Tag: plans

  • Trump Administration Plans to Freeze Billions in Childcare Funding to California – The 74

    Trump Administration Plans to Freeze Billions in Childcare Funding to California – The 74


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    The Trump administration says it’s planning to freeze about $10 billion in federal support for needy families in California and four other Democrat-run states, as the president announced an investigation into unspecified fraud in California.

    The plans come on the heels of the Trump administration announcing a freeze on all federal payments for child care in Minnesota, citing fraud allegations against daycare centers in the state.

    The state’s Democrat governor, Tim Walz — who ran for vice president against Donald Trump’s ticket in 2024 — announced Monday he was dropping out of running for reelection. He pointed to fraud against the state, saying it’s a real issue while alleging Trump and his allies were “seeking to take advantage of the crisis.”

    On Monday, the New York Post reported that the administration was expanding the funding freeze to include California and three other Democrat-led states, in addition to Minnesota. Unnamed federal officials cited “concerns that the benefits were fraudulently funneled to non-citizens,” The Post reported.

    Early Tuesday, President Trump alleged that corruption in California is worse than Minnesota and announced an investigation.

    “California, under Governor Gavin Newscum, is more corrupt than Minnesota, if that’s possible??? The Fraud Investigation of California has begun. Thank you for your attention to this matter! PRESIDENT DONALD J. TRUMP,” the president wrote on his social media platform Truth Social.

    He did not specify what alleged fraud was being examined in the Golden State.

    LAist has reached out to the White House to ask what the president’s fraud concerns are in California and to request an interview with the president.

    “For too long, Democrat-led states and governors have been complicit in allowing massive amounts of fraud to occur under their watch,” said an emailed statement from Andrew Nixon, a spokesperson for U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, which administers the federal childcare funds.

    “Under the Trump administration, we are ensuring that federal taxpayer dollars are being used for legitimate purposes. We will ensure these states are following the law and protecting hard-earned taxpayer money.”

    Gov. Gavin Newsom’s press office disputed Trump’s claim on social media, arguing that since taking office, the governor has blocked $125 billion in fraud and arrested “criminal parasites leaching off of taxpayers.”

    Criminal fraud cases in CA appear to be rare for this program

    Defrauding federally funded programs is a crime — and one LAist has investigated, leading to one of the largest such criminal cases in recent years against a California elected official, which surrounded meal funds.

    When it comes to the federal childcare funds that are being frozen, the dollar amount of fraud alleged in criminal cases appears to be a tiny fraction of the overall program’s spending in California.

    A search of thousands of news releases by all four federal prosecutor offices in California, going back more than a decade, found a total of one criminal case where the press releases referenced childcare benefits.

    That case, brought in 2023, alleged four men stole $3.7 million in federal childcare benefits through fraudulent requests to a San Diego organization that distributed the funds. All four pleaded guilty, with one defendant sentenced to 27 months in prison and others sentenced to other terms, according to authorities.

    It appears to be equivalent to one one-hundredth of 1% of all the childcare funding California has received over the past decade-plus covered by the prosecution press release search.

    Potential impact on California families

    The plans call for California, Minnesota, New York, Illinois and Colorado to lose about $7 billion in cash assistance for households with children, almost $2.4 billion to care for children of working parents, and about $870 million for social services grants that mostly benefit children at risk, according to unnamed federal officials speaking to the New York Times and New York Post.

    In the largest category of funding, California receives $3.7 billion per year. The program is known as Temporary Assistance for Needy Families, or TANF.

     ”It’s very clear that a freeze of those funds would be very damaging to the children, families, and providers of California,” said Stacy Lee, who oversees early childhood initiatives “at Children Now, an advocacy group for children in California.

     ”It is a significant portion of our funds and will impact families and children and providers across the whole state,” she added. “It would be devastating, in no uncertain terms.”

    About 270,000 people are served by the TANF program in L.A. County — about 200,000 of whom are children, according to the county Department of Public Social Services.

    “Any pause in funding for their cash benefits – which average $1000/month – would be devastating to these families,” said DPSS chief of staff Nick Ippolito.

    Ippolito said the department has a robust fraud prevention and 170-person investigations team, and takes allegations “very seriously.”

    It remains to be seen whether the funding freeze will end up in court. The state, as well as major cities and counties in California, has sued to ask judges to halt funding freezes or new requirements placed by the Trump administration. L.A. city officials say they’ve had success with that, including shielding more than $600 million in federal grant funding to the city last year.

