Note: This transcript was provided by a third party service.
Mushtaq Gunja: Hi, I'm welcome to dotEDU, the public policy podcast from the American Council on Education. I'm [inaudible 00:00:12], here with my co-host, Sarah Spreitzer, Jon Fansmith. How are you?
Sarah Spreitzer: Great.
Jon Fansmith: Sarah's great because she just got back from, what, 10 days in London, two weeks?
Sarah Spreitzer: Oh my God. It was like eight days.
Jon Fansmith: I don't know how long you disappeared for. It was forever.
Sarah Spreitzer: Really, this has been ongoing, Mushtaq, all day. You'd think Jon would be happy that I came back to work, but all he does is complain.
Mushtaq Gunja: How was London fair?
Mushtaq Gunja: To be fair, all I do is complain and everything.
Sarah Spreitzer: London was wonderful. It was nice to be out of the US of A for a little while, at least. Lots of questions from folks about what's going on in the US and how is it impacting other countries. But it was actually a really nice vacation. I didn't think about work at all. I just assumed that Jon had fixed everything while I was gone.
Mushtaq Gunja: Oh, good. Well, Jon, we're going to spend a lot of time talking to you about how you have fixed everything. A little bit later in the podcast, we have friend of the pod, Kimberly Jones, president of COE, coming back to talk to us a little bit about the state of the TRIO programs. And we had Kimberly on not that long ago, but need to have her on again because news around TRIO, well, continues to evolve. So we'll talk a little bit about that a little later. We have a whole range of... Well, it's always a busy time in higher education, Sarah. I can't believe you took eight days off. Amazing.
Sarah Spreitzer: I know. How dare I?
Mushtaq Gunja: I was hoping we talk a little accountability, a little bit of accreditation, maybe a little Section 117, just to make sure that Sarah is still very happy with us. Maybe updates on probes. Let's see how far, we get lots of quick hit issues. As always, friends, if you have questions in the chat or, if you have questions, please put them either in the Q&A or in the chat. We'll try to monitor and keep these in for those of you who are joining us live. For those of us who are on joining us on the podcast, thank you for listening. And on that point, please remember if you have a second to rate and review this podcast on your favorite sort of podcast platform, it helps others find the show.
All right, friends, maybe we can start with accountability, if that's okay. So if I understand correctly, a monstrosity of something came out Friday afternoon around the latest in the NPRM around accountability. I noticed a couple of interesting things about it, Jon, but do you want to tell audience what we should know?
Jon Fansmith: Yeah, I mean, the basics are really... We covered it pretty extensively. The Department of Ed did two different negotiated rulemaking sessions around the One Big Beautiful Bill Act provisions for higher ed. And they split the rise in the HED committee, and the AHEAD committee looked at a bunch of different things, including Workforce Pell and how Pell is packaged. We saw their proposed rule on that came out a while ago. Probably an easier one, honestly, to get to than the accountability piece. On Friday, the department released their proposed final rule on the accountability side. As you pointed out, it's a bit of a monster. It's about 400 pages or so, I think, at last look.
And look, I'm not going to pretend I've read every word closely and analyzed it, but talking to especially Emmanual Guillory who's popped up on the podcast a number of times and it's close to this, it's what we expect in [inaudible 00:03:51].
They had consensus in the rulemaking session, so a lot of the language reflects where they left it at the table, unless [inaudible 00:03:59] producers have linked to it too so people can take a look. A lot of the concerns we had coming out of the rulemaking session appear not to have been addressed by the department. Again, maybe not a surprise since they had consensus, but we were looking at things like what does the appeals process look like? Can institutions have a more direct role, not just in terms of assessing the data, but whether other factors may play into the changes there. Looking at some things like whether special exemptions could be made for certain programs of public interest, a whole range of different things. Again, still reviewing it, we'll probably identify stuff. I know we're going to have a summary up at some point, hopefully this week.
And then the comment period to reply, it's a 30-day notice period, so May 20th is the deadline to file comments. And rest assured, we will be filing comments on behalf of the higher education community and those conversations as to how to respond are already underway.
Sarah Spreitzer: And Jon, I'm correct that this one, so the RISE proposed rule that had to do with loan limits, that goes into effect July 1st this year. This one would go into effect in 2027. Is that correct? However, the data that they would start gathering would be earlier than that.
Jon Fansmith: No. So all of the reconciliation provisions are scheduled to go into effect as of July 1st of this year. The department has been, and we think inappropriately ignoring the master calendar and finalizing these regulations. I mean, we're end of April at this point. July 1st is not that far away, so we haven't even finalized these regulations, and yet schools will be held to them in just a few months. We have asked repeatedly, I think a lot of people in Congress are asking as well why the department feels this urgency to meet that July 1st deadline, but they have shown no interest in adding additional time for students and schools to get up to speed. So yeah, this will all take effect starting July 1st. The one thing about these rules, the accountability provisions, just quick refresher for folks. The basic premise is that it's on a program by program basis, not on an institutional basis.
And programs at the undergraduate level, so BA, AA certificate programs, graduates of those programs, completers of those programs four years out who are working have to earn more that cohort of borrowers or that cohort of students has to earn more than high school only graduates ages 25 to 34 in their state. For graduate programs, it's the same thing, but the comparison group is bachelor's degree recipients, 25 to 34 and that's eight, or against the national average in some levels. You have to fail that test two out of three years. So while the provisions will start to take effect, the data will start to be compiled and calculated. The earliest sanctions might be applied would be in 2028, two years after the rule takes effect. So you won't see any immediate action as a result of this, but the process will start.
