Tag: education

Last year, analysts projected a significant long-term budget shortfall for the Pell Grant program—the first in more than a decade—sending shock waves through Congress.

And while the Legislature tried to address it with a $10.5 billion Band-Aid, the Congressional Budget Office’s latest projection shows that even such an emergency action won’t be enough to prevent devastating deficits for the long-standing financial aid program that helps low-income students pay for college.

The report, released late Thursday evening, projects that by the end of fiscal year 2026, which ends Sept. 30, the Pell Grant program will be short $5.5 billion; that number skyrockets to $11.5 billion in fiscal year 2027 if Congress doesn’t make cuts or put in new money. And by 2036, the final year included in the CBO’s 10-year projection, the cumulative toll could reach up to $132 billion if Congress doesn’t up its spending to keep pace with inflation. (The 10-year deficit would be about $104 billion if adjusted for inflation.)

“A $100 billion 10-year projected shortfall isn’t just a wake-up call, it’s a fire alarm,” said Alex Holt, senior adviser for higher education at the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget.

Pell awards are already set for the 2025–26 academic year and many grants have already gone out the door, so Congress can’t address the shortfall by clawing back federal dollars, experts said. That means lawmakers will have to find the $5.5 billion before grappling with the larger long-term shortfall.

Without new money, students in future years could see changes to the maximum award, how many semesters they can use the grant for and when. The last time Pell faced a shortfall, Congress cut eligibility for the grant during the summer term, which was restored in 2017. And last year, when the CBO projected a $2.7 billion funding gap, the Trump administration proposed cutting the maximum award by more than $1,600 a year and blamed Congress for the program’s “chronic mismanagement.”

Any cuts to the program would be a blow for the more than seven million low-income students who rely on it, advocates say.

Higher education policy experts and student advocacy groups have warned about the looming consequences of a Pell Grant shortfall for years, but even they say that the scale of the CBO’s numbers came as a bit of a surprise.

“Most analysts and advocates were of the mind that the $10.5 billion that Congress generously provided in the [One Big Beautiful Bill Act] would make the program whole through fiscal year 2026,” said David Baime, senior vice president for government relations at the American Association of Community Colleges.

What this shows, Baime added, is that “substantially more appropriations will be needed” to keep the program afloat.

Holt added that Congress has largely avoided making tough choices related to Pell and now “the bill really has come due.”

“These one-year fixes are not sustainable. Congress made the program more expensive and now they either need to find a way to cut costs, find the money to pay for it, or both,” he said. “If you’re worried about low-income students, then you need to be worried about protecting Pell, and to protect Pell you need to get serious about how to pay for it.”

Increasing Demand on Pell

In the 2020–21 academic year, the Pell Grant went to 6.4 million students, costing $26.5 billion.

By this current academic year, about 7.6 million students received the Pell Grant, according to CBO, which would cost about $34 billion in discretionary funds. Yet Congress hasn’t substantially increased funding for the program beyond the one-time funding last summer.

The flat funding is in spite of Congress’s decision in 2020 to expand access to the Pell Grant program as part of the FAFSA Simplification Act. That expansion took effect in spring 2024, and a recent analysis found that 1.5 million additional students are now eligible to receive the maximum Pell Grant this academic year.

Starting July 1, that number will only increase more as students in short-term workforce training programs will be able to use the Pell Grant to pay for their classes as well.

Students in the short-term workforce programs won’t receive nearly as much in aid as the maximum $7,395 that students who are working toward a credential can access. However, experts worry Workforce Pell could exacerbate the shortfall.

It remains unclear whether and how the Congressional Budget Office accounted for new costs related to Workforce Pell; the regulations that specify which training programs and students are eligible have yet to be finalized.

Some, like Baime from AACC, say the “overwhelming financial pressure” put on Pell is from the 2020 expansion, not Workforce Pell. But Ben Cecil, the deputy director of higher education policy at Third Way, a left-of-center think tank, says, “We can’t underestimate the effects of Workforce Pell on the projected shortfall.”

Education Under Secretary Nicholas Kent addressed the potential shortfall during a talk at the Community College Legislative Summit earlier this week, noting that Pell has had bipartisan support but that the lack of new money could force some “hard decisions” at the Education Department. He added that ED wants to work with Congress to identify which areas should be cut versus gain more support and acknowledged that Workforce Pell is a wild card.

