funding / grants

Nutrition education programs shutter amid funding cuts [Murphy]

On 10/06/2025, in education, funding / grants, health, legislatures / government / legal, society, sociology, United States, by Daniel Christian

Nutrition education programs shutter amid funding cuts — from open-campus-dispatch.beehiiv.com by Colleen Murphy
SNAP-Ed programs teach low-income families about healthy eating habits and food preparation.

University-run nutrition education programs are closing around the country following Trump administration funding cuts. That means low-income families are losing access to information about healthy eating and cooking.

“When you teach people how to eat healthier, the students do better in school, the parents do better at work, that feeds the economy,” Mark Lynch, director of advocacy, told the TV station. “Everybody lives longer and stays out of the doctor’s offices or the ERs.”

From DSC:
“Everybody lives longer and stays out of the doctor’s offices or the ERs.” DC: Yup. We can pay up front and be healthier as a society, or we can try to get people their necessary healthcare later on (probably costing us much more on the aggregate).

Making America Great Again…NOT!

Do your friggin’ job Supreme Court! Posting includes a gifted article from the NY Times

On 09/29/2025, in funding / grants, game-changing environment, generational differences, global / globalization, legislatures / government / legal, policy, political science, society, United States, by Daniel Christian

Supreme Court Allows Trump to Slash Foreign Aid — from nytimes.com by Ann E. Marimow
The court’s conservative majority allowed the president to cut the funding in part because it said his flexibility to engage in foreign affairs outweighed “the potential harm” faced by aid recipients.

The Supreme Court on Friday allowed the Trump administration to withhold $4 billion in foreign aid that had been appropriated by Congress, in a preliminary test of President Trump’s efforts to wrest the power of the purse from lawmakers.
…
“The stakes are high: At issue is the allocation of power between the executive and Congress” over how government funds are spent, wrote Justice Elena Kagan, who was joined by Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Ketanji Brown Jackson.

“This result further erodes separation of powers principles that are fundamental to our constitutional order,” Nicolas Sansone, a lawyer with the Public Citizen Litigation Group who represents the coalition, said in a statement. “It will also have a grave humanitarian impact on vulnerable communities throughout the world.”

From DSC:
Do your friggin’ job Supreme Court justices! Your job is to uphold the Constitution and the laws of the United States of America! As you fully well know, it is the Legislative Branch (Congress) that allocates funding — not the Executive Branch.

And there will be horrible humanitarian impacts that are going to be felt in many places because this funding is being withheld.

Making America Great Again…NOT!!!

“Provosts Are a ‘Release Valve’ for Campus Controversy” [Whitford] + a variety of items re: higher education in general

On 09/19/2025, in adjunct faculty, apprenticeships, business, business side of he, career development, change, changing business models, collaboration, colleges, community colleges, corporate / business world, cost of getting a degree, faculty/staff, funding / grants, future of higher education, game-changing environment, generational differences, higher education, ideas, innovation, instructional design, leadership, learning ecosystem, Learning Experience Design, liberal arts, pace of change, parents/guardians, participation, pedagogy, real-world assignments, reinvent, skills, student-related, teaching & learning, traditional / tradition, trends, United States, universities, vision/possibilities, workplace, by Daniel Christian

Provosts Are a ‘Release Valve’ for Campus Controversy — from insidehighered.com by Emma Whitford
According to former Western Michigan provost Julian Vasquez Heilig, provosts are stuck driving change with few, if any, allies, while simultaneously playing crisis manager for the university.

After two years, he stepped down, and he now serves as a professor of educational leadership, research and technology at Western Michigan. His frustrations with the provost role had less to do with Western Michigan and more to do with how the job is designed, he explained. “Each person sees the provost a little differently. The faculty see the provost as administration, although, honestly, around the table at the cabinet, the provost is probably the only faculty member,” Heilig said. “The trustees—they see the provost as a middle manager below the president, and the president sees [the provost] as a buffer from issues that are arising.”

Inside Higher Ed sat down with Heilig to talk about the provost job and all he’s learned about the role through years of education leadership research, conversations with colleagues and his own experience.

