Tag: Senate

  • What’s inside the Senate megabill for higher education?

    What’s inside the Senate megabill for higher education?

    The Senate on Tuesday passed its mammoth domestic policy package, which would reshape the federal student lending system and delay major higher education regulations. 

    Vice President JD Vance cast the tie-breaking vote to pass the legislative package 51-50. Lawmakers passed the bill through the reconciliation process, which allows the Senate to bypass the usual 60 votes needed to overcome a filibuster. 

    The House and the Senate will have to reconcile their two versions of the bill before they can send it to President Donald Trump’s desk. 

    That could prove difficult. Although the two proposals would both extend tax cuts and fund Republican priorities like increased immigration enforcement, some aspects are dramatically different. 

    That includes for the higher education sector. For instance, while the House version would put colleges on the hook for their former students’ unpaid student loans, the Senate’s version creates an entirely different system intended to hold institutions accountable for their student outcomes. 

    Below, we’re rounding up some of the Senate bill’s major provisions. 

    Cutting off student loan eligibility to college programs

    One of the biggest provisions in the Senate’s bill would prevent college programs from being eligible to receive student loan funding if their graduates can’t meet certain earnings thresholds. 

    For undergraduate degree programs, they would have to prove that at least half of their graduates earn more than the typical worker in their state with only a high school diploma. Similarly, graduate programs would have to show their graduates earn more than the typical bachelor’s degree holder working in the same field and region. 

    College programs would lose their eligibility for federal student loans if they fail the earnings test in two out of three consecutive years. 

    Reshaping federal student loans

    Like the House-passed version, the Senate bill would end Grad PLUS loans, which allow graduate students to borrow up to the cost of the attendance for their programs, including tuition, fees, textbooks and living expenses. 

    The bill would moreover cap graduate student lending to $100,000 per borrower, or $200,000 for students enrolled in professional programs, such as law or medicine. It would also cap Parent PLUS loans to $65,000 per student. 

    Additionally, the Senate’s plan would consolidate the number of repayment options for federal student loans. Starting July 1, 2026, borrowers taking out new loans would only have access to two plans: one standard plan with fixed payments and one income-driven repayment plan with remaining balances forgiven after 30 years. 

    Major changes to Pell

    The Senate’s version of the bill would allow Pell Grants to be used for short-term programs between eight and 15 weeks. 

    However, lawmakers took out a controversial provision that would have also extended short-term Pell Grants to unaccredited providers. The move came after the Senate’s parliamentarian said the original provision should be subject to a 60-vote approval versus the simple majority needed for reconciliation.

    The package also would increase funding for Pell Grants to cover expected shortfalls while removing eligibility for students if they receive scholarships that cover their full cost of attendance. 

    Endowment tax hikes

    The Senate’s version of the bill would raise the tax that wealthy private nonprofit colleges pay on their endowment returns. The new system would introduce a tiered tax, starting at the current rate of 1.4% and jumping up to 4% and 8% based on endowment assets per student. 

    Currently, only colleges with at least $500,000 in endowment assets and 500 tuition-paying students pay the tax. But the new bill provides an exemption for smaller colleges, excluding those with 3,000 tuition-paying students or fewer from having to pay the tax. Like the initial short-term Pell proposal, lawmakers took out an earlier proposed exemption for religious colleges after scrutiny from the chamber’s’s parliamentarian.

    Delays to Biden-era regulations

    The Senate’s original plan would have rolled back permanently two Biden-era versions of regulations: the borrower defense to repayment and closed school discharge rules. The former allows borrowers to receive debt relief if they were defrauded by their colleges while the latter offers forgiveness if their institutions closed before they could finish their programs. 

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  • Senate Introduces Legislation to Increase Federal Minimum Wage to $15 per Hour – CUPA-HR

    Senate Introduces Legislation to Increase Federal Minimum Wage to $15 per Hour – CUPA-HR

    by CUPA-HR | June 24, 2025

    On June 10, Senators Josh Hawley (R-MO) and Peter Welch (D-VT) introduced the Higher Wages for American Workers Act (S. 2013). The Higher Wages for American Workers Act would amend the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA), raising the federal minimum wage to $15 per hour and directing the secretary of labor to adjust the minimum wage annually based on inflation.

    Higher Wages for American Workers Act

    The bill proposes to increase the federal minimum wage from $7.25 to $15 per hour beginning January 1 of the first year after enactment. Each year after, the secretary of labor is directed to increase the minimum wage annually by “the percentage increase, if any, in the Consumer Price Index for Urban Wage Earners and Clerical Workers.”

    Although the federal minimum wage has not been increased since 2009, several states have increased their state minimum wage above the current $7.25 per hour. As of January 1, 2025, 30 states and the District of Columbia have minimum wage laws set above the federal level, and 10 states and the District of Columbia have a minimum wage of $15 per hour or higher. All other states must follow the minimum wage set by Congress through the FLSA.

    Looking Ahead

    While legislation has been introduced in recent years to increase the federal minimum wage, calls to increase the level to $15 per hour have mostly come from Congressional Democrats. It is therefore notable that Republican Senator Josh Hawley is leading efforts on this issue. It remains to be seen if enough Republicans in the Senate will also support this effort to give the legislation the chance to receive 60 votes to bypass the filibuster and whether House Republicans will take up similar legislation.