Sarah Spreitzer: But the loss of Title IV eligibility will be for that program as opposed to say for the entire institution.
Jon Fansmith: Yeah, and it's a little bit tricky. I mean, some of the things we are going to highlight when we comment is the department put a number of things in place that weren't actually in the law. The bill that Congress passed said, if you fail to test in two out of three years, those programs lose eligibility for federal student loans, but only for federal student loans. In the negotiating session, the department expanded that to say, if programs fail this fifty fifty test, essentially if that program fails the earnings metric and then either 50% of the institution's Title IV students or 50% or more of the institution's Title IV dollars are in that program, then that program also loses access to all Title IV raids. So that would be Pell Grants, that would be work study, that would be SEOG, any other program that would've provided federal financial aid to students in those programs.
So it's something that wasn't in statute, it's an expansion of the role, and it makes the state certainly much more significant for those programs.
Sarah Spreitzer: And what are the programs you think will be most impacted? And do you think we'll see anything like with the graduate student loan limits where we've seen these concerns raised by the nursing community and others that there may be these unintended consequences? Do you think we'll start seeing that?
Jon Fansmith: Yeah, and we feel, I don't know if the term I want to use is pretty confident, but we've done some analysis here at ACE that I think is... I'll just give credit to Kyle who works with Mushtaq here and did a really phenomenal job looking at these numbers. It makes a lot of sense what we saw when we ran the numbers, which is that you don't see widespread failures of programs, you don't see failures of programs clustered by institutional type per se or other things. One area where that's a little bit different, cosmetology programs at proprietary schools tend to have a lot of exposure, but beyond that, where you see failures are programs that prepare people for fields in which you often need some level of post-undergraduate study, a master's or something, and are going into fields that don't pay well. So you think about social workers, a lot of social workers require an MA to work in that field yet historically, salaries for social workers are really low.
Librarians, early childhood educators, teachers aides, therapists, counselors, a lot of these ranges where you want people to have specialized skills and training because of the not just difficulty of the work they do, but the importance of being aware of ethical constraints and the delicacy of these interactions. You really want people with skills and training, but we still, as a society, don't really pay people to do that. That's where you tend to see a lot of the program failures clustered that we would predict. A couple other areas, culinary arts, performing arts, historically also very low paying program areas, so not a surprise there either, but I think especially those groups we were talking about earlier, very concerning about what that might mean. For pipelines in some areas where we're already under-resourced as a country, we don't have enough people doing that work to begin with.
Mushtaq Gunja: Four quick questions for you on accountability. First, when we say program, the question chat, are we talking two-digit CIP, four-digit, six-digit?
Jon Fansmith: It's four-digit CIP, but then there's issues with the privacy suppression for program sizes below 30 students, so that gets rolled up across consecutive years if there's not enough students in the program to make an assessment for one year.
Mushtaq Gunja: Second, look, I'm not a master calendar and NPRM sort of timing expert, but isn't it the case that the administration needs to respond to every comment that comes in, a meaningfully comment on every conversation that comes in, finalize the rule, and then it only goes into effect at the earliest, 30 days after that, feels like we're running very close to July 1st, if not after that. So you're nodding, Jon, but then what?
Jon Fansmith: Because everything you've said so far is accurate, right Mushtaq? The department is required to read and respond to every comment. Certainly there are cases where some organizations will set up mass commenting forms, so they will get a thousand nearly identical comments. And in that case, they're clear about we batch, responded, we understood it, which is reasonable, of course. But then they have to, for all the other individual comments, read and assess and respond to them in their final rule. What that looks like, I think varies a lot. As well as I do, that response could be, we're changing what we're doing to, we acknowledge it, but we disagree with a point that was made. And then after that is 30 days and practice a lot longer because whatever the final revised rule is after that point, we'll also go to OMB, an office called OIRA at the Office of Management and Budget, which reviews all regulations across the federal government to ensure consistency with administration policy before it's finalized.
So there's a lot of steps that are behind the scenes steps that make this process go more slowly than you'd think. And again, we talked about it. As we record this, it is April 20th. If these are going to take effect July 1st, stack a couple of months of time, you're just getting to the finish line right before they take effect. That's not a real amount of time for schools to update systems and inform students and do all of the things you would ideally like them to be able to do and advance these decisions taking effect.
Sarah Spreitzer: But when it comes to reading comments and responding to the Mushtaq, I mean, I really think that this administration especially is taking advantage of AI, and doing it at a much faster clip than I think we've seen other administrations do it.
Mushtaq Gunja: It's possible. I mean, when I worked on the department in the Obama administration, I mean, we had folks from OPE working constantly, weekends, late hours, reading all the letters, really trying to figure out the right way to be able to batch stuff. I mean, they're probably appropriate and less appropriate ways to use technology to make this a little bit better. I mean, hard for me to know for sure, but sorry, you may well be right. Jon, I noticed-
Jon Fansmith: Can I just say on that point though, I would be very hesitant if they were using AI as a substitute for a human review of the comments, because it certainly can be a powerful tool for reviewing and analyzing and aggregating information. But I think certainly you would say the spirit of the law is intended to inform the decisions made by individuals. And could it expedite it? Sure. But it also seems kind of inconsistent with the spirit of the law and the fact that you want the people writing the regulations to be thinking about input from the public.
Mushtaq Gunja: Yeah, no doubt. I mean, so third question for you, Jon, in the stories, I noticed that the for-profit association, CQ said this is an improvement on previous accountability measures, but we still have serious concerns. I mean, does that set of concerns, do you think the administration is more likely to take these seriously given their closeness with certain parts of the for-profit industry? I mean, anything there that we should be looking out for?