    A union representing California childcare workers said the funding freeze would harm low-income families.

    “These threats need to be called out for what they are: direct threats on working families of all backgrounds who rely on access to quality, affordable child care in their communities to go to work every day supporting, and growing our economy,” said Max Arias, chairperson for the Child Care Providers United, which says it represents more than 70,000 child care workers across the state who care for kids in their homes.

    “Funding freezes, even when intended to be temporary, will be devastating — resulting in families losing access to care and working parents facing the devastating choice of keeping their children safe or paying their bills.”

    Federal officials planned to send letters to the affected states Monday about the planned funding pauses, the New York Post reported. As of 3 p.m. Tuesday, state officials said they haven’t gotten any official notification of the funding freeze plans.

    “The California Department of Social Services administers child care programs that help working families afford safe, reliable care for their children — so parents can go to work, support their families, and contribute to their communities,” said a statement from California Department of Social Services spokesperson Jason Montiel.

    “These funds are critical for working families across California. We take fraud seriously, and CDSS has received no information from the federal government indicating any freeze, pause, or suspension of federal child care funding.”

    This story was originally published on LAist.


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  • What the white paper told us about the Government’s future plans for R&D

    What the white paper told us about the Government’s future plans for R&D

    Author:
    Dr Hollie Chandler

    Published:

    This blog was kindly authored by Dr Hollie Chandler, Director of Policy at the Russell Group. It is the third blog in HEPI’s series responding to the post-16 education and skills white paper. You can find the first blog here, and the second blog here.

    When the white paper finally arrived, much of it confirmed the speculation that’s been rife all summer. Namely, that the Government wants a more joined-up skills sector where universities and FE collaborate more, offer a clearer set of pathways for post-16 choices, and widening opportunity for students from disadvantaged backgrounds. There was also a strong focus on quality, presented as a deal for the increase in tuition fees – a step towards financial sustainability that will be significantly undermined by the international levy.

    But alongside the paper’s focus on further education and vocational qualifications – most prominently the newly-announced V-levels – there was plenty of recognition for postgraduate skills and the UK’s world-leading research base.

    This was a welcome moment of focus for the postgraduate research community. These students are the lifeblood of our research and development ecosystem, but the number of new researchers starting a postgraduate qualification is in decline – decreasing by 10.4% between 2018/19 and 2023/24. If the UK is to become a true world leader in high-growth R&D sectors, then this is a real concern. The government’s own labour market projections show demand for workers educated beyond graduate level will grow 53% by 2035: the biggest increase for any qualification level. So it’s encouraging to see the Government considering how to bolster this vital talent pipeline.

    Part of this involves ensuring postgraduate study is more accessible to students from broad backgrounds, as well as increasing opportunities and support for people to use their skills and expertise in research settings. It’s an area that has long been overlooked in widening participation conversations, which is why the Russell Group recently launched a dedicated workstream to consider policies and share best practice. It’s about increasing opportunity, but also about ensuring we harness a wide spectrum of skills, knowledge and perspectives to inform vital research. For this to succeed, the conditions and culture of research must be set up to retain talent through the trickier early-career stages. It’s promising to see commitments to improving conditions, such as parental and medical leave, so postgraduate researcher students have the support they need.

    As always, many of the challenges come back to funding. Cost recovery on research is at a historic low, threatening the sustainability and global competitiveness of valuable R&D. Although UKRI commits to funding 80% of the full cost of grants, the reality is UK universities are only receiving 67% of their costs from funders – down from 75% in 2015/16. The Russell Group has previously explored a number of drivers behind this, and the white paper does reiterate some of the useful steps UKRI is taking. This includes making sure equipment is funded at 80% and confirming that matched funding by universities, which increasingly eats into cost-recovery rates, is not required. These are not new announcements – and there’s a long way to go if we’re to reach that 80% funding benchmark – but the government is making the right noises on better understanding cost-recovery challenges and pledging a concerted effort alongside charities, funding bodies and universities to tackle the problem together.

    The white paper places significant emphasis on the role of universities in regional economic growth and commits to creating a research system that enables collaboration and supports specialisation. We await further details on the “funding reforms” that will achieve this, but it’s encouraging to see a renewed commitment to dual support research funding and QR, and protecting curiosity-driven research through a new strategic objective for UKRI. We hope this means the government will be looking to address the real-terms decline in QR seen in recent years (down by 16.5% since 2010).