    CUPA-HR will keep members apprised of further developments related to federal minimum wage laws.



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  • How Senate Republicans Want to Hold Colleges Accountable

    How Senate Republicans Want to Hold Colleges Accountable

    More than a week after the Senate education committee released its draft plan to overhaul the federal student aid system, higher education leaders across the sector are still breathing a sigh of relief over key provisions concerning how to hold colleges accountable for student outcomes.

    The high chamber’s proposal, which ties a university’s access to federal loans to how much their students earn after graduation, is simpler and more productive than the House proposal, known as risk-sharing, which would require colleges to pay an annual penalty based on their students’ outstanding loan balances, they say.

    “More than any other factor, a program having low earnings is the thing that is most connected with the prevalence of students defaulting or struggling to pay down their loans,” said Jordan Matsudaira, director of the Postsecondary Education and Economics Research Center at American University. “This is a serious and sensible proposal to establish what I think of as a very necessary accountability in the higher education space.”

    The Senate plan seems to be based on an existing regulation known as gainful employment, which uses students’ earnings and debt to measure whether for-profit and non-degree programs adequately prepare their students for the workforce. But Republicans who sponsored the bill and expanded its reach to all degree programs have been wary of drawing attention to the overlap, as lawmakers have avoided calling it anything like “gainful employment 2.0” or “gainful for all.”

    Republicans have historically opposed the Democratic policy, which was first put in place during the Obama administration, saying it unfairly targeted for-profit programs and that a free market would be the best way to regulate the quality of academic programs. (The first Trump administration rescinded the policy, and then the Biden administration enacted a stricter version that remains in place today.)

    But now, as congressional Republicans grow increasingly concerned about student debt and skeptical of higher education, some have started to change their tune.

    Some say the Senate’s proposed earnings test is likely to succeed and become law, as it’s the lesser of two evils and aligns more with a conservative federalist ideology when compared to the House’s plan. But others view this new accountability measure as just that—new.

    “They’re not looking at the Biden gainful-employment rules and saying, ‘Oh, this was a good thing. Let’s do it like they did.’ They’re taking a different approach,” said Jason Altmire, president of Career Education Colleges and Universities, the national trade association representing for-profit institutions, which criticized the Biden regulations. He also noted that including all types of colleges is “a huge difference from the way the two last Democratic administrations approached gainful employment.”

    Either way, the provision is now up for consideration as part of a broader legislative package—the One Big Beautiful Bill Act—that would cut spending in order to finance Trump’s tax cuts and immigration policies. The House bill passed by a one-vote margin last month; now, senators are aiming to pass their version by July 4.

    Since lawmakers are using a process known as reconciliation, they only need 51 votes to pass the bill in the Senate, down from the typical 60 votes. But it also means the legislation has to adhere to a specific set of rules.

    Some policy experts question whether the Senate’s accountability measure for colleges will pass the sniff test. If it does, they expect the proposal to be included in the final bill.

    How Does It Work?

    The crux of the Senate’s accountability measure is tracking the median earnings of students program by program and comparing them to the average earnings of adults ages 25 to 34 with only a high school diploma. If students don’t earn more than adults without a college degree for two out of three consecutive years, then the program would lose access to federal loans for at least two years.

    Earnings for baccalaureate degree programs will be measured four years after a student leaves the program regardless of age—a time frame that some experts say is too short to truly gauge a program’s value. Meanwhile, the median income of high school graduates would not be evaluated until they hit at least 25 years old, or seven years after the typical high school graduation. Some higher ed lobbyists say that comparison isn’t fair.

    “You’re comparing a 23-year-old, let’s say, cosmetology graduate just getting started with her book of business to a 34-year-old flight attendant who’s been on the job for 16 years who only has a high school diploma,” Altmire said.

    A similar process would be used for graduate and professional programs, except the income level would be compared to adults with a bachelor’s degree and earnings will be evaluated further out from when the student left the program.

    The Senate hasn’t released any data on its plan, but studies on the Biden gainful-employment rule offer some insights into which types of college programs could be affected most.

    Data collected by the Department of Education in 2022 showed that about 1.3 percent of programs not currently subject to gainful employment would fail. About half of the programs failed because of the earnings test, according to an Inside Higher Ed analysis of department data.

    Other studies show that of those programs, the ones most impacted will likely be graduate studies and for-profit bachelor’s degrees. For example, about 20 percent of students in each of these sectors failed the Biden earnings test, said Matsudaira, who worked for the Department of Education during the Biden administration and is very familiar with gainful employment. That’s compared to only about 4 percent of nonprofit bachelor programs.

    Altmire, from CECU, however, disagreed. He pointed to a 2023 study conducted by Monroe College, a for-profit institution, which showed that nearly 90 percent of the undergraduate degree programs that would fail the earnings test are at public and private nonprofit colleges.

    But just because more nonprofit colleges fail doesn’t mean they have a high rate of failure proportionally, Matsudaira responded.

    “About 90 percent of enrollment is in the nonprofit sector, and only 10 percent of enrollment is in the for-profit sector, so of course, that should tilt in the direction of the nonprofit sector,” he said. “I would think about it a little bit more within each one of those sectors.”

    A Fairer Gainful?

