Welcome back to After the First 100 Days, Inside Higher Ed’s newly renamed weekly roundup of news from the Hill to the Oval Office. I’m your host, Katherine Knott, IHE’s news editor.
It’s Day 109 of the second Trump administration, and this week, collections resumed on student loans—and universities could be in trouble if a lot of their students default because of an accountability measure known as the cohort default rate. (An institution risks losing access to federal financial aid if its rate hits 30 percent for three consecutive years or 40 percent in one year.) Plus, the Trump administration is ratcheting up the pressure on Harvard University yet again and scrutinizing colleges’ foreign gifts.
But what I want to talk about today is Trump’s budget proposal, which dropped just before I sent last week’s newsletter. He’s looking to carve out at least $163 billion, and to do so, he’s planning to make deep cuts to research agencies and at the Education Department. Of course, the budget outline is just a proposal, and the president is unlikely to get most of his plans through Congress. For instance, after he proposed gutting TRIO, a key senator voiced “serious objections.”
But what the document shows us is what Trump will try to do over the next three and a half years, and with a Congress hell-bent on tackling the deficit and cutting spending, some of the proposed cuts are likely to survive.
So here’s what to know about the proposal:
- It cuts $12 billion from the Education Department, defunding TRIO, GEAR UP, the Child Care on Campus and the Supplemental Educational Opportunity grant programs, among others.
- It eliminates several agencies such as the National Endowment for Humanities and the Institute of Museum and Library Sciences.
- The National Institutes of Health would lose about $18 billion while the National Science Foundation would see its budget cut in half.
Higher ed groups condemned the cuts and said slashing the budgets at NIH and NSF would “delay or deny lifesaving treatments” and “sideline researchers racing toward new discoveries in frontier fields.”
And speaking of TRIO, my colleagues Liam Knox and Sara Weissman talked to students and college advisers, who said that the proposed cuts to the college-access program “could be devastating for low-income students and the institutions that serve them.” Read their full story here.
In Other News: The three college presidents called to testify this week about antisemitism mostly weathered the congressional grilling, though Haverford president Wendy Raymond bore the brunt of the criticism.
And, the Education Department’s recent demands to the University of Pennsylvania, which would resolve an ongoing Title IX violation, are unusual and show how the administration plans to wield the gender-equity law to go after colleges.
On Tap for Next Week:
- The House Ways and Means Committee is expected to mark up its reconciliation bill on Tuesday, May 13. The committee is reportedly eyeing a significant increase to the endowment tax on wealthy private colleges, from 1.4 percent to either 14 or 21 percent.
- Education Secretary Linda McMahon will speak at the Cato Institute about the future of her department at 5:30 p.m. Wednesday, May 14.
- The Education Department has until Friday, May 16, to respond to a lawsuit challenging the Biden administration’s gainful-employment rule. The response should shed some light on whether the department plans to keep the rule that measures whether students in career education programs can afford their student loan debt. Failing the gainful employment tests could mean losing access to federal financial aid.
That’s it for Week 16. Did you know the new pope has ties to American higher ed? He’s a Villanova grad.
As always, if news breaks this afternoon or over the weekend, which, let’s be real, it probably will, you can find the latest at InsideHigherEd.com. Any other questions or concerns? Email me at katherine.knott@insidehighered.com. In the meantime, I’ll be hunting for a Mother’s Day gift for my mom. I know I’m behind, but we’ve been a bit busy.
Have a good weekend!
Did someone forward you this email and you want to receive it in your inbox? Become a member here. You can also read more about this newsletter here.