Jon Fansmith: Yeah, I mean, I will say I know the folks over at CQ pretty well, and we have had our agreements and our disagreements with them. I think this is one where I don't necessarily disagree with their position here. I think there's some interesting things. One of the things that was done as part of this process was the existing gainful employment rule, which applied to all programs at proprietary institutions, and then essentially non-degree programs at for profit institutions, mostly certificate programs, was rolled into one broader accountability measure. So now every program is facing the same metrics in terms of determining what that accountability measure is, and it's this earnings premium. And I think honestly, philosophically, there's really good reason to say if we are going to look at accountability from the framework of earnings, and I think there's a lot of problems with deciding the quality of a program solely based on earnings, as we talked about, it leads to some really important problems, but certainly the idea of a consistent approach across program areas rather than institutional level, rather than anything like that, makes a lot of sense.
The standards are the same for everybody. If it's a good program for one, it should be a good program for others. So in that regard, and I know that's been a concern of the proprietary sector for a long time, what they saw as disparate treatment under law, that makes total sense to me. I agree with that. I do think we get into some other things we've looked at in the past where there's certainly understandable reasons you think about the proprietary sector in terms of different terms and measures in the accountability space, but in this regard, you can certainly see why they see this as a pretty promising outcome from the process.
Mushtaq Gunja: Last question, what would you have our institutions do in the next bit before the end of the public comment period?
Jon Fansmith: I mean, I think this is the time to file comments. A lot of institutions, and I will tell you, we talked a little bit about AI reviewing comments or how the process works, and I think sometimes people get a little skeptical of the value of it. You really should file comments as much as the administration has perspectives, putting on the record what this will mean for your campus, good and bad, what you perceive this to be, how it will impact what you do staffing-wise, programmatic-wise, putting those things onto the record does help shape, in the majority of cases, the outcome. And even where it doesn't, it creates a formal record. So as subsequent challenges come forward, whether in the courts or other areas, there's this documentary base of evidence about the public raising concerns that either were or were not addressed by the administration implementing the rule that has a value in and of itself.
Mushtaq Gunja: Well, can I move us over to accreditation because there was a rulemaking session on accreditation last week? Jon, was that last week, two weeks ago?
Jon Fansmith: It was last week. Yeah, all last week.
Sarah Spreitzer: It sounded kind of exciting. I was sad to miss it.
Mushtaq Gunja: Okay. And I know that we talked about it at some length last time previewing what we were going to talk about. Just any updates from that first session progress made? Did it seem like the negotiators were in a mood to compromise? Where are we?
Jon Fansmith: No, it was interesting. I think a lot of the, and we talked about it before, a lot of the concern with the composition of the committee was that a lot of the primary stakeholders in this area, so the representative from the recognized, the formerly regional accreditors, whoever see the vast majority of schools enrolling the vast majority of students were an alternate, so they couldn't vote, they couldn't speak if the primary person wasn't there, weren't at the table. The specialized accreditors or representative, those, the recognized specialized accreditors weren't at the table as primary negotiators. I think there was some thought that this might constrain criticism of the department's proposals. And just the opposite was true. There was a really pretty lively debate and discussion, a lot of pushback, a lot of pushback from conservative members of the committee. I think there's a great deal of unease across the political spectrum, across higher ed and what the department is trying to put forward, and that got reflected at the table.
Not a lot of progress in terms of accomplishing the work of the committee. No temperature check votes were taken. Edits were made by most accounts, and certainly what I was able to see, really more rearranging the language rather than substantively changing the language that had been proposed. There will be one more session starting in May 18th through that week, May 18th through the 22nd. That will be the put the rubber to the road session. They're going to have to start revising language in a way if they want to get to consensus. Coming out of this week, the department really very clearly focused on getting the consensus. Hard to see, at least coming out of Friday, where that will be. But there will be new revised language proposed by the department. The negotiators themselves will have time to offer new proposals. So still a lot of work to be done and the time pressure may force some concessions on all sides we will see. I think probably Sarah pointed out what sounded interesting, there were some fireworks at the very beginning of the session.
One thing they have done, the department has done in this rulemaking, which is kind of out of the norm, they have a political appointee as their negotiator at the table. Historically, this is a career staff person at the Department of Education, often somebody who's either familiar with running the rulemaking process or somebody who might have subject matter expertise. That person started by saying that these regulations are necessary. And in fact, the administration's proposals were going to go forward "with or without you," speaking to the negotiators, which certainly is maybe not reflective of the idea of an openness to compromise in negotiation rather than having a pretty clear set of goals they're looking to implement. And I think a lot of people took away from that... What people have worried about this session becoming, which is essentially just trying to codify what the department wants to do in the first place rather than actual open discussion about best policy choices.
So we will say, like I said, lots still to be determined that last week's going to be fascinating, but some reasons for concern coming out of week one.
Mushtaq Gunja: Remind me, what's next? When does next language come out? When is the next meeting?
Jon Fansmith: I forget the deadlines for when the negotiators are supposed to submit proposals. I believe the department has said that they would provide a revised draft a week before, so March, or sorry, May 11th, the week before the last session begins.
Mushtaq Gunja: Okay. Well, we'll keep everybody abreast. Sarah, With Or Without You is my 17th favorite U2 song. What's your favorite U2 song?
Sarah Spreitzer: Probably Sunday Bloody Sunday.
Mushtaq Gunja: Fansmith?