    The Senate plan does keep the current gainful-employment rules in place while House Republicans want to repeal them. The Trump administration is currently defending the regulations in federal court, but a judge could throw them out.

    Still, policy experts cautioned against thinking of the Senate proposal as an add-on to Biden’s version of gainful employment.

    “I think it would be inaccurate to say the Senate took the Biden gainful-employment rules and tinkered around the edges,” Altmire said. “They took one concept from the Biden rules but then did a lot of other things that greatly improved that concept and made it more fair across all schools.”

    Beyond covering all degree programs, the Senate plan doesn’t specifically include credential programs, which currently fall under gainful employment. That’s a change that some experts say is a mistake, especially when the Senate is looking to expand the Pell Grant to cover some of these credentials. However, that plan comes with its own guardrails.

    “Certificates, beyond any other type of program, are most typified by extremely low earnings, and having those low earnings leads to a lot of loan defaults over all. So the fact that the Senate proposal ignores the certificate space altogether is baffling,” Matsudaira said.

    The Senate also changed the test itself. This version only measures a student’s earnings, while the Biden rule measures both income and whether students can pay off their loans. Furthermore, the Senate’s calculation includes all program enrollees, regardless of whether they completed their degree. The current gainful-employment regulations only count completers.

    Of these changes, the most debated has been whether to include in the earnings calculation students who stopped out before completing their degrees.

    Some policy experts argue that it’s fair to hold colleges accountable only for the earnings of students who complete their degree programs. If the goal is also to increase degree completion, that’s great, they say, but it should be handled through a separate provision than the one focused on return on investment.

    “If the goal is to actually measure the ROI, we should be looking specifically at those who earned a degree,” said Craig Lindwarm, senior vice president for governmental affairs at the Association of Public and Land-grant Universities. “There are a lot of other ways of supporting efforts to boost college completion, like investment in the Postsecondary Student Success Grant program.”

    But others say it is entirely fair.

    “You shouldn’t be rewarded when a student chooses your school, takes a bunch of financial aid, doesn’t complete the program,” said Altmire from CECU. “That makes no sense.”

    That said, higher education leaders from all sectors of the industry are generally pleased with the proposal and say it shows that the Senate has been listening to their concerns.

    “We’re encouraged that the Senate is heading down a more productive path,” one collegiate lobbyist said. “This is a much fairer, simpler and [more] effective approach to accountability.”

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  • Senate Outlines Plans for Endowment Tax Hike

    Senate Outlines Plans for Endowment Tax Hike

    The Senate Committee on Finance is proposing to raise the endowment tax on private colleges and universities, but not to the extent the recently passed bill in the House calls for, according to a draft plan released Monday.

    The less dramatic excise tax tops out at 8 percent for the wealthiest institutions, compared to 21 percent in the House plan, but the Senate’s proposal keeps the House’s tiered rate structure, with some colleges paying more depending on the value of their endowment per student. The current rate for affected institutions is 1.4 percent.

    Institutional lobbyists and college presidents have warned that the sharp increase in the House plan would hurt their ability to provide need-based aid and be debilitating for some low-income students. Although the Senate’s iteration offers some relief, it’s not as much as they hoped for.

    “The Senate version of the so-called endowment tax is better, but it’s still bad and harmful tax policy,” said Steven Bloom, assistant vice president of government relations​​ at the American Council on Education. “They’re going to take money that would likely have been devoted to financial aid and research and other academic purposes on campus, and they’re going to send it to Washington, where it’s used largely for purposes unrelated to higher education.”

    The Senate committee’s plan, like the House proposal, also still exempts religious colleges and requires colleges to take international students out of the total roll call when calculating the endowment’s value per student. If passed, this stipulation would increase the tax rate significantly for institutions like Columbia University that have 20 percent or more foreign students.

    The finance committee legislation, which also includes cuts to Medicaid that could put pressure on states’ budgets, is part of a broader package of bills that would make significant changes to higher education policy and cut spending and taxes in order to pay for President Donald Trump’s priorities, which include increased deportations and tax cuts for the wealthy. The House version of the reconciliation bill known as the One Big Beautiful Bill Act passed by a one-vote margin last month. Senators are aiming to pass their version by July 4 and only need 51 votes thanks to the reconciliation process, as opposed to the traditional 60 votes.

    Unlike the House proposal, colleges that don’t accept federal financial aid would be exempt from the tax entirely. Hillsdale College president Larry Arnn blasted the House plan in an op-ed last month as an attack on the institution’s independence. (Hillsdale doesn’t participate in the federal financial aid system.)

    “The resources entrusted to Hillsdale College are not drawn from the public treasury,” Arnn wrote. “They are given freely by those who believe in our mission. To tax these gifts is to tax philanthropy itself—to burden those who would lift burdens. It is to weaken those who do good precisely because they are free to do it. It weakens them and strengthens the federal government, reversing the order intended by our Founders.”

    Hillsdale wasn’t the only college that pushed back on the rate increase. In recent weeks, private institutions big and small have pitched their own alternatives to Congress.

    Some of the largest and wealthiest research institutions that would be affected by the tax—such as Harvard, Stanford and Princeton Universities—pledged to spend 5 percent of their endowment’s value annually in exchange for a much lower 2.4 percent endowment tax rate, The Wall Street Journal reported. Bloom agreed that if the tax is to increase, he would like to see some kind of incentive introduced, like financial aid spending thresholds, to mitigate the tax rate.