    The white paper also confirms that we can expect a review of the HEIF as the Government looks to align it more closely with the growth mission. We know HEIF brings great returns on investment: every £1 invested yields £14.80 at sector-level. Large research-intensive universities deliver an even higher return on investment from their HEIF allocations, as much as £20 once spinout performance is accounted for. We have long called for caps on HEIF to be raised, given its potential. For example, our modelling suggests that tripling HEIF could deliver around £11bn for the economy.

    There was no such funding boost indicated in the white paper, but there was recognition of HEIF’s power to generate growth by de-risking innovation, driving technology transfer and building entrepreneurial capacity locally and nationally. However, there are a lot of unanswered questions on how exactly HEIF could be pivoted towards the growth mission.

    A major benefit of HEIF, just like QR, is its flexibility. Our universities use it for everything from boosting pre-seed investment capabilities to establishing regional business hubs and empowering student entrepreneurs. It’s natural that the government wants the return on public investment to meet national priorities, but any blanket tailoring of how the fund is spent could impact its regionally specific benefits. It will be important to consult closely with the sector to make sure any review of HEIF enhances how universities contribute to local economies and doesn’t restrict initiatives that are already performing well.

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  • University of Northern Colorado plans to lay off 50 employees

    University of Northern Colorado plans to lay off 50 employees

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    Dive Brief:

    • The University of Northern Colorado plans to lay off about 50 staff members in early November and eliminate roughly 30 vacant roles, CFO Dale Pratt said during a town hall last week. 
    • The layoffs come as the university tries to close a projected $7 million budget shortfall for fiscal 2026 and shrink its scale to meet lower enrollment levels. The job eliminations are expected to save $8 million to $10 million annually, or up to 7.5% of its personnel expenses. 
    • Signaling that layoffs were on the horizon earlier this month, university President Andy Feinstein pointed to unexpected reductions in state funding, lower-than-anticipated revenue from enrollment, inflation and historically low employee turnover.

    Dive Insight:

     Many of the University of Northern Colorado’s financial woes stem from enrollment that is shrinking faster than expenses. Between 2018 and 2023, the public institution’s fall headcount fell by nearly a third, to 9,067 students.

    Following the pandemic, officials had expected a rebound in enrollment that has yet to materialize, Pratt said. Meanwhile Feinstein said the university is still optimistic that growth lies ahead given robust retention rates and other factors.

    Even so, its student body is likely to remain smaller in the years ahead compared to the past. In his presentation, Pratt cited a note from S&P Global Ratings analysts arguing that the university’s financial health depended on its ability to scale down to meet a smaller student body going forward. 

    He also pointed to metrics showing that the university has more employees per student than nearly all other colleges in the state, and that its net operating results per student have been negative since fiscal 2023.

    Going into the fiscal year, officials had a balanced budget drawn up for fiscal 2026, based in part on expected employee turnover and projected enrollment. Leaving jobs unfilled would have allowed University of Northern Colorado to save on costs without having to resort to layoffs, which leaders did consider when initially making the budget earlier this year, Pratt said. 

    But not as many employees left on their own as the university expected, with its turnover rate falling from 19.1% in June 2022 to 11.8% in June of this year, according to Pratt’s presentation. Just between 2024 and 2025, the turnover rate fell by 2 percentage points.

    Moreover, Colorado lawmakers reduced the university’s funding for the current fiscal year by $550,000 to plug an unanticipated hole in the state budget, Pratt said. 

    An even bigger financial blow came as the new school year began. In the fall semester, 391 fewer students enrolled than the institution budgeted for, with an actual headcount of 8,443. That metric includes 119 fewer degree-seeking undergraduate students than anticipated, which Pratt described as especially worrisome. 

    “There were changes here that occurred that really caught us off guard,” Pratt said. 

    Although officials are still analyzing what exactly happened, Pratt pointed to the Trump administration’s aggressive approach to immigration and visas, including for international students, and the recent state budget cuts. 

    That translated into a dip in international enrollment at larger universities in the state, including University of Colorado and Colorado State University. However, to compensate for the declines, those institutions may have recruited and enrolled students that otherwise would have gone to the University of Northern Colorado, Patt and Feinstein said. 

