Hello and welcome back to The Markup, Inside Higher Ed’s weekly roundup of all things higher ed policy. I’m your host, Katherine Knott, IHE’s news editor.
In the last week, the Department of Justice opened an investigation into a program at CUNY that supports Black and Hispanic students and claimed that UC Davis’s medical school discriminates on the basis of race during the admissions process. And another 15 medical schools are facing scrutiny from the DOJ.
This Week’s Big Story
And while we’re talking about the Department of Justice, the agency’s campaign against state policies that allow undocumented students to receive in-state tuition has seen mixed results.
Most recently, a judge ruled that Nebraska’s law violates a federal law that prohibits states from making noncitizens “eligible on the basis of residence” for “any postsecondary education benefit unless a citizen or national of the United States is eligible for such a benefit.”
That decision doesn’t settle the issue, particularly in the wake of a March ruling upholding a similar law in Minnesota. Still, the two court orders do offer a glimpse into how the wider legal battle is playing out.
Experts told Sara Weissman that the fate of the various state laws will likely hinge on how they determine which students are eligible for in-state tuition rate. But they also caution from drawing too many conclusions, because the Nebraska judge never heard an opposing argument. In many of these cases, the states have declined to defend the laws and judges haven’t allowed other legal groups to join the suits on behalf of undocumented students.
It’s a wonky legal issue, but the stakes are high for undocumented students who are facing much higher tuition bills and weighing whether to drop out.
Before Trump took office, nearly two dozen states charged eligible undocumented students the in-state rate. The administration has since sued nine of those states, and four have subsequently scrapped their policies without putting up a fight..
