Welcome back to After the First 100 Days, Inside Higher Ed’s weekly roundup of news from the Hill to the Oval Office. I’m your host, Katherine Knott, IHE’s news editor.
It’s Day 249 of the second Trump administration, and the hits keep coming for higher ed. In the last week, we saw the president levy a $100,000 fee for H-1B visas, which hundreds of institutions use to bring in foreign talent, as well as more grant cuts to college access programs.
And in a twist that one expert called “absolutely Orwellian,” the Education Department said the nation’s wealthiest university was at risk financially and put it on probation—the latest salvo in the Trump administration’s battle with Harvard.
This week we looked at an unexpected agency on the front lines of the attack on Harvard and in the president’s broader crackdown on higher ed—the Office for Civil Rights in the Health and Human Services Department. For decades, the Education Department’s Office for Civil Rights has managed civil rights violations and federal oversight of colleges. But under Trump, more agencies—from DOJ to USDA—are joining the fray.
The HHS’s civil rights office has played a much more public role in higher ed oversight, opening several investigations into colleges’ medical schools and other practices—all of which puts more pressure on colleges. The office was even involved in the investigations into antisemitism at Harvard and Columbia.
HHS officials say they are implementing the president’s agenda but were less clear about how they’ve changed their approach since Trump took office. Under previous administrations, ED OCR put out a public list of open investigations. The HHS OCR isn’t as transparent.
“The administration has used every agency in a contemporaneous, simultaneous assault on universities,” said Catherine Lhamon, former director of the Education Department’s OCR under Presidents Biden and Obama. “It’s unnecessary to do what the administration is doing now, unless one is operating like a mob boss.”
In Other News: The Education Department is planning to prioritize “patriotic education” when it’s handing out grant dollars. The agency defines patriotic education in part as “a presentation of the history of America grounded in an accurate, honest, unifying, inspiring, and ennobling characterization of the American founding and foundational principles.”
Historians say the department’s patriotic education push is a politically motivated power grab and reflects a narrow concept of patriotism and patriotic education.
You can comment on the grant priority until Oct. 17.
On Deck for Next Week:
- The big question is whether the government will shut down on Oct. 1 and how painful the disruption in funding will be for colleges. Trump officials are saying they will conduct mass layoffs if the Democrats don’t vote on Republicans’ bill to fund the government through Nov. 21.
- The next round of negotiated rule making kicks off Monday and is supposed to run through Oct. 3, though the shutdown could get in the way of those plans. Several issues are on the agenda, including which programs should be subjected to which loan limits and how new loan repayment plans should work. The rule-making fun will be in person at the Education Department and starts at 9 a.m. each day. You can follow along here. Or, just wait for our coverage.
That’s it for Week 36. What do you want to know about the potential government shutdown? Let me know at katherine.knott@insidehighered.com.
As always, if news breaks this afternoon or over the weekend, you can find the latest at InsideHigherEd.com. In the meantime, I’ll be perfecting my banana bread recipe. Yes, I do put chocolate and bourbon in it, but I’ll take other suggestions. Have a good weekend!
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