    “They’ve created no incentive for schools to behave in ways that we believe that they would want schools to behave,” he said.

    Other institutions suggested that the tax rate should be based on what percentage of endowment revenue an institution spends each year on student financial aid or how many students enrolled come from a low-income background and receive the federal Pell Grant.

    A coalition of 24 smaller institutions, including Grinnell and Davidson Colleges, which would be hit hardest by the House endowment tax, proposed adjusting the excise rate based on the number of students enrolled. Colleges with fewer than 5,000 students have a different economic model than an institution with 30,000, they said.

    Grinnell president Anne Harris, who spent part of the last week educating lawmakers about the harm of the increased endowment tax, said Monday evening that the Senate plan still disproportionately burdens smaller institutions. She noted that her institution will likely still face the maximum 8 percent tax.

    “I deeply appreciate all the work that’s gone on and clearly all the consideration that has informed what we’re seeing this afternoon, but having said that, the current proposal still disproportionately burdens small colleges,” Harris said. “You’re going to find a school like Grinnell College with 1,700 students, a small college in a rural setting, bearing a much greater burden of this tax than a research institution in a large city.”

    She could only speculate that senators stuck with a tiered structure for simplicity, but added that “the simple fix” would be to make a stipulation that places all small private colleges in the lowest bracket and maintain the current 1.4 percent tax rate.

    Harris is hopeful that there will still be further opportunities for compromise and said she will continue to advocate for small liberal arts institutions like her own. But in the meantime, her executive team will also continue to plan out all the possible scenarios to figure out the best course of action to protect student aid if the bill passes as it currently stands.

    “All responsible options that provide the most money for financial aid and mission fulfillment are on the table as part of our scenario planning with the board,” she said.

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  • Senate HELP Committee Releases Big Beautiful Bill

    Senate HELP Committee Releases Big Beautiful Bill

    Sen. Bill Cassidy, R-Louisiana, spearheading the Senate plan for higher education reform.

    Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images

    Senate Republicans want to eliminate so-called “inflationary loans,” stop federal aid to degrees that leave students worse off and expand the Pell Grant to workforce training programs as part of a draft plan released late Tuesday evening to overhaul higher education policy. 

    The 71-page legislation is part of the Senate’s response to the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, which passed the House last month and is designed to fund President Donald Trump’s tax cuts, his crackdown on immigration and other top agenda items.

    The Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions committee drafted the higher education portion of the legislation. As expected, the plan mirrors the House bill in many ways as it calls for significant changes to the federal student loan system. For instance, both plans would end the Grad Plus loans and restrict the Parent Plus program.

    But the Senate has a different plan to hold colleges accountable, nixing the House’s proposed risk-sharing model, under which colleges would have to pay a fee for their graduates’ unpaid loans, for a measure like gainful employment. Under the Senate plan, colleges would have to report their average postgraduate income levels and could lose access to federal aid, depending on students’ earnings and debt. The Senate bill also omits a provision from the House bill that would exclude part-time students from the Pell grant. Overall, the changes in the Senate bill would save $300 billion over 10 years compared to the House bill, which would save $350 billion.

    “American higher education has lost its purpose. Students are graduating with degrees that won’t get them a job and insurmountable debt that they can’t pay back,” said Sen. Bill Cassidy, the Republican chair of the HELP committee, in a news release.  “We need to fix our broken higher education system, so it prioritizes student success and ensures Americans have the skills to compete in a 21st century economy. President Trump and Senate Republicans are focused on delivering results for American families and this bill does just that.”

    Lawmakers are using the process known as reconciliation to advance the legislation, so it only needs 51 votes to pass the high chamber instead of the typical 60 votes. But before senators can vote, the Senate Budget committee and then the parliamentarian will have to scrutinize the various provisions and ensure they adhere to the reconciliation rules. For example, the policy changes must have a budgetary impact and be within the jurisdiction of the committee that proposed it. 

    President Donald Trump has set an ambitious July 4 deadline to sign the measure into law, which would require quick action from the Senate.

    From the beginning of the Trump administration in January, House Republicans have been pushing a more radical plan with steep cuts to key welfare programs like Medicaid, the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, and, most recently, student financial aid like the Pell Grant. Meanwhile, senators have talked about more modest, though still significant, spending cuts. 

    Now, Republicans from both chambers will have to get on the same page if they want to meet their deadline. All the while, lobbyists, policy analysts and political figures—including ex-Trump advisor, Elon Musk—are expected to come at the bill from every angle with critiques.

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  • Top takeaways from OCR nominee’s Senate confirmation hearing

    Top takeaways from OCR nominee’s Senate confirmation hearing

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    The U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights is undergoing a slew of changes, including a significantly increased caseload after the Trump administration let go of hundreds of its employees. With the nomination of Kimberly Richey to fill the role of assistant secretary for civil rights, it’s likely the office tasked with enforcing equal educational access will shift even more.

    Right now, attorneys are juggling on average 115 cases, according to Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash., who shared the number with witnesses at a Thursday nomination hearing held by the Senate’s Health, Education Labor and Pensions Committee. 

