nearly 1,100 high schoolers with disabilities for a year and a half, was paid for by the U.S. Department of Education.

    Jessie Damroth’s 17-year-old son Logan, who has autism, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, and other medical needs, had attended classes and met with his mentor through the program at Newton Public Schools in Massachusetts for a month. For the first time, he was talking excitedly about career options in science and what he might study at college.

    “He was starting to talk about what his path would look like,” Damroth said. “It was exciting to hear him get really excited about these opportunities. … He needed that extra support to really reinforce that he could do this.”

    Then the Trump administration pulled the plug.

    Charting My Path was among more than 200 Education Department contracts and grants terminated over the last two weeks by the Trump administration’s U.S. DOGE Service. DOGE has slashed spending it deemed to be wasteful, fraudulent, or in service of diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility goals that President Donald Trump has sought to ban. But in several instances, the decision to cancel contracts affected more than researchers analyzing data in their offices — it affected students.

    Many projects, like Charting My Path, involved training teachers in new methods, testing learning materials in actual classrooms, and helping school systems use data more effectively.

    “Students were going to learn really how to set goals and track progress themselves, rather than having it be done for them,” McCrath-Smith said. “That is the skill that they will need post-high school when there’s not a teacher around.”

    All of that work was abruptly halted — in some cases with nearly finished results that now cannot be distributed.

    Every administration is entitled to set its own priorities, and contracts can be canceled or changed, said Steven Fleischman, an education consultant who for many years ran one of the regional research programs that was terminated. He compared it to a homeowner deciding they no longer want a deck as part of their remodel.

    But the current approach reminds him more of construction projects started and then abandoned during the Great Recession, in some cases leaving giant holes that sat for years.

    “You can walk around and say, ‘Oh, that was a building we never finished because the funds got cut off,’” he said.

    DOGE drives cuts to education research contracts, grants

    The Education Department has been a prime target of DOGE, the chaotic cost-cutting initiative led by billionaire Elon Musk, now a senior adviser to Trump.

    So far, DOGE has halted 89 education projects, many of which were under the purview of the Institute of Education Sciences, the ostensibly independent research arm of the Education Department. The administration said those cuts, which included multi-year contracts, totaled $881 million. In recent years, the federal government has spent just over $800 million on the entire IES budget.

    DOGE has also shut down 10 regional labs that conduct research for states and local schools and shuttered four equity assistance centers that help with teacher training. The Trump administration also cut off funding for nearly 100 teacher training grants and 18 grants for centers that often work to improve instruction for struggling students.

    The total savings is up for debate. The Trump administration said the terminated Education Department contracts and grants were worth $2 billion. But some were near completion with most of the money already spent.

    An NPR analysis of all of DOGE’s reported savings found that it likely was around $2 billion for the entire federal government — though the Education Department is a top contributor.

    On Friday, a federal judge issued an injunction that temporarily blocks the Trump administration from canceling additional contracts and grants that might violate the anti-DEIA executive order. It’s not clear whether the injunction would prevent more contracts from being canceled “for convenience.”

    Mark Schneider, the recent past IES director, said the sweeping cuts represent an opportunity to overhaul a bloated education research establishment. But even many conservative critics have expressed alarm at how wide-ranging and indiscriminate the cuts have been. Congress mandated many of the terminated programs, which also indirectly support state and privately funded research.

    The canceled projects include contracts that support maintenance of the Common Core of Data, a major database used by policymakers, researchers, and journalists, as well as work that supports updates to the What Works Clearinghouse, a huge repository of evidence-based practices available to educators for free.

    And after promising not to make any cuts to the National Assessment of Educational Progress, known as the nation’s report card, the department canceled an upcoming test for 17-year-olds that helps researchers understand long-term trends. On Monday, Peggy Carr, the head of the National Center for Education Statistics, which oversees NAEP, was placed on leave.

    The Education Department did not respond to questions about who decided which programs to cut and what criteria were used. Nor did the department respond to a specific question about why Charting My Path was eliminated. DOGE records estimate the administration saved $22 million by terminating the program early, less than half the $54 million in the original contract.

    The decision has caused mid-year disruptions and uncertainty.

    In Utah, the Canyons School District is trying to reassign the school counselor and three teachers whose salaries were covered by the Charting My Path contract.

    The district, which had 88 high schoolers participating in the program, is hoping to keep using the curriculum to boost its usual services, said Kirsten Stewart, a district spokesperson.

    Officials in Poway Unified, too, hope schools can use the curriculum and tools to keep up a version of the program. But that will take time and work because the program’s four teachers had to be reassigned to other jobs.

    “They dedicated that time and got really important training,” McCrath-Smith said. “We don’t want to see that squandered.”

