Hello and welcome back to The Markup, Inside Higher Ed’s weekly roundup of all things higher ed policy. I’m your host, Jessica Blake, IHE’s federal policy reporter who does not understand the unhinged weather we are experiencing on the East Coast.
In the last week, the State Department released updated data showing that the number of student visas issued last summer plummeted by more than 35 percent. Over all, the number sank from nearly 289,000 in 2024 to just over 186,000 in 2025—a drop far more drastic than previous reports had indicated, experts say.
But new data from Inside Higher Ed showed that this immigration crackdown is just one of the many challenges college and university presidents have been juggling. In fact, more than 40 percent of respondents to IHE’s annual survey of college and university presidents said the Trump administration’s policy changes have not affected their ability to carry out their mission. Aside from the volatile political pressure, presidents said they are focused on a mix of financial uncertainty, rapid technological advancement and building back public trust.
At the same time, multiple new higher ed–related lawsuits were filed. One suit from the California State University system focused on whether the Trump administration can retroactively punish institutions that allowed trans women to play women’s sports, in accordance with NCAA policies. The other from a coalition of Democratic Attorneys General aims to block the Education Department from collecting reams of admissions data. That data is due next week on March 18, though ED offered a conditional three-week extension.
This Week’s Big Story
March 11 marked the one-year anniversary of a historic reduction in force at the Education Department.
From day one of his second administration, President Trump made it clear that he wanted to dramatically downsize the federal workforce. But while he’d used January and February to make some initial moves like shuttering USAID and offering buyouts across the executive branch, it wasn’t until mid-March, just days after the confirmation of Education Secretary Linda McMahon, that he turned his attention to the department he hoped to dismantle.
In a matter of hours, the federal government’s smallest cabinet agency saw its head count slashed from 4,100 employees to just over 2,000. Years of institutional knowledge axed. Entire offices erased.
This week I spent some time sifting through the rubble to ask: Where does the Education Department stand now? What I found was that while the department may not appear broken, many key mechanisms behind the scenes have been badly damaged. From the approval process for new academic programs seeking financial aid to the compliance checks conducted on those that already exist, there simply aren’t enough staff members to get the job done in a timely fashion, union leaders, policy experts and internal officers say.