Jon Fansmith: Where the Streets Have No Name.
Mushtaq Gunja: That's the right answer. Okay.
Sarah Spreitzer: All very old school.
Mushtaq Gunja: Well, yeah, they've been around since 1980-
Jon Fansmith: We're old.
Mushtaq Gunja: Yeah, we're old. Hey, Sarah.
Sarah Spreitzer: Yeah.
Mushtaq Gunja: Section 117, what's the latest?
Sarah Spreitzer: Well, I think just because I was on vacation, the department decided to drop a new information collection request, which is how they gather information on Section 117, which for folks that don't remember is foreign funding to your institution in the form of grants or gifts or contracts that are coming in. You have to report everything at 250,000 or above twice a year. It's been an ongoing, long, ongoing discussion with the Department of Education that's spanned several administrations about how to actually do this reporting requirement. And this administration has taken a few actions around it. The first, they signed an interagency agreement with the U.S. Department of State where they're allowing state to take on some of the reporting requirements, specifically looking at the reports and I think deciding whether or not there needs to be investigations on any of the foreign funding going to institutions.
And then they've issued-
Mushtaq Gunja: Sarah, is that new?
Sarah Spreitzer: Yeah.
Mushtaq Gunja: Did the state typically do that?
Sarah Spreitzer: No, this is completely brand new. And it was messaged as one of the new interagency agreements, Mushtaq, in the overall plan to kind of demonstrate that we don't need the U.S. Department of Education, like the decision to move programs over to HHS or the Department of Labor. This was kind of done in the same vein, but also saying that the Department of State has an intelligence arm, and so therefore they could be a useful partner to the US Department of Education, which I don't think... I mean, the information that our institutions have reported have always been public. So any agency is able to see it and take a look at it. I don't think we have any disagreements on that. But one of the things that they've just done is they've issued this new information collection request and they're asking for comments by June, I think it's June 15th.
And one of the big changes, which I think they've been talking about a lot, is that they would require institutions to report the names of foreign donors. So previously, we've been allowed to have anonymous donors that actually seems to be in the language in the statute, but this has been something that the Trump administration has pushed for before. And in fact, it's been something that's been spelled out in proposed legislation around Section 117. There's this concern around anonymous donors. And so this information collection request makes it clear that they want the actual names of the foreign donors that we would not be able to have anonymous donations. [inaudible 00:26:02].
Mushtaq Gunja: Is that at any dollar level, or is there a threshold?
Sarah Spreitzer: No, this would be at 250 or above. But obviously if legislation were to pass the Deterrent Act that would lower that amount to 50,000 or below, it would likely capture, say, alumni gifts or other things in which the donor may not want to be very public about it. Yeah.
Jon Fansmith: And Sarah, some of those examples we've talked about in the past at those lower levels, alumni gifts, particularly to say a religious mission institution from a country in which your religious identity could put you at some risk for persecution by the government or by groups within the country. And certainly, I think we all understand the transparency concerns, but there are some common sense examples of where this could pose problems.
Sarah Spreitzer: Yeah, so we'll definitely be commenting, and we're interested in hearing from institutions who actually do these reports, how problematic this new information collection request will be.
Mushtaq Gunja: Well, thanks, Sarah. We'll definitely circle back. Jon, Sarah, what's the latest on appropriations? Any movements since the last time we spoke?
Sarah Spreitzer: I'd say a lot of movement. I mean, we had the president's budget request come out. They've started scheduling markups for bills. I think we actually have the FSGG bill, the Financial Services and General Government bill out on the House side. But yeah, the appropriations committees are moving forward. There's hearings going on. I think Labor H is scheduled to be marked up in June. I think members are taking in appropriations requests, but I think that that's pretty much wrapping up.
Jon Fansmith: Yeah, I think the one still big hanging issue, well, two big hanging issues. One is we still haven't resolved Homeland Security funding, and there's a process to maybe do reconciliation again, and what that looks like and what might get rolled up into that seems to depend on which chamber you're talking to and which person in that chamber you're talking to right now. But Senate leadership is they want a just Homeland Security funding. Lots of other people would like an opportunity to put some things in that bill as probably the last chance to move something substantive before the elections. Then you also have just at the top line level appropriators are moving forward, trying to work out what their bills should be without a bipartisan agreement, leadership agreement on overall how much to spend where, which in most years they have a ballpark idea of what they're doing. This year, it's a little bit weirder because the president and his budget asked for a $500 billion increase on the defense side, which I don't think anyone thinks is really actually on the table.
But given a lot of concerns we have, whether you support the actions we've taken in the Middle East or not, we've used up stockpiles of weapons. There's a real strain on military capacity, so there's probably some interest in additional funding in that area, just not clear that it's certainly at the level the president was talking about. So things still would be worked out that will eventually filter down.
Sarah Spreitzer: Yeah. I also feel like appropriations is going to lose a lot of steam by the time we get into the summer because attention's going to turn to the midterms and they're not going to complete it by October. I think on DHS, I think that will likely move in a reconciliation bill. But for FY27 funding, I don't think anybody should hold their breath thinking that they'll finish by October.
Jon Fansmith: Sarah and I have talked about this too. I mean, there's almost no incentive to do appropriations bills in advance of an election because Because either you're cutting things that people like and they'll hold that against you or you're spending too much and people think you're not being fiscally responsible and they'll hold that against you. So very few members of Congress are rushing to get appropriations bills finalized prior to the November midterms.