Brandeis University launches a new vision for American higher education, reinventing liberal arts and emphasizing career development — from brandeis.edu

Levine unveiled “The Brandeis Plan to Reinvent the Liberal Arts,” a sweeping redesign of academic structures, curricula, degree programs, teaching methods, career education, and student support systems. Developed in close partnership with Brandeis faculty, the plan responds to a rapidly shifting landscape in which the demands on higher education are evolving at unprecedented speed in a global, digital economy.

“We are living through a time of extraordinary change across technology, the economy, and society,” Levine said. “Today’s students need more than knowledge. They need the skills, experiences, and confidence to lead in a world we cannot yet predict. We are advancing a new model. We need reinvention. And that’s exactly what Brandeis is establishing.”

The Brandeis Plan transforms the student experience by integrating career preparation into every stage of a student’s education, requiring internships or apprenticeships, sustaining career counseling, and implementing a core curriculum built around the skills that employers value most. The plan also reimagines teaching. It will be more experiential and practical, and introduce new ways to measure and showcase student learning and growth over time.

Tuition Tracker from the Hechinger Report

“A tight housing market and a fragile job market mean those working in higher ed have fewer options than ever.” [Murphy]

On 09/05/2025, in adjunct faculty, business side of he, career development, change, colleges, community colleges, faculty/staff, funding / grants, higher education, teaching & learning, trends, United States, universities, by Daniel Christian

Higher ed’s ‘hunker-down mindset’ — from open-campus-dispatch.beehiiv.com by Colleen Murphy
A tight housing market and a fragile job market mean those working in higher ed have fewer options than ever.

Faculty and administrators could be just as constrained by the golden handcuffs of a 2% interest rate as everybody else. That makes them less likely to move for a new job, Kelchen said, especially since they’re unlikely to get the type of salary increase they’d need to offset more pricey mortgage payments. Plus, even finding an affordable house in the first place could be a challenge right now.

All of this contributes to what Kelchen called a “hunker-down mindset” in higher ed.

“Even if the institutions are giving out pay raises, the pay raises aren’t matching housing costs,” Kelchen said. “And then that creates a pressure to stay.”

While that might seem like a “first-world problem,” it also affects college and university staff members, Kelchen told me. Often the only way for staff members to make more money is to move universities — there aren’t the same in-house growth opportunities as there are for faculty. But that’s easier said than done.

One of the country’s largest community college districts expands support for students with criminal records—and the employers who hire them. [Fain]

On 08/22/2025, in Alternatives, colleges, community colleges, experimentation, funding / grants, higher education, ideas, innovation, learning ecosystem, society, sociology, student-related, United States, universities, by Daniel Christian

Diamonds in the Rough — from the-job.beehiiv.com by Paul Fain
One of the country’s largest community college districts expands support for students with criminal records—and the employers who hire them.

Clearing Records, Building Careers

The Big Idea: Toyotetsu is now one of several employers in talks with Alamo Colleges as they expand their support for students with criminal backgrounds. The effort is part of a larger push to broaden the colleges’ role in lifting up their cities and regions. Alamo Colleges is one of 15 institutions participating in Achieving the Dream’s Community Vibrancy Cohort, which encourages community colleges to reimagine their role in the health and economic success of their communities.

Before joining the Achieving the Dream cohort, San Antonio College was already establishing an associate degree program at Dominguez State Jail. Julia Stotts, director of strategic planning and partnerships for the Alamo Colleges Foundation, says the initiative spurred leaders to think about how to also help those kinds of students after release.

“The earlier we can catch these students who are having these challenges, the better off they’re going to be,” Stotts says.

“It’s hard to fathom what the impact of 10 million people in student loan default will have on college-going attitudes.” — from linkedin.com by Brandon Busteed

The rates of student loan non payment between April and June climbed sharply, so that 12.9 percent of debt is now subject to “serious delinquency,” according to new data released by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York.
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Federal Reserve Bank of New York’s Center for Microeconomic Data released its Quarterly Report on Household Debt and Credit on Wednesday, which found the number of student loans transitioning into serious delinquency, or 90 days past due, rose “sharply” in the second quarter of 2025.

— Newsweek.com

What borrowers should know about student loan changes in the One Big Beautiful Bill [Turner]

On 07/27/2025, in change, colleges, community colleges, cost of getting a degree, funding / grants, higher education, parents/guardians, society, student-related, surviving, United States, universities, by Daniel Christian

What borrowers should know about student loan changes in the One Big Beautiful Bill — from npr.org by Cory Turner

If you’re a federal student loan borrower or about to become one, your head may be spinning.