    Prior to the March layoffs that resulted in the shuttering of seven out of 12 OCR offices nationwide, attorneys tasked with protecting the civil rights of students and educators had about 42 cases on their plate. That caseload was characterized as “untenable” by the former assistant secretary for civil rights, Catherine Lhamon, and had prompted former U.S. Education Secretary Miguel Cardona to advocate for an increase in the office’s funding under the Biden administration.

    Murray said the newer caseload was now “making it difficult for those investigators to meaningfully investigate discrimination and to protect students’ rights.” 

    Thursday’s hearing was held to discuss the nomination of Richey to lead OCR, among nominations of other officials such as Penny Schwinn to be deputy secretary of education. Richey served under the first Trump administration as acting assistant secretary for the Office of Special Education and Rehabilitative Services and then as acting assistant secretary for civil rights.

    Being ‘strategic’ with resources

    When asked by multiple Democratic senators about how she would navigate a backlog of OCR complaints — which exceeds 25,000, said Murray — with half of the office’s former headcount and a budget that would be significantly slashed under President Donald Trump’s FY 26 proposal, Richey said she would have to be “strategic.” 

    “One of the reasons why this role is so important to me is because I will always advocate for OCR to have the resources to do its job,” said Richey. However, she dodged questions about whether OCR had enough resources to do its job under Trump’s first administration.  

    “I think that what that means is that I’m going to have to be really strategic if I’m confirmed, stepping into this role, helping come up with a plan where we can address these challenges,” she said.

    That would include evaluating the current caseload and determining where complaints stand in their investigative timeline. It would also include looking at the current staff distribution and organizational structure of OCR, and helping Secretary of Education Linda McMahon come up with a plan to “ensure that OCR is able to meet its mission and its statutory purpose to prioritize all complaints.”

    Richey said that rather than put certain investigations on pause, as has been the case under the second Trump administration, she would prioritize all complaints that fall at OCR’s footsteps.

    Changes in Title IX enforcement

    Richey raised the eyebrows of some Republican leaders when she said that she would enforce Title IX, the anti-sex discrimination statute, to protect LGTBQ+ students from discrimination based on gender identity and sexual orientation. The Trump administration and Republican leaders have prioritized enforcing the statute to exclude transgender students from women’s and girls’ athletics teams, locker rooms and other facilities. 

    When pressed, however, Richey clarified that she would enforce Title IX to protect LGTBQ+ students in a narrow number of cases, related to different treatment, bullying and harassment. 

    “We would also look at the relevance of sex in our cases,” Richey said. “Sex is relevant in regards to restrooms, and sex is relevant in regards to locker rooms and sex is relevant in regards to athletics.” 

    The Biden administration’s interpretation of Title IX following the Supreme Court’s decision in Bostock v. Clayton County protected LGTBQ+ students, including transgender students, on athletic teams in some cases. It prohibited blanket bans of transgender students from athletics.

    “That is not what we did under President Trump’s first term, and that is not what we will do under President Trump’s second term,” she said. 

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  • Senate Dems Grill Trump’s Pick to Lead Civil Rights Office

    Senate Dems Grill Trump’s Pick to Lead Civil Rights Office

    Kimberly Richey, a Florida education official, made her case Thursday about why she should lead the Education Department’s Office for Civil Rights, pledging “unwavering” support of the administration’s priorities such as protecting Jewish students.

    “Should I be confirmed as assistant secretary for civil rights, I will proudly be joining an administration that will not allow students to be intimidated, harassed, assaulted or excluded from their institutions,” she said in her opening remarks.

    But repeatedly throughout the hearing, Democratic senators interrogated her on how she plans to address a massive backlog in complaints—which one senator said has more than doubled since Trump took office, to 25,000—with a reduced staff.

    “This administration has fired more than half of the staff at OCR, and President Trump is now asking, in his budget, to slash that by $49 million next year, so explain to me how those firings and that funding cut will help reduce that backlog? I want to understand how you’re going to square that circle,” Sen. Patty Murray, a Democrat from Washington, asked early on in the hearing.

    Richey mostly avoided answering the questions, arguing that she had not yet assumed the role of assistant secretary and, therefore, had no say in the recent changes to OCR.

    “As a nominee, I do not have access to information with regard to the decisions that are being made at the department,” Richey responded. “I’m not in communication with OCR leadership or the secretary. One of the reasons why this role is so important to me is because I am always going to advocate for OCR to have the resources it needs to do its job. I think that what it means is I’m going to have to be really strategic, if I’m confirmed, stepping into this role, helping come up with a plan where we can address these challenges.”

    Several others doubled down on Murray’s line of questioning, including Sen. Andy Kim, a New Jersey Democrat, who asked Richey if antisemitism was getting worse in America. When she said it was, he questioned how cutting OCR staff is conducive to fighting antisemitism on college campuses. She reiterated her answer to Murray’s question, saying, “I can’t explain or provide information on decisions I wasn’t involved in.”

    Richey was one of four people who testified Thursday before the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee. She and the nominee for deputy secretary of education, Penny Schwinn, fielded the bulk of the committee’s questions as lawmakers pressed for answers about the OCR’s operations and priorities, proposed budget cuts, and the president’s plans to dismantle the Education Department. The senators didn’t vote on whether to advance the nominations to the Senate floor; that step will likely occur at a later meeting.