    For Damroth, the loss of parent support meetings through Charting My Path was especially devastating. Logan has a rare genetic mutation that causes him to fall asleep easily during the day, so Damroth wanted help navigating which colleges might be able to offer extra scheduling support.

    “I have a million questions about this. Instead of just hearing ‘I don’t know’ I was really looking forward to working with Joe and the program,” she said, referring to Logan’s former mentor. “It’s just heartbreaking. I feel like this wasn’t well thought out. … My child wants to do things in life, but he needs to be given the tools to achieve those goals and those dreams that he has.”

    DOGE cuts labs that helped ‘Mississippi Miracle’ in reading

    The dramatic improvement in reading proficiency that Carey Wright oversaw as state superintendent in one the nation’s poorest states became known as the “Mississippi Miracle.”

    Regional Educational Laboratory Southeast, based out of the Florida Center for Reading Research at Florida State University, was a key partner in that work, Wright said.

    When Wright wondered if state-funded instructional coaches were really making a difference, REL Southeast dispatched a team to observe, videotape, and analyze the instruction delivered by hundreds of elementary teachers across the state. Researchers reported that teachers’ instructional practices aligned well with the science of reading and that teachers themselves said they felt far more knowledgeable about teaching reading.

    “That solidified for me that the money that we were putting into professional learning was working,” Wright said.

    The study, she noted, arose from a casual conversation with researchers at REL Southeast: “That’s the kind of give and take that the RELs had with the states.”

    Wright, now Maryland state superintendent, said she was looking forward to partnering with REL Mid-Atlantic on a math initiative and on an overhaul of the school accountability system.

    But this month, termination letters went out to the universities and research organizations that run the 10 Regional Educational Laboratories, which were established by Congress in 1965 to serve states and school districts. The letters said the contracts were being terminated “for convenience.”

    The press release that went to news organizations cited “wasteful and ideologically driven spending” and named a single project in Ohio that involved equity audits as a part of an effort to reduce suspensions. Most of the REL projects on the IES website involve reading, math, career connections, and teacher retention.

    Jannelle Kubinec, CEO of WestEd, an education research organization that held the contracts for REL West and REL Northwest, said she never received a complaint or a request to review the contracts before receiving termination letters. Her team had to abruptly cancel meetings to go over results with school districts. In other cases, reports are nearly finished but cannot be distributed because they haven’t gone through the review process.

    REL West was also working with the Utah State Board of Education to figure out if the legislature’s investment in programs to keep early career teachers from leaving the classroom was making a difference, among several other projects.

    “This is good work and we are trying to think through our options,” she said. “But the cancellation does limit our ability to finish the work.”

    Given enough time, Utah should be able to find a staffer to analyze the data collected by REL West, said Sharon Turner, a spokesperson for the Utah State Board of Education. But the findings are much less likely to be shared with other states.

    The most recent contracts started in 2022 and were set to run through 2027.

    The Trump administration said it planned to enter into new contracts for the RELs to satisfy “statutory requirements” and better serve schools and states, though it’s unclear what that will entail.

    “The states drive the research agendas of the RELs,” said Sara Schapiro, the executive director of the Alliance for Learning Innovation, a coalition that advocates for more effective education research. If the federal government dictates what RELs can do, “it runs counter to the whole argument that they want the states to be leading the way on education.”

    Some terminated federal education research was nearly complete

    Some research efforts were nearly complete when they got shut down, raising questions about how efficient these cuts were.

    The American Institutes for Research, for example, was almost done evaluating the impact of the Comprehensive Literacy State Development program, which aims to improve literacy instruction through investments like new curriculum and teacher training.

    AIR’s research spanned 114 elementary schools across 11 states and involved more than 23,000 third, fourth, and fifth graders and their nearly 900 reading teachers.

    Researchers had collected and analyzed a massive trove of data from the randomized trial and presented their findings to federal education officials just three days before the study was terminated.

    “It was a very exciting meeting,” said Mike Garet, a vice president and institute fellow at AIR who oversaw the study. “People were very enthusiastic about the report.”

    Another AIR study that was nearing completion looked at the use of multi-tiered systems of support for reading among first and second graders. It’s a strategy that helps schools identify and provide support to struggling readers, with the most intensive help going to kids with the highest needs. It’s widely used by schools, but its effectiveness hasn’t been tested on a larger scale.

    The research took place in 106 schools and involved over 1,200 educators and 5,700 children who started first grade in 2021 and 2022. Much of the funding for the study went toward paying for teacher training and coaching to roll out the program over three years. All of the data was collected and nearly done being analyzed when DOGE made its cuts.

    Garet doesn’t think he and his team should simply walk away from unfinished work.

    “If we can’t report results, that would violate our covenant with the districts, the teachers, the parents, and the students who devoted a lot of time in the hope of generating knowledge about what works,” Garet said. “Now that we have the data and have the results, I think we’re duty-bound to report them.”

    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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