On July 4, when President Trump signed the One Big Beautiful Bill Act into law, he also greenlit a history-making overhaul of the federal student loan system — one that will affect the lives of many, if not most, of the United States’ nearly 43 million student loan borrowers.

And boy is it a lot to unpack, with new, tighter borrowing limits and dramatically reduced repayment options, to name just a few of the sweeping changes.

Under the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, borrowers in SAVE will have to change plans by July 1, 2028, when SAVE will be officially shut down. If they wait, though they currently can’t be required to make payments, they will see their loans explode with interest.

How the national debt affects the U.S. — and you — in 10 charts [Bogage]

On 06/24/2025, in economics, funding / grants, future, game-changing environment, generational differences, history, society, United States, by Daniel Christian

How the national debt affects the U.S. — and you — in 10 charts — from washingtonpost.com by Jacob Bogage; this is a GIFTED article
The national debt already exceeds $36 trillion and is growing at historic rates. That has cascading consequences for the government and economy.

The federal government is taking on record amounts of debt year after year.

The U.S. owes lenders more than $36 trillion. That is close to an all-time high when comparing the debt to the country’s total economic output — a leading indicator of the nation’s ability to pay it all back.

Debt and annual deficits have colored much of the debate around President Donald Trump and Republicans’ One Big Beautiful Bill Act, the mammoth tax and immigration measure the GOP hopes to pass through Congress before July 4. It would add $3 trillion to the debt over the next decade, factoring in the cost of the bill plus interest on the added borrowing, according to nonpartisan estimates.

But how does the national debt affect the U.S. economy and the government? Here are 10 charts to explain.

Nearly half of Gen Z and millennials say college was a waste of money—AI has already made degrees obsolete — from fortune.com by Preston Fore

College is often advertised as the best four years of one’s life, but many Americans now have regrets.

More than a third of all graduates now say their degree was a “waste of money,” according to a new survey by Indeed. This frustration is especially pronounced among Gen Z, with 51% expressing remorse—compared to 41% of millennials and just 20% of baby boomers.

Overall, a growing share of college-educated workers are questioning the return on investment (ROI) of their degree, Kyle M.K., a career trend expert at Indeed, told Fortune. It’s something that’s not all too surprising considering that the average cost of a bachelor’s degree has doubled in the last two decades to over $38,000, and total student loan debt has ballooned to nearly $2 trillion.

“Another 38% feel student loans have limited their career growth more than their diploma has accelerated it,” M.K. said.

“AI won’t invalidate a solid education, but it will reward those who keep upgrading their toolkit.”

Average Cost of College & Tuition — from educationdata.org
Last Updated: March 8, 2025

Report Highlights. The average cost of college^* in the United States is $38,270 per student per year, including books, supplies, and daily living expenses.

The average cost of college has more than doubled in the 21st century; the compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of tuition is 4.04%.
The average in-state student attending a public 4-year institution and living on-campus spends $27,146 for one academic year.
The average cost of in-state tuition alone is $9,750; out-of-state tuition averages $28,386.
The average private, nonprofit university student spends $58,628 per academic year living on campus, $38,421 of it on tuition and fees.
Considering student loan interest and loss of income, investing in a bachelor’s degree can ultimately cost in excess of $500,000.

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From DSC:
Reminds me of a graphic that Yohan Na and I created back in 2009:
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Reflections on “DOGE abruptly cut a program for teens with disabilities. This student is ‘devastated'” [Turner]

On 05/04/2025, in Bias | Diversity Equity & Inclusion (DE&I), Daniel S. Christian, funding / grants, K-12 related, legislatures / government / legal, neurodivergent/special needs, parents/guardians, participation, pathways, youth, by Daniel Christian

DOGE abruptly cut a program for teens with disabilities. This student is ‘devastated’ — from npr.org by Cory Turner

If you visit the website for Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), you’ll find a “Wall of Receipts” listing more than 7,000 federal contracts it has terminated.
…
One of these programs, cancelled on Feb. 10, was called Charting My Path for Future Success. It was a research-based effort to help students with disabilities make the sometimes difficult transition from high school into college or the world of work and self-sufficiency.
…
Stepping stones to post-school independence
Charting My Path was built on research that shows students with disabilities who get quality transition services “are more likely to be employed after high school. They’re more likely to be enrolled in post-secondary education, and they’re more likely to identify that they have a higher quality of life,” says Catherine Fowler, a special education researcher at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte who has been involved with Charting My Path since 2019, when the contract began.