    Richey is currently senior chancellor for the Florida Department of Education and has twice served in OCR before, including a brief stint as acting secretary of civil rights at the end of Trump’s first term and the beginning of Biden’s presidency. Her confirmation hearing comes months after the Trump administration slashed more than half of OCR’s staff, including shuttering seven of the 12 regional offices dedicated to investigating complaints. The office has also reportedly begun prioritizing opening cases regarding trans women athletes and antisemitism since Trump’s second term began, letting other cases pile up and go unaddressed, according to multiple news reports.

    In the confirmation hearing, Richey expressed strong support for those causes, stressing that she led OCR when it investigated one of the federal government’s earliest cases against a school for allowing a trans woman to play on a women’s sports team.

    “I’m certainly committed to vigorously enforcing it and continuing to pursue these cases,” she said.

    In response to a different question, though, she did say that OCR would investigate certain complaints of discrimination related to gender identity and sexual orientation—an answer that appeared to incense Republican senator Josh Hawley of Missouri.

    “I want to be crystal clear on this—I think it’s a very dangerous thing to start allowing this into Title IX, which, as you know, it is a landmark statute, it is vitally important, and it has been under attack for four long years,” he said, asking her to confirm that OCR will “go after” colleges and universities that allow trans women to play women’s sports.

    He also warned Richey that she should “rethink” her position that OCR can investigate discrimination based on gender identity.

    Sen. Angela Alsobrooks, a Democrat from Maryland, pressed Richey on whether she would continue OCR’s new system of prioritizing cases regarding antisemitism and trans athletes, asking if all forms of discrimination should be treated with equal importance.

    Richey told Alsobrooks she does believe “it’s important to vigorously enforce all of the federal laws that OCR is responsible for enforcing.” Later in the hearing, she noted that Education Secretary Linda McMahon is “prioritizing” removing trans women from women’s athletics, and she plans to do the same if confirmed.

    Schwinn, who was formerly Tennessee’s commissioner of education, received most of the panel’s questions about the Trump administration’s efforts to dismantle the education department. In response a question from Sen. Jim Banks, an Indiana Republican, about what steps would be required to dismantle the department, she stated that she “would certainly work, if confirmed, with the secretary and with Congress on any actions related to the role of the department” and that she believes in equipping states with legislation and funding that will help them improve their own educational systems.

    “A department or an agency in the federal government is not going to change the outcomes of students—the teacher in the classroom is going to teach the standards that are approved by that state. The parent is the parent of that child. What we need to do is ensure we’ve created a system that is going to drive outcomes,” she said. “That is not going to happen from the federal government, whether there is a Department of Education or not.”

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  • Higher education postcard: University of Cambridge, the Senate House

    Higher education postcard: University of Cambridge, the Senate House

    Greetings from Cambridge!

    Today’s card shows the Senate House at the University of Cambridge. Building started in 1722, the Senate House opened in 1730, and it was completed in 1768 (yes, that is the right order of events). It was designed by the Jameses Gibbs and Burroughs (the latter being master of Gonville and Caius); woodwork by James Essex the Elder; and ceiling plaster by Artari and Bagutti.

    As the name suggests, it was built as a meeting place for the university’s senate. And until 1926, the senate was a very big deal at Cambridge, being the governing body, in charge of everything. And since its members comprised everybody who held a Cambridge MA, it was a quite a thing to get a decision made. (I’ve blogged previously on the Microcosmographia academica, which is concerned with the politics of getting things agreed within the University of Cambridge senate).

    In 1926 things took a turn for the senate – its governance functions were given to the Regent House. Senate is now mostly responsible for electing the university’s chancellor and for electing the High Steward, who oversees senate procedure.

    There’s currently an election on for the University of Cambridge chancellor, which is all very exciting. For certain values of exciting. There’s ten candidates, including a big ticket HE name (Lord John Browne, he of the Browne review); big political names (former MP and cabinet minister Lord Chris Smith; Brexit campaigner Gina Miller); and the ubiquitous Sandi Toksvig. Voting takes place in person at the Senate House for two days in July; or online for about a week in July.

    When it’s not being used for cancellarial (it’s a real word, honest) elections – which is most of the time, in fact – Senate House is also used for graduation ceremonies at Cambridge. I’ve written before about one aspect of these; safe to say that there’s lots of other local peculiarities. At Cambridge, for example, each graduation is a separate decision of the governing body, so a special meeting of the Regent House (and before then, of the senate) is held for each ceremony. I suspect this may be where be get the notion of the degree congregation, which language I’ve heard used at other universities.

    There’s also an order of precedence for the colleges at graduation, established in the Statues and Ordinances. It is: King’s College, Trinity College, St John’s College, Peterhouse, Clare College, Pembroke College, Gonville and Caius College, Trinity Hall, Corpus Christi College, Queens’ College, St Catharine’s College, Jesus College, Christ’s College, Magdalene College, Emmanuel College, Sidney Sussex College, Downing College, Girton College, Newnham College, Selwyn College, Fitzwilliam College, Churchill College, Murray Edwards College, Darwin College, Wolfson College, Clare Hall, Robinson College, Lucy Cavendish College, St Edmund’s College, Hughes Hall, and Homerton College. And this isn’t strictly the order in which the colleges were established or admitted as colleges. If anyone knows why, please let me know!