“We don’t know what the behavioral change will be, which makes costing this out a little bit of an imperfect science at the very beginning,” he said.

Kim Cook, CEO of the National College Attainment Network, a leading advocacy group for federal student aid, said the numbers for Workforce Pell are “soft,” compared to the “firm” numbers for FAFSA Simplification.

“FAFSA Simplification is doing exactly what we hoped for from a policy point of view—that more students are seeing this as a simpler form. The barriers are taken down. They’re completing the form, and they’re getting the aid for which they’re eligible,” she said. “Now the piece is that we have to call on Congress and the president who signed this into [law] to give Pell sufficient funding to keep that promise.”

But getting Republicans in Congress to support an additional $16 billion at minimum for the Pell Grant program could prove difficult, especially as lawmakers are looking to trim—not increase—federal spending. Congress has until Sept. 30 to pass a federal budget for fiscal year 2027.

Rep. Tim Walberg, the Republican chair of the House Education and Workforce committee, said in a statement Friday that the shortfall has been known “for some time,” and House Republicans want to make the program sustainable for future students.

“In reconciliation, House Republicans proposed targeted reforms to reduce the shortfall and encourage completion—a responsible approach that recognizes fiscal realities,” he said. “We will continue to advocate for concrete solutions to ensure Pell remains strong and focused on students with the greatest need.”

Rep. Bobby Scott, a Virginia Democrat and ranking member of the House education committee, declined to comment.

Still, Cook remains hopeful. The Pell Grant has always been a bipartisan program that represents the core beliefs of American democracy, she said, and that should be the kind of leverage that’s needed to get lawmakers on board.

“We have a fundamental belief in this country that we should help everyone who wants to pursue higher education be able to afford it,” Cook said. “And I think every lawmaker—many of whom have been Pell Grant recipients like me—will look at the need for an educated workforce in their districts and their states and see that this is absolutely a program that demands their support.”

The Trump administration filed a lawsuit Friday accusing Harvard University of failing to comply with a federal investigation into whether its admissions processes are discriminatory.

The federal government alleged in a court filing that the Ivy League university has unlawfully withheld “information necessary to determine whether Harvard, which has a recent history of racial discrimination, is continuing to discriminate in its admissions process.” The Trump administration alleged in the lawsuit that Harvard “has slow-walked the pace of [document] production and refused to provide pertinent documents relating to applicant-level admissions decisions.”

The Trump administration said in the filing that it brought legal action “solely to compel Harvard to produce documents relating to any consideration of race in admission” and is not accusing Harvard of discriminatory conduct, seeking monetary damages or the revocation of its federal funding.

“The Justice Department will not allow universities to flout our nation’s federal civil rights laws by refusing to provide the information required for our review,” Assistant Attorney General Harmeet K. Dhillon of the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division said in a DOJ news release. “Providing requested data is a basic expectation of any credible compliance process, and refusal to cooperate creates concerns about university practices. If Harvard has stopped discriminating, it should happily share the data necessary to prove it.”

Attorney General Pamela Bondi said in the same news release that the Department of Justice “will continue fighting to put merit over [diversity, equity, and inclusion] across America.”

Applicant data sought by the DOJ includes grade point average, standardized test scores, essays and extracurricular activities, disaggregated by race and ethnicity, according to the court filing, which also noted that the federal government’s initial requested deadline was April 25 of last year. Harvard provided hundreds of pages of documents in response but the court filing says it handed over “aggregated admissions data”—not “individual-level applicant data.”

A Harvard spokesperson denied claims of wrongdoing in an emailed statement.

“Harvard has been responding to the government’s inquiries in good faith and continues to be willing to engage with the government according to the process required by law,” the spokesperson wrote to Inside Higher Ed. “The University will continue to defend itself against these retaliatory actions which have been initiated simply because Harvard refused to surrender its independence or relinquish its constitutional rights in response to unlawful government overreach.”

Friday’s lawsuit is the latest salvo from the Trump administration in a nearly yearlong fight with Harvard that has included efforts to cut off $2.2 billion in federal research funding and to prevent it from hosting international students. Harvard has managed to successfully fend off those efforts and sued the Trump administration last April. Harvard won that legal battle with the federal government last fall but remains in the crosshairs of the Trump administration, as the president and others have accused Harvard of permitting antisemitism, among other allegations.