At the heart of Charting My Path was one of the most promising, research-based services: building students’ self-determination skills by working with them to set goals, then helping create concrete plans to achieve them.

Based on the early results he saw in Newton, John Curley says he was hopeful and calls the decision to cut Charting My Path “a huge mistake. I think investing in students with disabilities is investing in all of us because they’re part of our community, right? They’re our brothers and sisters, our kids, our neighbors, our coworkers.“

From DSC:
If you don’t have a child with special needs, you probably don’t care about this article. But, as with so many things with us human beings, if we know of someone special to us who has disabilities, we suddenly care a lot more. Our youngest daughter fits right into this story. It could have been her pictured in this article. Such programs are needed and it sounded like this study was doing solid work.

How does cutting this program make America great again? It doesn’t. It just makes life more difficult for the 1,600 high school juniors with disabilities that this study was helping (not to mention future students). Their pathways to a productive life just got harder, once again. I dare you to try and go figure out the spaghetti mess of how to get funding and assistance for a special needs youth graduating from high school — and all of the restrictions mentioned therein. And good luck to you if you are that individual and your parents are no longer alive.

What are colleges’ legal options when threatened with federal funding cuts? [Burke]

On 04/21/2025, in funding / grants, higher education, legislatures / government / legal, research, United States, universities, by Daniel Christian

What are colleges’ legal options when threatened with federal funding cuts? — from highereddive.com/ by Lilah Burke
Higher education experts said colleges could work together or lean on their associations if they take up a legal fight against the Trump administration.

Understand your allies
In fact, colleges may struggle to fight the administration on their own.

“I don’t think that institutions should necessarily fight it by themselves,” said Jeffrey Sun, a higher education and law professor at the University of Louisville. “I don’t think they’ll win.”

What will have more power is several institutions, or even many, working together to fight the attacks on higher education.

“I don’t think we have an option unless we work in collective action,” Sun said.

Harvard University won’t yield to Trump administration’s demands— from highereddive.com by Natalie Schwartz
Alan Garber, the Ivy League institution’s president, said the university wouldn’t forfeit its “independence or its constitutional rights.”

Harvard University President Alan Garber said Monday that officials there would not yield to the Trump administration’s litany of demands to maintain access to federal funding, arguing the federal government had overstepped its authority by issuing the ultimatum.

“The University will not surrender its independence or relinquish its constitutional rights,” Garber wrote in a community message.

The move tees up a battle between the Ivy League institution and the Trump administration, which threatened the university with the loss of $9 billion in federal funding over what it claimed was a failure to protect Jewish students from antisemitism.

Harvard Professors Sue the Trump Administration While Other Universities Are Targeted — from iblnews.org

Two groups representing Harvard University professors (the American Association of University Professors and the Harvard faculty chapter) filed a lawsuit against the Trump Administration on Friday, saying that the threat to cut billions in federal funding for the institution violates free speech and other First Amendment rights.

The Trump Administration announced two weeks ago that it reviewed about $9 billion in federal funding that Harvard receives and would send a list of demands to unfreeze the money.

In a statement, Andrew Manuel Crespo, a law professor at Harvard and general counsel of the AAUP-Harvard Faculty Chapter, said the “Trump administration’s policies are a pretext to chill universities and their faculties from engaging in speech, teaching, and research that don’t align with President Trump’s views.”

OPINION: For our republic to survive, education leaders must remain firm in the face of authoritarianism — from hechingerreport.org by Jason E. Glass
We face direct threats to the values around access, opportunity and truth our schools are meant to uphold

Across the country, education leaders are being forced to make some tough decisions — to choose between defending core values, such as equity and historical truth, or yielding to political coercion in hopes of avoiding conflict. There is no strategy that does not involve conflict and trade-offs. Every education leader operates in their own political context with unique legal and cultural constraints.

But make no mistake: Inaction is not neutral. Even the decision to do nothing is a choice, one that has consequences.

Northwestern to self-fund federally threatened research — from highereddive.com by Laura Spitalniak
Leaders at the well-known institution said the support would sustain “vital research” until they had a “better understanding of the funding landscape.”