    All of those factors combined to strain the University of Northern Colorado’s budget and pressure leaders to make cuts. Officials were still clearing the layoffs with the university’s legal and human resources offices at the time of the townhall, Pratt noted. 

    He also said that faculty positions would only be eliminated through vacancies or nonrenewals of contracts. 

    In addition to its workforce, the university plans to rein in spending on travel, professional development and services and supplies. It is also reviewing student wages and graduate assistantships. 

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  • Trump plans overhaul of H-1B visa favouring high paid workers 

    Trump plans overhaul of H-1B visa favouring high paid workers 

    The notice, published in the Federal Register on September 24, proposes an overhaul of the H-1B visa process to establish a “weighted selection process” favouring “higher skilled and higher paid” workers. 

    If finalised, the proposal would give greater odds of selection to workers with higher wages, if the number of applicants exceeds the 85,000-limit set by Congress, which has been the case every year for over a decade. The system would replace the current lottery selection process.

    The changes – initially put forward for White House review in July – follow a major hike in the H-1B visa fee to $100,000 announced last week, triggering widespread panic among US companies and prospective foreign employees.  

    Prior to the announcement, employers typically paid between $2,000 to $5,000 for H-1B visa applications, with Trump claiming the increase would put an end to employers “abusing” the system by hiring foreign workers at a “significant discount” in comparison to American workers. 

    As per yesterday’s proposal, prospective employees would be assigned to four wage bands, with applicants in the top band (level four) placed into the selection pool four times, those in level three entered three times, and so on.  

    The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has said the process would “incentivise employers to offer higher wages or higher skilled position to H-1B workers and disincentivise the existing widespread use of the H-1B program to fill lower paid or lower skilled positions”. 

    The department said it “recognised the value” in maintaining opportunities for lower wage earners and maintained they would not be precluded from the visa, unlike the Trump’s 2021 proposal which “left little or no opportunity” for lower earners.

    But critics argue the proposed weighted system will harm US employers’ ability to build international knowledge and fill jobs.

    “By favouring more experienced foreign workers and reducing the number of new job entrants, US companies will find themselves struggling to grow,” Intead CEO Ben Waxman told The PIE News.  

    The plans now face a 30-day public comment period before they are considered by the administration for a final rule, a process that could take several months.  

    Extensive feedback to government from US businesses on how the proposal would damage US competitiveness is widely expected, with experts also anticipating possible court challenges against the legislation.

    Early reports from Bloomberg have suggested the US Chamber of Commerce has begun polling member companies about a potential lawsuit to challenge the $100,000 fee hike.

    DHS itself has estimated that 5,200 small businesses currently employing H-1B visa holders would suffer significant damages due to loss of labour.

    “There simply are not enough American computer science graduates to support the decades-long record of US innovation and economic growth. That is the wonder of the US tech sector,” said Waxman.

    “Why would the US government want to constrain that engine?” he asked.

    With analysis by the Chamber of Commerce forecasting a continued decline in the US labour force participation by 2030, advocacy bodies such as IIE have emphasised the importance of international students to fill gaps in labour markets across the country.   

    There simply are not enough American computer science graduates to support the decades-long record of US innovation and economic growth

    Ben Waxman, Intead

    The visa, popular with tech companies, enables US employers to temporarily employ foreign workers in “specialty occupations” spanning a wide range of industries from healthcare and teaching to computer science and financial analysis.  

    Under the current system, there is a statutory annual cap of 85,000 new H-1B visas: 65,00 for regular H-1B visas and 20,000 for individuals with advanced degrees from US institutions known as the master’s cap. 

    Each year, US employers submit registrations to USCIS for each worker they want to sponsor for a visa. Typically, this number exceeds the cap, in which case, applicants are placed into a random lottery which determines who is awarded a visa. 

    Since 2012, 60% or more of H-1B workers have held a computer-related job.

    Amazon remains the single largest sponsor, with 10,000 out of its total 1.56 million employees holding H-1B visas. Microsoft, Apple and Meta have also expanded foreign hiring through this stream in recent years, according to Newsweek analysis of new federal data.

    Commentators have already warned that if the new structure is implemented, the US tech sector will ramp up offshoring facilities and jobs. “Not the outcome anyone in the US wants,” said Waxman.

