Welcome back to After the First 100 Days, Inside Higher Ed’s weekly roundup of news from the Hill to the Oval Office. I’m your host, Katherine Knott, IHE’s news editor.
It’s Day 235 of the second Trump administration. The last eight months have been marked by a series of unprecedented actions and decisions from the federal government, but Charlie Kirk’s death at Utah Valley University will be a defining moment for this era of higher ed. Kirk was a vocal critic of higher education who became a close ally of President Trump and the most influential person who doesn’t work in the White House, according to one scholar.
He regularly espoused fringe and radical opinions that have since become mainstream in the Republican Party, and his organization, Turning Point USA, helped to reshape the campus conservative movement. Education Secretary Linda McMahon considered him “a friend and an invaluable adviser.”
We still don’t know a lot at the moment, but the president, without evidence, blamed the “radical left” for killing Kirk and vowed retribution. The police announced this morning that they have a suspect in custody. IHE’s Ryan Quinn spent Thursday talking to folks about how Kirk’s death could affect free speech on campus and the campus conservative movement. They are worried it could lead to a further clampdown on speakers on campuses and potentially more violence.
Federal Policy Corner: The Education Department is ending funding for seven grant programs that support minority-serving institutions, arguing that the criteria for the funds are discriminatory. For example, Hispanic students must make up at least 25 percent of a college’s student enrollment in order for that institution to be eligible for the Hispanic-serving institution grant. The department is planning to “reprogram” $350 million in discretionary funds toward programs “that do not include discriminatory racial and ethnic quotas and that advance Administration priorities.”
Advocates who questioned the department’s ability to end funding for congressionally approved grant programs are stunned. The cuts, they say, will be a blow to hundreds of institutions, many of which are under resourced.
As expected, the move has outraged Democrats in Congress, but it’s unclear what they plan to do to save the programs. (Both the House and Senate’s proposed budgets for the Education Department fully fund the grant programs for the coming fiscal year.)
In Other News: In a speech at Hillsdale College on Monday, McMahon detailed the ways in which she sees higher education as broken and in decline. She took issue with the number of administrators on campuses, argued that the system “delivers disillusionment for millions of students” and pointed to Hillsdale—a private, Christian college that receives no federal funding—as the model all institutions should strive toward.. The speech was largely directed at four-year institutions.
Outside experts say her comments “misrepresent the reality on college campuses today” and hark back “to the tweedy past when women went to college to get an Mrs. degree, little to no diversity and prestige was measured by exclusion.”
I broke it all down here.
On Deck for Next Week:
- The House higher ed subcommittee will have a hearing at 10:15 a.m. Tuesday on reforming college pricing. Witnesses haven’t been announced.
- Higher ed topics are in the spotlight at the Federalist Society’s Education Law & Policy Conference, slated for Wednesday. The all-day event will include discussions on law school accreditation reform as well as combating antisemitism. A conversation with Education Secretary Linda McMahon will kick off the event.
- McMahon also will be speaking at the Ronald Reagan Institute’s annual Summit on Education on Thursday.
- Congress has just over two weeks to pass a bill to keep the government funded past Sept. 30, otherwise we could have a shutdown.
That’s it for Week 34. What’s on your mind and what do you want to know about? I’m at katherine.knott@insidehighered.com if you want to chat.
If, or when, news breaks this afternoon or over the weekend, you can find the latest at InsideHigherEd.com. In the meantime, I’ll be trying to learn how to play pickleball again and sitting in a park somewhere in D.C. Have a good weekend!
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