Northwestern University will pull from its coffers to continue funding “vital research” that has been threatened by the Trump administration, the private institution announced Thursday.

Trump is bullying, blackmailing and threatening colleges, and they are just beginning to fight back — from hechingerreport.org by Liz Willen
After Harvard rejected the president’s demands, more university leaders have started to speak out — but many say a bigger response is needed

Many hope it is the beginning of a new resistance in higher education. “Harvard’s move gives others permission to come out on the ice a little,” McGuire said. “This is an answer to the tepid and vacillating presidents who said they don’t want to draw attention to themselves.”

Harvard paved the way for other institutions to stand up to the administration’s demands, Ted Mitchell, president of the American Council on Education, noted in an interview with NPR this week.

Stanford University President Jonathan Levin immediately backed Harvard, noting that “the way to bring about constructive change is not by destroying the nation’s capacity for scientific research, or through the government taking command of a private institution.”

“I tell them, you will never regret doing what is right, but if you allow yourself to be co-opted, you will have regret that you caved to a dictator who doesn’t care about you or your institution.”

What’s Happening at the Social Security Administration? Here’s What People With Disabilities Need to Know. [Dilworth]

On 04/17/2025, in Bias | Diversity Equity & Inclusion (DE&I), funding / grants, legislatures / government / legal, neurodivergent/special needs, parents/guardians, society, United States, by Daniel Christian

What’s Happening at the Social Security Administration? Here’s What People With Disabilities Need to Know. — from thearc.org by Jackie Dilworth
Millions of people with disabilities rely on Social Security benefits to survive. Recent changes at the Social Security Administration (SSA) may make accessing these benefits harder than ever. Long wait times, office closures and staff cuts, and policy rollbacks are already raising concerns and exacerbating customer service issues. Here’s what you need to know.

Staffing Cuts and Office Closures

In 2025, SSA has announced a dramatic reduction in staff and offices, including:

Plans to cut 7,000 employees (over 12% of the agency’s workforce).
Closure of 60% of SSA’s 10 regional offices, reducing key staff that help resolve problems with peoples’ benefits.
Closure of SSA’s Office of Civil Rights and Equal Opportunity, which handled reasonable accommodation requests and managed the agency’s civil rights complaints, including public complaints of discrimination on the basis of disability. This office’s statutory responsibilities have reportedly been divided and moved to other divisions within SSA.

Why does this matter? SSA workers process disability applications, answer calls, and help people navigate complex benefit rules. With fewer staff and the consolidations of regional offices, wait times could get even worse. The loss of key staff also raises concerns about SSA’s ability to modernize, maintain, and improve essential services, further limiting accessibility for beneficiaries. Modernizing SSA’s operations requires long-term investments in systems and processes that are being undercut by these changes.

Online higher education is projected to pass an impressive if little-noticed milestone this year [The Hechinger Report]

On 03/21/2025, in business side of he, changing business models, colleges, community colleges, cost of getting a degree, funding / grants, higher education, leadership, new business models, online learning, parents/guardians, strategy, student-related, teaching online, United States, universities, by Daniel Christian

Online higher education is projected to pass an impressive if little-noticed milestone this year: For the first time, more American college students will be learning entirely online than will be learning 100 percent in person.

Most college students are taking online classes, but they’re paying just as much as in-person students — from hechingerreport.org by Jon Marcus
Rather than lowering the price, some universities use online courses to subsidize everything else

Online higher education is projected to pass an impressive if little-noticed milestone this year: For the first time, more American college students will be learning entirely online than will be learning 100 percent in person.

Bittner’s confusion about the price is widespread. Eighty percent of Americans think online learning after high school should cost less than in-person programs, according to a 2024 survey of 1,705 adults by New America.

2025 College Hopes & Worries Survey Report [princetonreview.com]

On 03/12/2025, in assessment, colleges, community colleges, cost of getting a degree, credentialing, Emotion, funding / grants, higher education, learning ecosystem, parents/guardians, participation, society, student-related, United States, universities, user experience (UX), by Daniel Christian

2025 College Hopes & Worries Survey Report — from princetonreview.com
We surveyed 9,317 college applicants and parents about their dream schools and their biggest college admission and financial aid challenges.
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Learning Ecosystems