Mushtaq Gunja: One last topic before we bring in Kimberly to talk about TRIO and what's happening there. Actually, probably we should have segued from a probes, but our friends at Hampshire College have announced that they will be closing, so pour one out for our friends there. Jon, Sarah, I was wondering whether we see this as a real trend in the data of institutions closing. I mean, goodness, folks have been predicting enormous amounts of college closures for as long as I've been thinking about higher education, and it hasn't fully come to pass. I mean, do you guys have reactions to this news?
Jon Fansmith: I mean, you kind of summed it up pretty well. I think I remember, I don't know, 15 or 20 years ago hearing Clayton Christensen say half of all private schools would be closed by 2020 or something like that. And that hasn't happened. But look, the schools that are under tremendous financial pressure are generally small private tuition dependent schools. They don't have state resources to support them. A lot of them, frankly, are in rural areas where there aren't growing population bases. You think about the Northeast and the Midwest, especially Upper Midwest, areas where demographic changes are really putting a lot of pressure on reducing the number of students pursuing in education. And it's really unfortunate. I think the debate in DC tends to focus on this idea of the sustainability of those institutions and whether "they're worth saving" or something like that. And then you read the accounts.
I mean, a lot of good coverage actually around Hampshire closing has focused on other schools in similar positions that might be serving rural communities that don't have other educational options or performing a very unique role that students won't be able to find somewhere else. And there is a real reason to be upset about the loss of these institutions, even if the economics are, they're sailing into headwinds again. I think we saw it in the chat too, somebody just said, "This is a special institution with a special mission." If you wanted to go to Hampshire, you went there because you wanted what Hampshire did, not because it was equivalent to a lot of other options available to you. And it's worth thinking about that, even if I don't know that there is really a way for a lot of these institutions, short of some of the innovative approaches we've seen mergers and collaboratively specializing in certain programs or restructuring.
But again, that's moving you away from maybe what you were established to do. It's tough. It's a really tough thing.
Sarah Spreitzer: I mean, I do worry about it as an alum of a small liberal arts private school that served a very unique mission. I worry about it a lot because I think you're not going to make up those institutions once we lose them. But I do have hope, Mushtaq, because I think about our institutions getting through COVID, getting through the first Trump administration, getting through the enrollment changes that we've already seen the start of, but taking on the loss of international students on top of uncertainty in federal funding, on top of uncertainty with new regulations from the US Department of Education, I do worry a lot that it's just going to be too much, but I have a lot of hope in our institutions that they're going to be able to pivot and figure out ways to survive in whatever the new world looks like.
Mushtaq Gunja: Yeah, I sort of echo that. Generally, I echo that optimism. I mean, I think our institutions probably need to do some pivoting to meet changing student demand and changing workforce needs. And I think that our institutions are up for that challenge. I think what's hard is that there are demographic realities as we have fewer high school students that are coming, and we have rising costs in healthcare that increase the cost of running an institution that's really labor-dependent. And those things we can manage. What's sort of annoying is also having to deal with self-inflicted wounds from loss of international students to some of these cuts in federal funding. Those are the things that I think are frustrating, but I'm hopeful that maybe we can argue our way out of some of those. And that's part of why ACE exists. And actually one of our partner organizations that's really helping us is COE.
And maybe this is a good time to bring Kimberly Jones in and maybe we can talk a little bit about potentially some self-inflicted wounds here on TRIO. So Kimberly, how are you, my friend? I know you're coming up on the screen.
Kimberly Jones: Hey, I promise you these are not self-inflicted because maybe take away the gun.
Mushtaq Gunja: Yeah. And I should say, when I say self-inflicted, I don't mean from our institutions themselves, but from the federal government, things that are within our control to be able to, you know what I mean? As opposed to the things that are a little bit harder and external for us to control. So Kimberly, we had you on a couple of months ago to talk about TRIO. And since Congress has funded, they've authorized TRIO. So what is the uncertainty right now? What is happening with our TRIO programs?
Kimberly Jones: Sure. So thanks y'all for having me back. It's good to be here. And Congress, as you mentioned, funded TRIO. Even though there had been calls by the administration to eliminate the program, Congress rebuked that and continued to fund the program and had very strong bipartisan support. The chair of the Appropriations Committee and the Senate is the co-chair of the TRIO Caucus, Susan Collins of Maine, and the chair of the Appropriations committee in the House is Tom Cole, one of the foremost TRIO supporters in Congress. And so we were very, very grateful that the Congress recognizes our value and put forward a budget that affirms the work we do.
So given that they couldn't defund us, what has happened is that the administration has put forward two requests for proposals for the next scheduled TRIO grant competitions, and that's for the TRIO Talent Search Program and the TRIO Educational Opportunity Center's program.
And in these RFPs, they drastically propose to alter the structure of the programs, the focus of the programs, and who gets the awards. And so we are dismayed and fighting as hard as we can against these. These are in contradiction to what is in federal law. And it's very, very troubling the situation we find ourselves in.
Mushtaq Gunja: One level deeper, what are the RFPs actually proposing? What are the changes that are contemplated here?
Kimberly Jones: So there's really kind of two buckets of troubling issues. The first is that TRIO as a whole, all of TRIO is intended to support college going for low-income, potential first-generation college graduates. And so while of course, certainly we do have students who come in and ultimately pursue shorter term credentialing programs, the focus, the goal has always been that four-year college degree. And so in the proposals for both Talent Search, which serves kids as young as the sixth grade, so sixth through 12th graders, and Educational Opportunity Centers which serve adults, 19 years old and older, they include some absolute priorities that require programs to integrate apprenticeship programs, short-term credentialing programs, workforce training programs into what they are steering students toward.