    Senate House has seen its share of high jinks. Most notable, perhaps, is the 1958 incident where students contrived to place an Austin Seven on its roof. Here’s the Liverpool Daily Post, reporting with an admirable straight face on plans for its retrieval.

    Eagle eyed readers may remember that this stunt was followed by a similar, suspending an Austin from the Bridge of Sighs.

    Here, as always, is a jigsaw of the card – hope you enjoy it.

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  • What to Expect as the Senate Tackles Reconciliation

    What to Expect as the Senate Tackles Reconciliation

    The clock is ticking for Senate Republicans as they rush to approve a sweeping bill that cuts spending and taxes and pays for some of President Donald Trump’s top agenda items by the Fourth of July.

    If passed, the complex piece of legislation—known as the One Big Beautiful Bill Act—could entirely reshape the student loan system, increase endowment taxes, force colleges to repay their students’ unpaid loans and significantly cut Medicaid, among other changes.

    The House passed the measure late last month, putting the ball in the Senate’s proverbial court. But key senators have since said little about the higher ed provisions in the bill, so it’s unclear what lawmakers in the upper chamber will prioritize. Higher ed experts predict risk-sharing, or the plan to require colleges to pay a penalty for unpaid loans, likely won’t survive. Other issues, like whether to change the eligibility criteria for the Pell Grant, are more uncertain. But any changes to the House bill will come at a cost, as saving one program likely will mean deeper cuts to another.

    Over all, lawmakers will face a difficult balancing act to get the legislation through the Senate without endangering a second passage in the House, where bill advanced by the skin of its teeth. And Trump has called the bill the single most important piece of legislation in his second term, suggesting that failure is not an option.

    “The One, Big, Beautiful Bill will implement President Trump’s Make America Great Again agenda by delivering the largest tax cut in American history, the largest border security investment in history, and the largest deficit reduction in nearly 30 years,” Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said in a statement last month. “The Senate should pass this critical legislation as soon as possible to usher in America’s Golden Age.”

    The Congressional Budget Office has estimated the bill would add $2.4 trillion to the deficit over a decade.

    What’s Next

    The Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee hasn’t yet released its version of a reconciliation bill, though a draft is expected soon since congressional leaders are hoping to get a vote on the legislation by June 16, sources familiar with the Hill say. Lawmakers are using the reconciliation process, so they only need 51 votes in the Senate to pass the bill. But if the Senate version is at all different from the House’s, the House will have to vote again before the legislation can reach the president’s desk.

    When a bill does drop, it will likely skip the traditional committee markup, so the legislation can reach the Senate floor for a vote faster. But that fast tracking will limit the time for college leaders and others to review and weigh in on the bill.

    Policy analysts say Senate and House Republicans will likely have to make some compromises in order to move the bill forward. Some Senate Republicans may stand firm and advocate for changes on certain provisions, but the question is which ones will earn priority and which ones will fall by the wayside. For instance, can moderate Republicans save both the Pell Grant and Medicare? Or will they have to choose between the two?

    In many cases, what spending cuts and program changes survive is going to depend on “how the tug-of-war between the House and Senate plays out,” said Preston Cooper, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, a right-leaning think tank.

    All of this, however, could be thrown for a loop if former Trump adviser Elon Musk holds any influence. The billionaire tech mogul who previously led Trump’s Department of Government Efficiency has launched an all-out feud with the president over social media, calling the bill a “disgusting abomination” and saying, “shame on those who voted for it.”

    At Odds Over Accountability

    If the reconciliation bill does move forward, policy experts expect the Senate to propose a very different version than the House. And Michelle Dimino, director of education at Third Way, a left-leaning think tank, said she’s looking to the Lowering Education Costs and Debt Act, a bill introduced by Louisiana senator Bill Cassidy in 2023, for an outline of what it may include. (Cassidy is the chair of the Senate education committee.)

    “Senate and House Republicans have not always been aligned in their approach to higher ed reform,” she said. And “unsurprisingly, each chamber tends to favor legislation that originated internally.”

    One of the most notable differences Dimino and others anticipate between the House and Senate is how each tries to hold colleges accountable for students’ financial outcomes.

    House Republicans want to use risk-sharing, a strategy that would require colleges and universities to pay a fee each year based on the amount of loans their graduates (or those who left without a degree) have failed to repay. But the formula for calculating that fee is complicated, and colleges have a lot of questions about how it works and whether it’s fair. The Congressional Budget Office estimated that these risk-sharing payments would total $1.3 billion by 2034 and then continue to increase annually.

    Meanwhile, the Lowering Education Costs Act calls for a plan similar to the gainful-employment rule—a metric that ties colleges’ financial aid eligibility to their students’ earnings and debt levels. The idea was first introduced by President Obama, scrapped by President Trump in his first term and then expanded by President Biden.

    Under gainful employment, colleges would have to show their graduates make more than someone with a high school diploma and that their loan payments will be affordable. If a college ever falls below those thresholds, it could lose access to all federal student aid. The Senate plan would likely apply to all colleges, whereas the current gainful-employment rule only applies to for-profit colleges and nondegree programs.

    Higher education lobbyists are generally more supportive of the Senate’s anticipated proposal. But they note that while it’s a much lesser evil than risk-sharing, concerns remain, especially about how it would affect institutions.