    The visa program has been the subject of much debate in recent months, with Elon Musk, himself once an H-1B worker, coming out in defence of the visa against calls for its abolition from some MAGA hardliners who argued it allowed firms to suppress wages and sidelines American workers.  

    Denial rates for H-1B visas peaked at 15% during Trump’s first administration due to stricter immigration rules and the tightening of the definition of “specialty occupations”.  

    India, America’s largest source of international students, is also the top country of origin for H-1B visa holders, with Indian nationals making up 73% of new H-1B approvals in 2023.

    China was the second-most common birthplace of H-1B workers, accounting for 12% of skilled workers approved in 2023, while no other birthplace accounted for more than 2% of the total. 

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  • New College Plans Kirk Statue on Campus

    New College Plans Kirk Statue on Campus

    New College of Florida plans to honor recently murdered conservative activist Charlie Kirk with a statue on campus, the public liberal arts institution announced on social media earlier this week.

    Kirk, who founded the organization Turning Point USA, which has chapters at hundreds of colleges, was shot and killed while speaking outdoors at Utah Valley University last week. Kirk has since been eulogized by multiple conservative figures, including President Donald Trump. 

    “Today, we announced that we will commission a statue of Charlie Kirk to honor his legacy and incredible work after his tragic assassination last week. The statue, privately funded by community leaders, will stand on campus as a commitment by New College to defend and fight for free speech and civil discourse in American life,” New College officials wrote Monday on X.

    Where on campus the statue would go has not yet been announced.

    NCF appears to be the first to announce such a move to honor Kirk, though more than a dozen congressional Republicans are seeking to place a statue of Kirk in the United States Capitol. Additionally, Iowa representative Mariannette Miller-Meeks has called on the University of Iowa to name its new Center for Intellectual Freedom after the activist as a tribute to his legacy.

    Although a public institution, NCF made national headlines in early 2023 when Republican governor Ron DeSantis appointed a swath of new members to its Board of Trustees and tasked them with shifting New College in a conservative direction akin to the private Hillsdale College.

    New College’s announcement generated millions of impressions on social media, including concerns about whether the statue would be vandalized, prompting DeSantis to respond, “If a student defaces the statue, then the student will be sent packing. Go ahead, make my day!”

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  • CUNY Plans to Buy Manhattan Campus

    CUNY Plans to Buy Manhattan Campus

    Funds from the sale of the campus will pay off a portion of MCNY’s $67.4 million outstanding debt.

    Cash-strapped Metropolitan College of New York is planning to sell its Manhattan campus to the City University of New York for $40 million, a regulatory filing first reported by Bloomberg shows.

    The two institutions signed a letter of intent on Monday, according to the regulatory filing, which notes that proceeds will be used to pay off a portion of MCNY’s $67.4 million outstanding debt. 

    MCNY agreed to sell the site last year as part of a forbearance agreement with bondholders.

    Metropolitan College of New York has struggled to keep up with debt in recent years and failed to maintain the agreed-upon ratio of liquid assets, according to a regulatory filing from July. The small college enrolled fewer than 500 students, according to the latest state data, and posted a deficit of more than $7 million in fiscal year 2023, publicly available financial data shows.

    CUNY is purchasing 101,542 square feet across three floors in the shared building, which officials told Bloomberg they intend to use as a temporary site for the Hunter-Bellevue School of Nursing amid ongoing construction projects. The sale will require approval from bondholders as well as Metropolitan College’s accreditor, the Middle States Commission on Higher Education.

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  • Cornell University plans to restructure later this year amid federal funding declines

    Cornell University plans to restructure later this year amid federal funding declines

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    Dive Brief:

    • Cornell University leaders expect to begin restructuring the institution’s operations and workforce in phases beginning late this year and continuing into 2026.
    • In a community update Friday, senior leaders echoed a June message warning of job cuts. “Reducing costs will mean reconsidering how we handle all of our processes, from procurement to technology, and rethinking, in fundamental ways, how we allocate our resources,” they said Friday. “It will also, inevitably, mean reducing our workforce.”
    • The officials cited inflation, historical staff growth, contractions in federal funding, “significant legal and regulatory expenses,” and “an uncertain and unprecedented federal landscape.”

    Dive Insight:

    In June, the same group of Cornell leaders — President Michael Kotlikoff, Provost Kavita Bala, Chief Financial Officer Chris Cowen and Provost for Medical Affairs Robert Harrington — told the university community that disruption in the higher education world would “require financial austerity.”

