Tag: shutdown

  • NACIQI Meeting Delayed by Government Shutdown

    NACIQI Meeting Delayed by Government Shutdown

    The Department of Education has delayed the semiannual convening of its accreditation advisory committee for the second time this year, according to an email sent to committee members and obtained by Inside Higher Ed.

    The meeting of the National Advisory Committee on Institutional Quality and Integrity, originally slated to take place in July, had already been pushed back to Oct. 21. Now, as a result of the government shutdown, it’s been rescheduled for Dec. 16.

    “As many of you know, most department staff, including those supporting NACIQI, have been furloughed and the Department has suspended operations except for specific excepted activities,” Jeffrey Andrade, deputy assistant secretary for policy, planning and innovation, wrote in the email. “The Department will be publishing a notice in the Federal Register shortly announcing this change of meeting date.”

    Inside Higher Ed reached out to the department for direct comment on the delay but did not get a response prior to publication.

    The meeting was slated to include Under Secretary Nicholas Kent’s first comments on accreditation since he took office, as well as compliance reports from five different accreditors. Three of those agencies are institutional: the Middle States Commission on Higher Education, the New England Commission of Higher Education, and the Western Association of Schools and Colleges Senior College and University Commission. The other two are programmatic: the Accreditation Commission for Midwifery Education and the Commission on Accreditation in Physical Therapy.

    And while it wasn’t formally listed on the committee’s agenda, this meeting also likely would have served as the unveiling of six new Trump-appointed committee members.

    When department officials announced the first delay in July, observers noted that by the time the rescheduled meeting took place, the terms of six of the committee’s 18 members would be over. With key decisions about the future of higher education accreditation looming, many policy experts took this as a sign that the Trump administration was trying to stack the panel in its favor.

    Now, the new appointees will likely go unnamed for another two months, and the compliance reports will remain unchecked until the next meeting. And though neither of these agenda items is quite as high-stakes as a recognition review—the process by which independent accrediting agencies are granted the power to gate-keep federal student aid—one expert feared it could lead to a backlog in future evaluations.

    “While [the accreditation agencies] are coming up before NACIQI on this compliance report, they are also likely in the process of having their regular recognition reviewed again,” said Antoinette Flores, the director of higher education accountability and quality at New America, a left-leaning think tank. “So it adds to the burden and could lead to compounding issues.”

    Flores, who served in the same role as Andrade during the Biden administration, is worried that the delay could not only slow down future reviews but also hamper current ones, putting certain agencies and the institutions they serve at risk. When an agency is placed under compliance review, it has 12 months to fix the problem and prove it is meeting the committee’s criteria, she explained. So, if it hasn’t proven it’s meeting those criteria within that period, technically the agency’s authorization could be at stake.

    Flores said she’s particularly worried for Middle States Commission and the New England Commission, because they each received letters from the Trump administration earlier this year pressuring them to take action against member institutions’ alleged noncompliance with civil rights laws. Neither accreditor has done so, and they won’t be able to present their compliance reports before the 12-month deadline.

    “So is the agency in compliance? Is its recognition going to continue? … That’s kind of the underlying question,” Flores said.

    Others are far less concerned.

    Kyle Beltramini, a policy research fellow at the American Council of Trustees and Alumni, a right-leaning policy organization, said that to his knowledge there’s never been a time when NACIQI failed to meet and review an agency’s compliance or recognition before the deadline.

    So while it remains unclear what would happen if the meeting never took place or the agencies were unable to present their compliance reports before deadline, Beltramini believes that any consequences of the delay will be minimal.

    “I don’t think what we’re going to see is the nuclear option of an accreditor losing their authorization,” he said. “It’s partially because of the fact that even if that’s what the administration wanted to do—which I don’t think that that’s the case—they just don’t have the full majority on the committee.” (Although, technically, the under secretary and secretary of education do not have to follow the committee’s guidance.)

    Either way, if and when the meeting occurs, Beltramini anticipates that it will set the tone for how the Trump administration plans to approach accreditation moving forward.

    “There is a broad and bipartisan agreement that there needs to be change to the system, and what you’re going to see, more and more often, is NACIQI attempting to hold the accreditors accountable by asking them questions and getting them on the record in ways that may make them uncomfortable,” he said.

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  • Government Shutdown Could Delay ED Rule Making

    Government Shutdown Could Delay ED Rule Making

    All rule-making sessions for the Department of Education were held online from the start of the COVID pandemic to the beginning of the second Trump administration.

    J. David Ake/Getty Images

    If the government shuts down Wednesday, it’s not clear whether the Department of Education will be able to continue with the meetings it had planned to iron out a batch of regulatory changes this week.

    The advisory rule-making committee began its work Monday and was originally slated to continue through Friday. But at the start of Monday’s meeting, department officials noted that if the government runs out of funding Oct. 1, the remainder of the session would be delayed and the plan would be to resume virtually in two weeks. (This was consistent with a pending notice that was posted to the Federal Register in the morning.) 