And so that's very troubling. The idea, particularly with the talent search program, the idea that you want to steer kids in a certain direction before they've even had a chance to think about college. That's why we start with students that young, is to give them the exposure and the awareness. So certainly in terms of our mission, that is extremely troubling. What is also happening is the actual structure of the grant awards.
So the department has created incentives for state boards of education, for state workforce development boards to come in to the competition and to apply for massive monster sized grants. It's up to $10 million in talent search, up to $3 million in EOC. I will tell you that the average talent search or EOC grant is about $350,000. And so any grant that's won, that's a million dollars or more is going to wipe out at least three other existing projects. And so what is happening, unsurprisingly, because money is an attractive factor, is that a lot of state entities are just seeing the dollars and deciding to move forward without understanding the mission of TRIO, without understanding the accountability metrics. Many people were surprised, for instance, to learn that, no, you don't get a planning year. You are expected in your first year to serve the thousands of students that you said you were going to serve. And by the way, if you don't serve them, your grant can get revoked. They're surprised to learn that unlike our sibling program GEAR UP, we do have pretty strict verification requirements around student citizenship.
You must be a US citizen or permanent resident to participate in these programs. And in some jurisdictions, I know that would be a political powder keg if they have to do that. And even in TRIO, there have been some instances where some target schools have said to programs, "If you can't serve all of our kids, we don't want you in the school." And so I think people don't necessarily appreciate a lot of the rigors of running a TRIO program.
And then for our pre-college kids, you have to track them for six years following high school graduation to ensure... Again, the goal is to ensure that they get that college degree. And so again, I don't think there's an appreciation or an understanding. There's just an interest in the dollars. And so we're working very hard to educate people about what this really entails and how this could really disrupt. And I'll be candid, I believe it's an intentional disruption of the current infrastructure of TRIO. There are projects that to some, this is not a good thing, but there are some projects that have been operating for decades and being very successful in their communities and they are part of the infrastructure of these schools. And this is an attempt to break that up.
Sarah Spreitzer: And Kimberly, you said that these are RFPs. So does that mean that there's no opportunity to comment on this enormous shift? They're just being issued and there's a deadline for proposals?
Kimberly Jones: That is correct. And so the department, and this is probably more information than you want or need, but for those who do this work regularly, you know there's typically a comment period for a proposal like this. Well, not this administration, the previous administration issued an RFP, which to be fair, all it did was recycle the one from the last competition and to slap a year on it. That's not unusual. It's very typical for the RFPs to be published so that it gives the runway to the agency to come out with the final. So there was no legitimate opportunity to comment on this. This just came out of the blue.
Jon Fansmith: Yeah. And Kim, the department has signed an interagency agreement with the Department of Labor to administer the TRIO programs. We have this effort to basically take what is in law as a college preparation and access program and start to make it into a workforce program. I don't know if you want to say this, so maybe I'll say it and you can correct me if I'm wrong or just stay silent. But look, we've gone through two presidents' budget cycles where they've sought to eliminate TRIO. They are now revamping the grant awards, the criteria, the eligibility provisions, having them administer a different agency. I mean, functionally, this is kind of what we've seen with the department as a whole. They're attempting to hollow out the program by just using what gray space they have to make it something other than what Congress wants, what is serving student interests and what funding has been provided for.
Is any of that incorrect that this is basically attempting to destroy TRIO by other means?
Kimberly Jones: It sounds absolutely on point, death by a thousand cuts. What's interesting to me is that not just with TRIO, but with all of the IAAs, this has been pitched as a proof of concept. What I'm worried about, not so much on the front end, but on the backend, once they move TRIO projects over to the Department of Labor's grant management system, in talking to our friends and other areas that have already been transitioned to these new systems, I'm not confident that things will go smoothly at all. And the TRIO community is very vocal. And so I don't know if they want to put thousands of people into these new systems and it not function properly, but that's a tomorrow problem. My today problem is these RFPs.
Jon Fansmith: And we've heard the same issues with career and technical education programs that move to the Department of Labor, systems issues, contact issues, lack of clarity about what has changed, who to talk to. And I think for most institutions, I mean, I know the TRIO folks are tireless in terms of serving their students and trying to work through the challenges, but adding more challenges to the work and across the spectrum, it's not helpful regardless of your political viewpoints to do that. So yeah-
Kimberly Jones: It's the opposite-
Jon Fansmith: It's a concept, just not the way they mean it to be.
Kimberly Jones: Yeah.
Sarah Spreitzer: So Kimberly, you talked about how the Congressional Appropriators came in last year or this year and said, "No, we disagree with the administration. We're giving the funding back. These are programs that work." Are you hearing from your congressional champions about these RFPs?
Kimberly Jones: We are.
Sarah Spreitzer: Or any pushback going on towards the administration saying this is not congressional intent?
Kimberly Jones: We are. And Jon put it right, they're playing in the gray areas, which makes this a little bit more difficult. It's not as if there's a readily available legislative vehicle to fix this, at least in the immediate term, but as recently as I think last week or the tail end of the week before, Senator Collins actually co-led a letter to the secretary, co-authored with Senator Warnock, who was a TRIO alum, and it was 12 senators, six Republicans and six Democrats to express their very strong concerns about the process and what it meant and to request that the department revoke this and work together with Congress to come up with something that actually effectuates their will.