    “The spring semester was unlike anything ever seen in higher education, with hundreds of millions of dollars in federal research contracts at Cornell terminated or frozen, and serious threats to future research funding, federal financial aid, medical reimbursement, and research cost recovery, along with an anticipated tax on our endowment income, and rapidly escalating legal expenses,” they wrote at the time. 

    The June message also brought news of a hiring freeze. On Friday, the leaders said hiring restrictions would continue “indefinitely” with “rare exceptions” determined by campus committees. 

    Cornell was among the 60 institutions that the Trump administration warned in March could face potential sanctions over allegations related to antisemitism. 

    In April, the administration reportedly froze $1 billion in federal research funding for the university. Administrators said then that they hadn’t received official word from the government about the frozen funds but were hit with dozens of stop-work orders on grant projects. This summer, Bloomberg reported that Cornell was nearing a deal with the Trump administration to restore grant funding that could involve a $100 million payment. 

    Even before the Trump administration’s actions, Cornell faced budget pressure from rising expenses. For fiscal 2024, the Ivy League institution posted a $175.5 million operating deficit, compared to $23 million surplus the year before. 

    Cornell’s senior leaders said that to save costs, the university is looking to consolidate operations where it can, seeking “new efficiencies and reducing duplication of work.” And while part of the university’s tradition, its decentralized structure is also a source of significant administrative inefficiencies, they added.

    “Part of our task is identifying opportunities to scale and regularize our academic support systems across units with unique characteristics and needs without compromising our institutional excellence,” they said. 

    That means centralizing operations that are duplicated across colleges and units, which will ultimately lead to a smaller workforce, leaders said. They didn’t note whether those losses would be primarily through layoffs, buyouts, attrition or other means. 

    Cornell didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment Monday. 

    The leaders said they expect to complete an analysis and planning process around the university’s operations this fall. 

    “These changes will be difficult for our community but are vital for our future,” they added, describing the steps they are taking as “necessary to ensure that Cornell pursues its academic mission sustainably for generations to come.”

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  • Education Department plans return of laid-off OCR employees

    Education Department plans return of laid-off OCR employees

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    Dive Brief:

    • The U.S. Department of Education said it plans to bring back more than 260 Office for Civil Rights staff that it cut as part of its March reduction in force, returning groups of employees to the civil rights enforcement arm in waves every two weeks Sept. 8 through Nov. 3. 
    • The department’s Aug. 19 update was filed as required by a federal judge’s order in Victim Rights Law Center v. U.S. Department of Education directing that the Education Department be restored to “the status quo” so it can “carry out its statutory functions.” 
    • Since March, the Education Department has been paying the OCR employees about $1 million per week to sit idle on administrative leave, according to the update.

    Dive Insight:

    The update, filed in U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts, comes as a U.S. Supreme Court emergency order in a separate but similar case allowed the agency to move forward with mass layoffs across the entire department, rather than just OCR.

    That case — New York v. McMahon— was overseen by the same judge who ordered on June 18 that OCR be restored to its former capacity.

    Last week, Judge Myong Joun said he stood by his OCR order regardless of the Supreme Court’s decision in New York v. McMahon because the students who brought the Victim Rights Law Center case have “unique harms that they have suffered due to the closure of the OCR.”

    In March, the Education Department closed seven of its 12 regional offices as part of the layoffs that impacted 1,300 staffers across the entire department.

    Civil rights and public education advocates, as well as lawmakers and education policy experts warned that such a significant slash to OCR would compromise students’ civil rights and compromise their equal access to education that OCR is meant to protect.

    In April, the Victim Rights Law Center case was brought by two students who “faced severe discrimination and harassment in school and were depending on the OCR to resolve their complaints so that they could attend public school,” said Joun in his Aug. 13 decision.

    The Education Department’s update this week that it is returning OCR employees to work is in compliance with Joun’s decision.

    After Joun ordered the Education Department in the New York case to restore the department more broadly, the administration filed an emergency appeal with the Supreme Court to push the RIF through.

    The department did not respond by press time to K-12 Dive’s inquiry as to whether it intends to likewise appeal the Victim Rights Law Center decision to the Supreme Court.

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  • Education Department plans return of laid-off OCR staffers

    Education Department plans return of laid-off OCR staffers

    This audio is auto-generated. Please let us know if you have feedback.

