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, Jessica Blake, IHE’s federal policy reporter.
It’s Day 256 of the second Trump administration, and the government has officially shut down, but have no fear, negotiated rule making is continuing. (Your host is writing today’s edition live from inside the Education Department.)
First, a quick note about the shutdown: Pell Grants are continuing and the FAFSA is still open. Institutions shouldn’t feel much pain in the short term, but the longer a shutdown lasts, the more disruptive it becomes. You can read more here about what the shutdown means for colleges.
Despite the shutdown, the administration is moving ahead with an effort to give some colleges a so-called competitive advantage in government funding. The proposed agreement, sent Thursday to nine institutions, would require them to overhaul their admissions policies, cap their international student enrollment at 15 percent and freeze tuition, among other changes.
In contrast to the demands we’ve seen the administration send to Columbia and Harvard—the stick—Trump officials see this compact as a carrot to incentivize certain behaviors. Others call the proposal “political extortion.”
Back at the mostly closed department, negotiators on the rule-making committee have plugged away at ironing out the technical details for a new income-driven repayment plan and clarifying how to implement the Republicans’ graduate loan caps. Throughout the week, the most heated issue on the table has been which degree programs will qualify as professional and therefore get access to double the amount of federal loans.
The first round of negotiations won’t end until Friday afternoon, but here’s where we are as of Thursday afternoon: At first, ED officials stood firm with their narrow list of 10 eligible programs. By Wednesday afternoon, however, they appeared open to a short-term expansion of that list. All that said, it’s still unclear if it will capture master’s programs in education, social work and nursing or just doctoral-level health-care programs like clinical psychology.
Either way, it would only be in effect until July 2027. Is that going to be enough to help colleges keep their high-demand licensure programs running? It’s hard to know. (Expect more on this question in the days and weeks to come.)
In Other News: First Amendment and higher education advocates celebrated what they called a “historic ruling” in the case AAUP v. Rubio. Filed in response to the detainment and deportation of multiple international students who had participated in pro-Palestinian protests, the lawsuit argued that noncitizens are entitled to the same First Amendment rights as citizens. And a federal district judge agreed, though he was skeptical that his decision would matter.
On Deck for Next Week:
- With the government shut down, the main thing we’ll be keeping an eye on is whether the Democrats and Republicans can cut a deal and what happens in the meantime.
That’s it for Week 37. What do you want to know about the potential government shutdown, and how is it affecting you? Let me know at jessica.blake@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 rewatching this week’s Dancing With the Stars episode and mourning the elimination of Lauren Jauregui.
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