    That all changed once again moments before Monday’s meeting ended when Jeffrey Andrade, the deputy assistant secretary for policy, planning and innovation, said the department was reconsidering its earlier statement and that the negotiated rule-making committee might be able to continue operating in person through the end of the week.

    “There is a possibility that we can work through this,” Andrade said, adding that he had just received word of the possibility himself. 

    The department is planning to furlough nearly 87 percent of its employees, according to its shutdown contingency plan. But officials are planning to keep employees who are working on the rule-making process on board as well as those working to implement Congress’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act, which passed in July.

    This rule-making session is focused on clarifying the details of new graduate loan caps and a consolidated version of the multiple existing income-driven repayment plans.

    Going into this week’s meetings, multiple higher education experts said that finalizing new regulations before the caps and repayment plans take effect July 1, 2026, would be difficult no matter what. A government shutdown, one added, could throw a wrench into the already tight timeline.

    “With such a crunched timeline for finishing the rules in the first place, this makes the department’s job much more challenging,” said Clare McCann, managing director of policy for the Postsecondary Education and Economics Research Center at American University. 

    One of this week’s rule-making committee members, who spoke with Inside Higher Ed on the condition of anonymity, said that while they were still uncertain how the rest of the week will play out, Andrade’s last-minute announcement gave them hope.

    “I’m not sure what to make of it and will be waiting for clearer answers in the morning,” the committee member said. “But I know the department is working hard to get as much done as possible.”  

    That said, if the session does end up moving online, it wouldn’t be too out of the ordinary for department staff members. All sessions prior to the start of the second Trump administration were held online since the COVID-19 pandemic broke out in 2020.

    The real challenge, McCann noted, would likely be having enough staff to facilitate the session, regardless of its modality. 

    “Certainly the department will be able to keep some of this moving, but they will undoubtedly also have some employees who are not considered essential and are furloughed during a shutdown,” McCann said. “It takes many people at the department to make a rule making happen, and so any loss of personnel is going to present a challenge, even if they’re able to keep some of the core team that’s involved.”

    Under the contingency plan, student aid distributions will not be paused and loan payments will still be due. The department will, however, pause civil rights investigations and cease grant-making activities, though current grantees will still be able to access funds awarded by Sept. 30.

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  • Federal judge blocks Trump’s Education Dept. shutdown, orders reinstatement of laid off staff

    Federal judge blocks Trump’s Education Dept. shutdown, orders reinstatement of laid off staff

    This story was originally published by Chalkbeat. Sign up for their newsletters at ckbe.at/newsletters.

    A federal judge on May 22 issued a preliminary injunction blocking President Donald Trump’s executive order to shut down the U.S. Department of Education and said the agency must reinstate the employees who were fired as part of mass layoffs.

    After U.S. Education Secretary Linda McMahon announced the agency’s plans in March to slash its workforce by roughly half, she called it a first step in getting rid of the agency. Trump followed days later with his executive order aiming to eliminate the department, a move he has long wanted.

    But only Congress can actually eliminate the department, and the administration’s attempt at getting around that influenced U.S. District Judge Myong Joun’s Thursday ruling.

    The Trump administration argued that they implemented agency layoffs to improve “efficiency” and “accountability,” the Massachusetts judge wrote, but then said: “The record abundantly reveals that [the administration’s] true intention is to effectively dismantle the Department without an authorizing statute.”

    Joun added: “A department without enough employees to perform statutorily mandated functions is not a department at all. This court cannot be asked to cover its eyes while the Department’s employees are continuously fired and units are transferred out until the Department becomes a shell of itself.”

    Within hours of the Joun’s ruling, the Trump administration filed an appeal.

    “This ruling is not in the best interest of American students or families,” Madi Biedermann, Deputy Assistant Secretary for Communications, wrote in a statement.

    Calls for the injunction came from lawsuits filed by the Somerville and Easthampton schools districts in Massachusetts along with the American Federation of Teachers, other education groups, and 21 Democratic attorneys general.

    They argued that the gutting of the department rendered the agency incapable of performing many of its core functions required by Congress.

    For example, all of the attorneys from the agency’s general counsel office who handle grants for K-12 schools and grants under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, or IDEA, had been fired. The dismantling of the Office for Civil Rights made it difficult to enforce civil rights protections. The department’s Financial Student Aid programs, which provide financial assistance to almost 12.9 million students across approximately 6,100 postsecondary educational institutions, were also hampered.

    Trump’s executive order instructed McMahon to “take all necessary steps to facilitate the closure of the Department of Education and return authority over education to the States and local communities” to the “maximum extent appropriate and permitted by law.”