Despite Harvard’s legal victory, rumors of a settlement have persisted for months. Any such deal would follow similar agreements struck with the University of Pennsylvania, Columbia University, Brown University, the University of Virginia, Cornell University and Northwestern University. 

However, while a deal has supposedly been in the works for months, Harvard reportedly has been resistant to pay a fine as part of any such settlement. Earlier this month The New York Times reported that the federal government had dropped its request for a fine as part of the settlement, only to be immediately countered by Trump, who demanded Harvard pay $1 billion.

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Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University has banned university-funded “identity-based Graduation Achievement Ceremonies,” the institution announced on its website. The Virginian-Pilot reported the news Thursday, though the university made the announcement Jan. 26.

“The decision aligns with guidance from the U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights, which states that federal civil rights law prohibits using race in decisions related to graduation ceremonies and cautions that such practices may be perceived as segregation,” the university said in its announcement. But it’s unclear what guidance it was referencing.

A year ago, the Office for Civil Rights told universities that identity-based graduations were illegal. “In a shameful echo of a darker period in this country’s history, many American schools and universities even encourage segregation by race at graduation ceremonies,” the office wrote in a Dear Colleague letter. Some universities canceled similar ceremonies.

But, last April, a federal judge blocked the department from enforcing that guidance and, on Jan. 21—five days before Virginia Tech’s statement—the department gave up defending it.

A Virginia Tech spokesperson told Inside Higher Ed that recognized student organizations can still use nonuniversity funds to host the events on campus. The university’s online statement said, “Student groups planning events for graduating seniors should contact the appropriate scheduling office, such as Event Services, by the end of January.”

In an email, the university spokesperson said, “Virginia Tech decided to end its graduation achievement ceremonies to ensure that we are compliant with the law. We will continue to seek ways to celebrate the academic accomplishment of all our students in ways that [are] consistent with current law and are open to all members of the university community.”

I’ve spent much of my career working as a college administrator. I’ve held senior roles, carried expansive portfolios, and had titles that critics of higher education increasingly cite as evidence of “administrative bloat.” I understand why those titles and the organizational charts behind them can feel alienating to faculty. They can reinforce an unhealthy sense of “us versus them” on campus.

But after years inside those roles, I’ve come to believe that title inflation is not the core problem it’s often made out to be. It’s visible. It’s frustrating. And it’s easy to blame. However, focusing solely on titles risks mistaking a symptom for the disease, and in the process, leaving the real cause of administrative overload unexamined.

That’s why Austin Sarat’s recent Inside Higher Ed essay asking, “How Many Vice Presidents Does a College Need?” resonated with me, even as I think it ultimately misdiagnoses the challenge. Sarat is right to be uneasy about what he calls the “vice presidentialization” of higher education. Titles matter. Hierarchies matter. And the proliferation of vice presidents deserves scrutiny.

But the growth of administrative titles is not what is hollowing out institutional capacity or widening the divide between faculty and administrators. It is what happens when leadership repeatedly avoids the more challenging work of setting priorities and enforcing limits.

Criticism of administrative growth in higher education is not new, and it is not entirely unfounded. Colleges and universities have undeniably expanded their administrative functions over time. But the ideas behind many of those roles are sound and, in many cases, essential. Retention matters. Financial aid matters. Student support, compliance and data matter. Investing in these functions improves student success. The problem begins with what happens after those roles are created.

Over time, administrators are assigned work that is only loosely connected or not connected at all to the responsibilities their titles suggest. Priorities proliferate. New initiatives emerge. New reporting requirements arrive from accreditors, legislators, donors and boards. Crises, real and perceived, demand immediate attention. Almost nothing is ever taken away. Each new priority is layered on top of existing work, often without clarity about duration, ownership or trade-offs. Vice presidents effectively become executives’ administrative assistants.

To understand an institution’s true priorities, don’t start with the strategic plan. Look instead at how administrators are actually spending their time. What you’ll often find is that people hired to do one essential job are doing five or six others instead. Much of that work is not merely peripheral; it is squarely outside the scope of the role. This is not a failure of individual administrators. It is a failure of organizational discipline.