Sarah Spreitzer: It was interesting. I heard at a Senate hearing a couple of weeks ago, Senator Murray talk about the fact that Secretary McMahon has not testified before the Help Committee and that there's questions about these interagency agreements and some of the changes happening at the Department of Education, but I hadn't realized she hadn't been up to testify since basically the last budget hearing, I think.
Kimberly Jones: Mm-hmm. Yeah.
Sarah Spreitzer: So yeah, I think that there are a lot of questions about some of these actions by the Department of Education, by bipartisan members of Congress.
Kimberly Jones: And I do think, because as part of last year's, or I guess this year, it was March, this year's CR, they did put in some guardrails to require frequent communication between the agencies and the committees. So I believe that those conversations are happening, but there's still not a lot of transparency and not a lot of solid answers coming out despite these meetings.
Jon Fansmith: Yeah, I think that's the big thing. It's these are changes that are being made to programs meant to serve the public, and it's not clear what is changing, who is directing it, timeframes, other things. And it's certainly a good thing. And I think we're very appreciative of Congress recognizing the concerns are out there and trying to put some checks into place. But everything we know about these processes comes from individual institutional examples. And you hear one account and it's somewhat contradicted by another account and then you're trying to sort of parse this out. And I can only imagine what it's like on a campus or heading a trio program to say a lot of what our members do with the federal government is so apolitical. It is really administrative. It is really, we'll do what you ask us to do, just tell us how to do it.
And all of these barriers, again, it's really, to much talk self-inflicted wounds, keep shooting ourselves in the foot in this regard. They're throwing more barriers in the way and damaging what the whole role of the programs is.
Sarah Spreitzer: Well, and when programs are created, I mean, by Congress, they go through a hearing in which they hear from witnesses about this is how the program, how you could shape the program. There's a bill, it's marked up, it's debated, it goes to the floor. There's this whole transparent process. To make these changes through executive authority is really, I mean, not transparent at all because you don't understand the intent or what they're trying to get at and where are the guardrails.
Kimberly Jones: I will say, at least in the case of these RFPs, I don't know if this was purposeful or not, but does seem that there is sufficient confusion about some of the elements of the proposals. So for instance, there's confusion about whether or not an institution of higher education can come in and write for one of these massive state grants. On its face, it's not clear, but in some training conversations, the department staff have said, no, that's not the case because they really are trying to shift it towards state boards of education, state workforce development boards, but people don't know that. And so we've got some schools that are abandoning their longstanding programs to try to go after this massive award that they may not even be eligible for.
Sarah Spreitzer: And how many of the massive awards would actually be made?
Kimberly Jones: So this is all perspective. In the RFPs, they always put the total allocation and the number of grants they expect to fund. And in both cases, they listed, essentially, they only want to fund two-thirds of the current number of grantees. So that's telling me that the department has an expectation that there will be many of these massive institutional grants getting funded versus the traditional $350,000 grant.
Mushtaq Gunja: For states that are contemplating applying for these grants, I mean, these could be quite complicated. I mean, what would you say to a state that was looking to apply for one of these grants?
Kimberly Jones: Oh, what a great question. So first off, and I say this, again, this is not to be derogatory in any way, but just for clarity, because a lot of what we're hearing from people who already have the state GEAR UP grants, and they're like, "Oh, we'll just run it like GEAR UP." No, it has an entirely different set of requirements and verifications and tracking procedures than the GEAR UP programs. They already mentioned the citizenship piece for the pre-college students tracking them through college graduation.
I would also say really think about the relationships that your institutions of higher ed have already built on the ground. I have a very genuine fear that in some cases you might end up with a state that gets the money and then it doesn't go where it used to go. So in some places, and plus in some rural places, TRIO is the only college access programming that exists, and there's no guarantee that they are going to reinvest in those same areas.
I mean, the state has its own set of priorities and its own places where it wants to do things. And so this creates a lot of uncertainty for students, for educators working in the programs, and it's very, very troubling.
Sarah Spreitzer: So Kimberly, is there an advocacy message you're asking folks to deliver to Capitol Hill or deliver to the department?
Kimberly Jones: Absolutely. We are calling for the department to rescind these proposals, to rescind them, to revise them and reissue them in a way that is keeping with the mission and the intention of TRIO and the structure of TRIO. And so actually, I should have had this pulled up. I will add our little advocacy center--
Sarah Spreitzer: Oh, our producers just put in the link.
Kimberly Jones: Oh, there it goes.
Sarah Spreitzer: So everyone go there and send your message asking them to rescind the RFPs.
Kimberly Jones: And here's the thing I think a lot of people aren't getting. And I don't like to say this because I'm not a fear monger, but if these proposals move forward as intended by the department, the proverbial blood hits the streets right before school starts this fall. And so thousands of students losing access to a program they were counting on, seniors who are going to be going into their senior year, going to be applying to college, that's not a good look for anybody, especially in an even numbered year, and I'll leave it at that.
Jon Fansmith: Well, and we talked about this a little bit earlier with the implementation date for the reconciliation changes. We are historically, and again, this is a nonpartisan issue, historically used to in the administration, even where they have priorities we disagree with, having a thoughtful approach to what that timeframe looks like. If you want to make changes, you have to understand that the impact of them falls on the citizens of this country. And so how do you account for that? How do you address it in a way where you minimize the harm? These very abrupt... I mean, the changes to the eligibility criteria to the grant awards were sudden, unanticipated, taking effect relatively quickly. This is not historically how Republican or Democratic administrations have done this because what they've tried to do is manage the process in a way to minimize harm. And what we've seen again and again is an almost willful disregard of the implications of these expedited processes.