    Dive Brief:

    • The U.S. Department of Education said it plans to bring back more than 260 Office for Civil Rights staff that it cut as part of its March reduction in force, returning groups of employees to the civil rights enforcement arm in waves every two weeks Sept. 8 through Nov. 3. 
    • The department’s Aug. 19 update was filed as required by a federal judge’s order in Victim Rights Law Center v. U.S. Department of Education directing that the Education Department be restored to “the status quo” so it can “carry out its statutory functions.” 
    • Since March, the Education Department has been paying the OCR employees about $1 million per week to sit idle on administrative leave, according to the update.

    Dive Insight:

    The update, filed in U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts, comes as a U.S. Supreme Court emergency order in a separate but similar case allowed the agency to move forward with mass layoffs across the entire department, rather than just OCR.

    That case — New York v. McMahon— was overseen by the same judge who ordered on June 18 that OCR be restored to its former capacity.

    Last week, Judge Myong Joun said he stood by his OCR order regardless of the Supreme Court’s decision in New York v. McMahon because the students who brought the Victim Rights Law Center case have “unique harms that they have suffered due to the closure of the OCR.”

    In March, the Education Department closed seven of its 12 regional offices as part of the layoffs that impacted 1,300 staffers across the entire department.

    Civil rights and public education advocates, as well as lawmakers and education policy experts warned that such a significant slash to OCR would compromise students’ civil rights and compromise their equal access to education that OCR is meant to protect.

    In April, the Victim Rights Law Center case was brought by two students who “faced severe discrimination and harassment in school and were depending on the OCR to resolve their complaints so that they could attend public school,” said Joun in his Aug. 13 decision.

    The Education Department’s update this week that it is returning OCR employees to work is in compliance with Joun’s decision.

    After Joun ordered the Education Department in the New York case to restore the department more broadly, the administration filed an emergency appeal with the Supreme Court to push the RIF through.

    The department did not respond by press time to K-12 Dive’s inquiry as to whether it intends to likewise appeal the Victim Rights Law Center decision to the Supreme Court.

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  • Week in review: Details emerge on plans to collect new admissions data

    Week in review: Details emerge on plans to collect new admissions data

    Most clicked story of the week:

    Nearly three dozen selective colleges are facing an antitrust lawsuit alleging they used the early decision admissions process to reduce competition and inflate prices. Also named as defendants are application platforms Common App and Scoir, as well as the Consortium on Financing Higher Education, an information-sharing coalition of selective liberal arts colleges.

    By the numbers

     

    740,000

    That’s the estimated number of work hours the higher education sector can expect to add as a result of the U.S. Department of Education’s plan to cull new data from colleges on their applicants’ race and sex. Behind the push is the Trump administration’s hostility toward diversity initiatives and its aggressive approach to enforcing the U.S. Supreme Court’s ban on race-based admissions.

    Anti-DEI push in courts, board rooms and classrooms:

    • A federal judge declined to block Alabama’s governor from enforcing a new law that eliminates diversity, equity and inclusion offices and forbids colleges from requiring students to adopt a long list of “divisive concepts.” The professors and students who sued over the law expressed concerns that it is overly vague and restricts their free speech rights. 
    • The Iowa Board of Regents adopted a new policy requiring public university faculty to present controversial subjects “in a way that reflects the range of scholarly views and ongoing debate in the field.” Before last week’s vote, the board stripped the proposal’s original language around DEI and critical race theory after public pushback. But one regent noted the policy does not define “controversial” and raised questions about who would. 
    • Students for Fair Admissions dropped its lawsuits against the U.S. Military Academy at West Point and the U.S. Air Force Academy over race-conscious admissions. Both academies dropped their diversity efforts in admissions earlier this year under a directive from the Trump administration. 

    Quote of the week:

    “Our actions clearly demonstrate our commitment to addressing antisemitic actions and promoting an inclusive campus environment by upholding a safe, respectful, and accountable environment.”

    George Washington University

    The private institution became one of the latest targets of the Trump administration, which claimed the university was indifferent to harassment of Jewish and Israeli students on its Washington, D.C., campus. As with its accusations against a handful of other colleges, the administration cited a pro-Palestinian protest encampment at GWU in spring 2024. The university asked the local police to clear the encampment shortly after it was formed.

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