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, whose brackets are already busted. Sad.
Education Under Secretary Nicholas Kent has been busy this week. He warned two accreditors about their DEI standards, shed light on the agency’s plans to change the rules for mergers and then his team announced a plan to move some student loan operations to the Treasury Department.
A year ago President Trump signed an executive order directing Education Secretary Linda McMahon to dismantle her department. Since then, the agency has signed 10 agreements to outsource dozens of programs to other federal agencies. Under the latest agreement announced Thursday, the Treasury Department will take over debt collections for defaulted student loans.
This Week’s Big Story
As we’ve discussed before, the Pell Grant program is in trouble and running out of money. But how much money will it take to address the problem? Your co-host Jessica Blake asked around to find out. And while advocates and lobbyists in D.C. had different ideas on how to address the shortfall in the long term, they generally agreed that Congress needs to put $17 billion more into the program this year.
That money would cover the expected shortfall for fiscal year 2026 ($5.5 billion) and the projected deficit for fiscal year 2027 ($11.5 billion). The $17 billion is on top of the typical appropriation for the program (about $22.5 billion). So the magic number for budget talks in Congress is $39.5 billion.
But getting all of the money from Republicans, who have been reluctant to spend, will be challenging, experts say. If Congress doesn’t put in more money, cuts to the program will be necessary and that would be devastating, advocates say.
“Priority No. 1 is making sure that the program available to the current generation of students continues to be made available to the next at the same levels … We should not go backwards,” said Craig Lindwarm, senior vice president for governmental affairs at the Association of Public and Land-grant Universities.
