Most clicked story of the week:
The forthcoming end of Grad PLUS loans — which allow graduate students to borrow up to the cost of attendance — could potentially make master’s, doctoral and professional programs financially out of reach for many, experts say. It could also translate into lower graduate enrollment and declining revenue for colleges.
Ivies feel the pinch from federal changes:
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The Education Department recently gave Harvard University, in Massachusetts, 20 days to provide documents about its undergraduate admissions as part of a civil rights investigation. The agency threatened the Ivy League institution’s federal student aid if it does not comply.
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The department also put Harvard on Heightened Cash Monitoring status — meaning the university must first disburse federal aid from its own coffers before drawing down funds from the agency's Office of Federal Student Aid. This list is typically reserved for colleges experiencing extreme financial distress, such as those at risk of closure.
- Brown University, in Rhode Island, said it would lay off 48 employees and eliminate 55 vacant roles to brace its budget for continued federal policy shifts, including an expected decrease in research funding from agencies like the National Science Foundation.
The Trump administration’s shifting grant policies:
- Hispanic-serving institutions in Texas are slated to lose roughly $60 million in federal funding after the Education Department said it would no longer support several grant programs for minority-serving institutions, according to a Texas Public Radio analysis.
- The Trump administration canceled nearly $170 million in GEAR Up grants for over 200 public K-12 schools, citing their diversity, equity and inclusion efforts, Ideastream Public Media reported. The GEAR Up funding supported counselors and programming to help students to prepare for college.
- The University of California, Los Angeles won a temporary reprieve from the Trump administration’s attempts to cut research grants. A federal judge ordered the National Institutes of Health to reinstate the UCLAawards the agency recently canceled — valued at some $500 million — saying the professors who sued over the terminations were likely to prove they were unlawful.
Quote of the week:
“AI is not a rotisserie. You don’t set it and forget it. It will burn it down.”
Jasmine Solomon
Senior associate director of systems operations, New York University
Solomon spoke at the National Association for College Admission Counseling’s conference this month about how to responsibly use AI tools in college admissions and operations, advised higher ed officials to perform regular error checks and audits on them.
