Hello! I’m your host, Katherine Knott, Inside Higher Ed’s news editor, and this is The Markup, IHE’s weekly roundup of all things higher ed policy.
This week, we saw more jockeying over the midterms and reviewed new evidence about how states’ policies and politics are affecting students’ decisions about where to attend college. And then, on Thursday night, The Washington Sun dropped a bombshell report that the Education Department is working to spin off its Office for Federal Student Aid into an independent agency by next October. ED calls the report “fake news,” but the backlash from Hill Democrats was swift.
“When did creating an entirely new federal agency to do the exact same work that’s already being done equate to efficiency?” said Sen. Patty Murray, a Washington State Democrat. “The law is clear: Federal Student Aid belongs at the Department of Education, and the Trump administration cannot move it without an act of Congress—nor have they even bothered consulting Congress.”
Here are two key developments from the week:
1. Census changes cause concern. The federal government doesn’t want to gather certain demographic data about American citizens when it conducts the 2030 Census—a very important survey that determines representation in Congress and funding for communities, among many other implications. Specifically, the government has dropped questions about a person’s race, ethnicity or sexual orientation. Now, the government could collect racial data in other ways, but civil rights organizations have warned that losing that data would make the government less equipped to respond to big issues and threatens the integrity of the Census.
For Native American students, dropping the question and other proposed changes to the Census could hinder the services available to them, Olivia Sanchez reported this week. Funding for tribal colleges won’t be affected, but advocates say it’s important to get an accurate count of “Indian Country—not just reservation populations.”
“The Census is more than a population count,” the National Congress of American Indians said in a statement. “Census data help shape political representation, federal funding decisions, policy development, and planning for essential programs and services across Indian Country.”