    “When the data is not available … we are operating off concepts and ideas,” said Emmanual Guillory, senior director of government relations at the American Council on Education. “So it begs the question: What is the intended outcome and is this proposal the solution?”

    Other Key Issues to Watch

    What is less certain, policy experts noted, is whether the Senate will sign off on the House’s plans to consolidate student loan repayment plans, cap loans, increase endowment taxes and change who is eligible for the Pell Grant. For example, while the House proposed waiving borrowers’ interest if their monthly income-based payment isn’t enough to cover what’s owed and forgiving remaining debt after 30 years of payments, Cassidy’s legislation would create a more traditional plan where students accrue interest but all is forgiven after 20 or 25 years of payments.

    And though the House plan would eliminate subsidized loans, end the Grad PLUS loan program and limit Parent PLUS, experts predict that the Senate will likely end both Grad and Parent PLUS and put more aggressive limits on how much students can borrow over all.

    But other aspects like Pell Grant eligibility were not discussed in Cassidy’s 2023 bill at all. So while the House would expand the Pell Grant to short-term workforce programs and limit access for the full-time Pell program, it’s unclear what, if anything, the Senate would propose. At a recent hearing, some senators appeared reticent to make deep cuts to the Pell program, though lawmakers have generally supported the concept of workforce Pell.

    Over all, it’s hard to know exactly where the Senate will fall on most issues, Guillory said, especially because unlike during most sessions, it seems the House has the upper hand.

    “I think the Senate would like to propose a very different bill that would require a lot of back-and-forth compromise, but they are feeling more and more pressure from the House to make fewer changes in order to get the bill passed quicker and to meet that July 4 deadline,” he said.

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  • 3 takeaways from OCR nominee’s Senate confirmation hearing

    3 takeaways from OCR nominee’s Senate confirmation hearing

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    The U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights is undergoing a slew of changes, including a significantly increased caseload after the Trump administration let go of hundreds of its employees. With the nomination of Kimberly Richey to fill the role of assistant secretary for civil rights, it’s likely the office tasked with enforcing equal educational access will shift even more.

    Right now, attorneys are juggling on average 115 cases, according to Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash., who shared the number with witnesses at a Thursday nomination hearing held by the Senate’s Health, Education Labor and Pensions Committee. 

    Prior to the March layoffs that resulted in the shuttering of seven out of 12 OCR offices nationwide, attorneys tasked with protecting the civil rights of students and educators had about 42 cases on their plate. That caseload was characterized as “untenable” by the former assistant secretary for civil rights, Catherine Lhamon, and had prompted former U.S. Education Secretary Miguel Cardona to advocate for an increase in the office’s funding under the Biden administration.

    Murray said the newer caseload was now “making it difficult for those investigators to meaningfully investigate discrimination and to protect students’ rights.” 

    Thursday’s hearing was held to discuss the nomination of Richey to lead OCR, among nominations of other officials such as Penny Schwinn to be deputy secretary of education. Richey served under the first Trump administration as acting assistant secretary for the Office of Special Education and Rehabilitative Services and then as acting assistant secretary for civil rights.

    Being ‘strategic’ with resources

    When asked by multiple Democratic senators about how she would navigate a backlog of OCR complaints — which exceeds 25,000, said Murray — with half of the office’s former headcount and a budget that would be significantly slashed under President Donald Trump’s FY 26 proposal, Richey said she would have to be “strategic.” 

    “One of the reasons why this role is so important to me is because I will always advocate for OCR to have the resources to do its job,” said Richey. However, she dodged questions about whether OCR, under Trump’s first administration, had enough resources to do its job.  

    “I think that what that means is that I’m going to have to be really strategic if I’m confirmed, stepping into this role, helping come up with a plan where we can address these challenges,” she said.

    That would include evaluating the current caseload and determining where complaints stand in their investigative timeline. It would also include looking at the current staff distribution and organizational structure of OCR, and helping Secretary of Education Linda McMahon come up with a plan to “ensure that OCR is able to meet its mission and its statutory purpose to prioritize all complaints.”

    Richey said that rather than put certain investigations on pause, as has been the case under the second Trump administration, she would prioritize all complaints that fall at OCR’s footsteps.

    Changes in Title IX enforcement

    Richey raised the eyebrows of some Republican leaders when she said that she would enforce Title IX, the anti-sex discrimination statute, to protect LGTBQ+ students from discrimination based on gender identity and sexual orientation. The Trump administration and Republican leaders have prioritized enforcing the statute to exclude transgender students from women’s and girls’ athletics teams, locker rooms and other facilities. 

    When pressed, however, Richey clarified that she would enforce Title IX to protect LGTBQ+ students in a narrow number of cases, related to different treatment, bullying and harassment. 

    “We would also look at the relevance of sex in our cases,” Richey said. “Sex is relevant in regards to restrooms, and sex is relevant in regards to locker rooms and sex is relevant in regards to athletics.” 

    The Biden administration’s interpretation of Title IX following the Supreme Court’s decision in Bostock v. Clayton County protected LGTBQ+ students, including transgender students, on athletic teams in some cases. It prohibited blanket bans of transgender students from athletics.

    “That is not what we did under President Trump’s first term, and that is not what we will do under President Trump’s second term,” she said. 

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