    At the same time, the order said McMahon should ensure “the effective and uninterrupted delivery of services, programs, and benefits on which Americans rely.”

    Trump said he would move the agency’s student loan portfolio to the Small Business Administration, and the Department of Health and Human Services would replace the Education Department’s role in “handling special needs.”

    Before the layoffs, the Education Department was the smallest of the 15 cabinet-level departments in terms of staffing, according to the judge, with around 4,100 employees. And the plaintiffs said the agency was strained meeting its obligations even then.

    The ruling was not based on the employees’ job rights, but rather how the agency was able to fulfill its obligations.

    “It’s not about whether employees have a right to a job,” said Derek Black, a University of South Carolina law professor. “It’s about whether the department can fulfill its statutory obligations to the states and to students.”

    The case made by former department employees, educational institutions, unions, and educators, Joun wrote, paints “stark picture of the irreparable harm that will result from financial uncertainty and delay, impeded access to vital knowledge on which students and educators rely, and loss of essential services for America’s most vulnerable student populations.”

    American Federation of Teachers President Randi Weingarten heralded the judge’s ruling, calling it “a first step to reverse this war on knowledge and the undermining of broad-based opportunity.”

    But Biedermann, from the Education Department, said the ruling was unfair to the Trump administration.

    “Once again, a far-left Judge has dramatically overstepped his authority, based on a complaint from biased plaintiffs, and issued an injunction against the obviously lawful efforts to make the Department of Education more efficient and functional for the American people,” she said in a statement.

    Chalkbeat national editor Erica Meltzer contributed reporting.

    Chalkbeat is a nonprofit news site covering educational change in public schools.

    For more news on federal policy, visit eSN’s Educational Leadership hub.

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  • Limestone University needs $6M to avoid shutdown or going online-only

    Limestone University needs $6M to avoid shutdown or going online-only

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    Dive Brief:

    • Limestone University, in South Carolina, may move to online-only classes or shut down entirely in the near future as it wrestles with a financial crisis, the 179-year-old institution announced Wednesday. 
    • To avoid closing or going exclusively online, the private nonprofit’s board of trustees said it would need an “immediate” infusion of $6 million in emergency funding, though it didn’t indicate where it might find the funds. 
    • Limestone attributed its financial woes to enrollment declines, rising costs and “long-standing structural pressures facing small, private institutions.”

    Dive Insight:

    Describing the current crisis as a “turning point,” Limestone’s announcement Wednesday listed multiple possible paths forward, and in doing so the university threw general uncertainty over its future. 

    “While full closure remains a risk, the institution is considering a scenario that would discontinue all in-person academic operations and all other activities, including athletics, in Gaffney,” the university said. “The fully online model would effectively end the traditional college campus experience.”

    Limestone’s board is set to meet April 22 to discuss next steps.

    Many of the Christian university’s travails stem from a drop-off in students. Between 2018 and 2023, fall enrollment plummeted 27% to 1,782 students.

    Under financial pressure, Limestone has been leaning heavily on its endowment, the university’s financials show. In 2023, with approval from the state attorney general, the university suspended a policy of spending no more than 5% of the endowment’s total value. Between fiscal years 2023 and 2024, Limestone’s net assets fell by more than $12 million, to $61 million.

    With cash and investments dwindling, and amid persistent budget deficits — to the tune of $9.2 million in fiscal 2024, following an $11.4 million gap in 2023 — the university’s auditors warned that it may not be able to continue operating as a “going concern.”

    Limestone currently offers online courses in addition to in-person classes, but it trumpets what it said is $150 million economic impact on South Carolina’s Cherokee County from its campus. That sum would be imperiled with a move to online-only operations.

    “This potential shift to online-only instruction threatens not only the campus experience, but local jobs and the cultural presence Limestone has provided for nearly two centuries,” the institution said. 

    The $6 million emergency fund — which the university’s trustees proposed without detailing — would “stabilize operations and give the university the opportunity to pursue long-term solutions that preserve its on-campus identity,” Limestone said. 

    “Limestone remains committed to our students and we will work directly with current students to help them identify the best path to successfully complete their educational journey,” board Chair Randall Richardson said in a statement. 

    Other colleges in recent years have likewise sought emergency cash funding infusions to stay afloat in troubled times. 

    For example, Northland College, a private nonprofit in Wisconsin, last year announced a multimillion-dollar Hail Mary fundraising campaign. Without $12 million, the college said last spring, it would be forced to close. 

    Northland wound up falling well short of that goal, but pursued a turnaround on what it called “transformative” gifts and an initiative to pare back its programs. Despite those efforts, the college announced in February that it will close at the end of the current academic year. 

    Other similarly situated colleges, including Hampshire College, have had better luck after an existential fundraising blitz. After falling into financial distress, Hampshire launched a $60 million fundraising campaign that kept it afloat and helped it revamp its programs and operations.

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