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, Inside Higher Ed’s federal policy reporter.
It’s Day 298 of the second Trump administration, and after a 43-day shutdown the government has officially reopened. But we aren’t completely out of the woods. While the package of legislation signed by President Trump late Wednesday evening appropriates funding for a handful of agencies through the end of the year, most—including the Department of Education—are operating on a temporary stopgap bill. If lawmakers fail to pass several new appropriations bills before Jan. 30, the shutdown will resume.
Policy experts say they aren’t expecting much to change for colleges and universities now that the shutdown is over. Many staff members at the Education Department were deemed essential and continued to disburse financial aid and service student loans. The Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program will resume, however, serving as a crucial relief for some lower-income students who’ve struggled to put food on the table these last few weeks.
That said, the higher ed federal policy crowd will be watching to see whether the Trump administration sends more than 460 employees who were laid off during the shutdown back to work.
Theoretically, under the new legislation these staffers should head back to work within five days. But some worry that Trump will just keep staff on administrative leave until the time runs out on Jan. 30.
“I would absolutely assume we should expect to see efforts to further reduce staffing,” said Jon Fansmith, senior vice president for government relations at the American Council on Education. “They’re not hiding the fact they’re trying to do it, and they don’t have a lot of compunction about the methods they use to do so.”
The Policy Corner: In other news, the Trump administration announced Monday that it would be reprogramming federal dollars from the Fund for the Improvement of Postsecondary Education. Congress had originally designated this pot of money to go toward student success and basic needs programs, but the administration said it will instead use it for “special projects” that promote workforce Pell, artificial intelligence, civil discourse and accreditation reform.
Moving the funding to different programs isn’t technically illegal, but college access advocates say it is unprecedented and a direct attempt to ignore congressional intent.
“It’s totally unclear to me how expanding artificial intelligence programs, promoting civil discourse or funding new accreditation agencies has anything to do with students’ ability to persist and ultimately graduate [from] college,” Bryce McKibben, senior director of policy and advocacy at the Hope Center for Student Basic Needs at Temple University, told me earlier this week.
Inside Higher Ed also took a deeper look at the end of last week’s rule-making session and what it will mean for postbaccalaureate student loans.
On Tap for Next Week:
- We are looking ahead to the department’s next negotiating committee meeting in early December and how it will regulate the new college earnings test enacted through the One Big Beautiful Bill Act. Some higher ed experts worry that using state median income levels as a point of comparison could be an unfair penalty for rural regional institutions.
- The House is preparing for a hearing on improving student outcomes and college costs.
That’s it for Week 43. Thanks for reading! What else should we be covering? 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 raking leaves and fighting every urge to put my Christmas decorations up early.
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