I know many of the people filling these roles. I have been one of them. They are not avoiding faculty or students. They would love to spend some time in a classroom. They are not ignoring phone calls and emails out of indifference. Most of them are in it for the right reasons: the students and the national imperative of postsecondary attainment. If they are rarely in their offices at all, it is because they are being pulled into meetings, task forces and crisis response for issues far removed from their core responsibilities. Many work nights and weekends, skip vacations and still fall behind, not because they lack commitment but because the system virtually guarantees overload.

This is where Sarat’s critique falls short. It’s not that administrators take their titles too seriously. It’s that institutions take on too many priorities without making corresponding choices about what not to do. And while many of those initiatives might be “good,” too many of them fall outside the core scope of educating students. The result is not just administrative strain, but less institutional attention devoted to teaching and learning itself.

Our colleges and universities are under greater and more varied pressure than ever. They are being squeezed from every direction: demographic decline, rising costs, declining public investment, growing accountability demands and increasingly diverse student needs have made it impossible to continue operating as if capacity were unlimited. Yet too often, institutional “strategy” still amounts to adding priorities rather than choosing among them. What this moment demands instead is institutional redesign, a deliberate rethinking of structures, roles and work so that colleges and universities can focus on what matters most for today’s students.

Real strategy is not about what initiatives institutions adopt, but what they deliberately decide not to do. In a moment when today’s students need clearer pathways, stronger support and better outcomes, institutions do not have the luxury of letting work continue to creep in unchecked, or of trying to be all things to all people. When leaders avoid making those choices, the pressure doesn’t disappear. They push it downward and outward until adding people and titles becomes the default way to cope.

Eventually, something must give. When a vice president reaches the limit of what one person can reasonably manage, institutions rarely narrow the role or clarify boundaries. Instead, they add another layer: an associate vice president, an assistant vice president. Titles proliferate not because administrators crave status, but because institutions use people and titles as workarounds for unresolved leadership failures.

Ironically, this is precisely what deepens the divide Sarat worries about. When administrators are stretched impossibly thin, they become less present, less responsive and less connected to academic life. Faculty experience this as indifference or bureaucratic arrogance. In truth, it is structural misalignment. The distance is real, but it is produced by overload, not hierarchy.

Which is why the solution cannot simply be fewer vice presidents or humbler titles. It must start with presidents, boards and faculty leaders willing to exercise real leadership discipline. That means distinguishing between core academic work and aspirational initiatives. It means abandoning programs and committees as readily as launching them. And it means acknowledging an essential truth that higher education often avoids: Adding priorities without subtracting others is not strategic ambition—it is organizational debt.

The best administration is often invisible, not because it lacks value, but because it is doing its job so well that teaching and learning can take center stage. Centering students and their education should mean fewer symbolic fights over titles and more honest conversations about priorities, capacity and trade-offs.

Sarat is right to warn against importing corporate hierarchy into higher education. However, to address administrative bloat seriously, we must look beyond the organizational chart. The real question is not how many vice presidents a college needs. It is the number of priorities an institution is willing to abandon to serve its academic mission effectively. This is a test of leadership and discipline. We need to do a better job ensuring that our institutions are designed around teaching our students rather than running an ever-expanding business enterprise.

Green River College trustees announced this week they voted to terminate President Suzanne Johnson’s contract following a budget crisis that prompted campus wide cuts, KUOW reported.

The college’s budget deficit climbed to a projected $14.2 million last year, prompting Johnson to call for a hiring freeze and 5 percent cuts across every division, though a spokesperson told the NPR affiliate that Green River has since achieved a balanced budget. But Johnson was ousted amid the fallout when the board terminated her contract ahead of a scheduled no-confidence vote.

Faculty quoted in the report argued she was too slow to act on financial challenges and not transparent enough about the college’s budget squeeze.

The radio station noted that the Board of Trustees did not specify why Johnson’s contract was terminated and credited her with increasing bachelor’s degree offerings and enrollment at the public community college in Washington state, which she led for nearly a decade. Trustees praised her for leading the college through the coronavirus pandemic with “a steady hand while consistently demonstrating compassion, understanding, and care for our campus community.”

The board appointed vice president of college relations, George Frasier, as interim president.