You're doing it so quickly maybe to try to overcome opposition, but the effect is so much more damaging to the people who will be impacted. I
Kimberly Jones: Can't speak for other issues because my wheelhouse is TRIO, but I will say this is deliberate. I mean, they found that they couldn't get rid of us through the appropriations process, so this is the alternative. And so for anybody who cares about TRIO, who benefited from TRIO, now is the time to make your voice heard. Because again, because the harm is perspective, I don't think people understand.
And what I don't want to have happen, this reminds me, this is a very much smaller scale example, but in 2012, the Obama administration actually within their authority, they transitioned $10 million out of the McNair Scholars Program. The McNair Scholars Program serves undergraduates who want to go onto doctoral study. And the rationale was McNair Scholars is very expensive. It's about $8,000 per student. So instead we're going to put that money into the Upper Bound Math Science program, which costs maybe $5,000 a student to get kids earlier into the pipeline.
What happened, which is what we told them what happened. When they finally had the grant results come out for McNair, McNair's one of the smaller programs, 50 institutions lost their grants. Many of them were HBCUs. One of them was Dr. McNair's alma mater, and it's taken us almost since 2012 to recoup those losses in the McNair program. And again, nobody, not to say nobody cared, but people didn't see the impact until it happened. And we don't want to wait till the beginning of the school year when these kids need these services.
Mushtaq Gunja: So we're all going to go to the Take Action Now page on the-
Kimberly Jones: Oh, you do?
Mushtaq Gunja: Are there other things? So given this idea of folks not understanding what is going to happen and what the effects of some of these changes are going to be, any other advice that you would give presidents, provosts, IR directors, the registrar, folks that might be listening that they can do now to help create the stories that might be able to be persuasive to either the administration or to folks on Congress?
Kimberly Jones: Sure. Well, definitely we do implore college leaders to let legislators know the impact trios having on your campus. I mean, routinely, routinely, routinely, we hear from people that the outcomes for students who are in the TRIO programs best those, not just of the other low-income first-gen students, but the student body as a whole. And so certainly you don't want to lose that on your campus, but then also please affirm to your TRIO professionals your support, your willingness to work with them. I know there's been some areas where, I won't say where, but a conversation was had internally and should we go for a state grant? And the institution said, no, we are very supportive of our TRIO group programs. They're doing good work and we want to see what they've got going maintained. And so having those conversations to reassure, because there's understandably a lot of fear and a lot of ambiguity and uncertainty within the TRIO community, I think leaders of colleges, it would make a big difference for them to know that they have that support from their leaders.
Jon Fansmith: And if I could add one thing, I think we're talking about campuses with TRIO programs. We would love to see more TRIO programs at more campuses-
Kimberly Jones: Yes.
Jon Fansmith: ... not less. Even if you don't have a TRIO program on your campus, as Kim pointed out, these are great programs. They work.
We don't like what the administration is doing. It should not pass without public outcry, and that does not depend on you having a TRIO program on your campus. If you want to get a TRIO program in the future, we need more funding for this program. We need the administration to respect the law's intent and language. And so I would urge people, again, even if you don't have a direct impact from these changes to your campus, still weigh in. This is a great issue to raise with your legislators, maybe even more so because you don't have a direct stake in it. So raise your voices. It matters.
Kimberly Jones: Thank you.
Mushtaq Gunja: Well, Kimberly, we are also grateful for having you on the ground fighting this fight every day.
Kimberly Jones: Fighting for my life. Every day.
Mushtaq Gunja: And anything we can do to help support, happy to have you on to be able to lift up this message. And I know Jon, Sarah, and team are thinking about this as much as they can too. So thank you. Thank you. And any last words? Anything else you want to point our listeners to?
Kimberly Jones: Oh, you didn't ask me about the lawsuit. Last time I was here, I talked about the fact that over a hundred TRIO grants had been canceled last summer. And so COE did bring suit against the Department of Education. The initial declarance to the first suit was about 11 schools. Half of them had their grants reinstated, and now the court has extended relief to another 45 schools, so they should be learning about the status of their grants by mid-May or towards the end of May.
Sarah Spreitzer: That's great.
Jon Fansmith: Fingers crossed from that.
Kimberly Jones: Yeah.
Mushtaq Gunja: Thank you, Kimberly.
Kimberly Jones: Yeah, thanks for having me.
Mushtaq Gunja: Well, hopefully everything will work out and we won't have to... The next time we have that-
Kimberly Jones: I'll come back with rejoicing and all the good news about all the beautiful things that are happening in TRIO.
Sarah Spreitzer: [inaudible 00:59:04].
Kimberly Jones: Because there's still a lot of good stuff happening.
Mushtaq Gunja: Yeah. Well, either way, we'll have you back and either we'll rejoice or we'll keep strategizing on the next way to go.
Kimberly Jones: Absolutely.
Mushtaq Gunja: Thank you so much for joining. And thank you everybody for joining live. And for those of you who are listening afterwards, thank you so much. Please look at the show notes to look at the links that are put in. And friends, we will see everybody in a couple of weeks. Thank you so much.
Jon Fansmith: If you enjoyed the show, please consider subscribing, rating, and leaving a review on your favorite podcast platform. Your feedback is important to us and it helps other policy wonks discover our show. Don't forget to follow ACE on social media to stay updated on upcoming episodes and other higher education content. You can find us on X, LinkedIn, and Instagram.
And of course, if you have any questions, comments, or suggestions for future episodes, please feel free to reach out to us at podcast@acenet.edu. We love hearing from our listeners and who knows, your input might inspire a future episode.