Mushtaq Gunja: Hello and welcome to dotEDU, the Public Policy Podcast from the American Council on Education. I'm your host, Mushtaq, and I think Jon Fansmith did a little double-take because he didn't see me in the hat before.
Jon Fansmith: Yeah, no, I'm seeing it, now.
Mushtaq Gunja: And I'm here, as always, with my co-host, John Fansmith and Sarah Spreitzer. How are you, my friends?
Sarah Spreitzer: Good. Although I am shocked by your background, Mushtaq, because we just had a long discussion about changing our backgrounds and now did you actually move your desk?
Mushtaq Gunja: I moved my desk and I also moved what was on my head just to try to jazz it up a little bit.
Jon Fansmith: I'm noticing the jacket and the hat and the change of backdrop. It's a very dynamic difference. I think you can tell whether I approve or not, but it's a very dynamic difference.
Mushtaq Gunja: John is just salty, audience, because the Dodgers beat the Phillies a couple of rounds ago, actually, not even last round.
Sarah Spreitzer: Baseball is still happening? Come on, it's fall.
Mushtaq Gunja: Sarah Spreitzer, two nights ago, the Dodgers and Blue Jays played an 18-inning game and I was giving a talk in Baltimore at 8:30 the next morning, and so I knew I was supposed to go to sleep, but one cannot sleep during an 18-inning marathon, and so I just got a few hours before I went up to Baltimore to be able to go see it.
Friends, today we are talking about the latest on the Trump administration's higher ed Compact. We're going to talk about where we are in the government shutdown. We'd love to pick your brain a little bit, Sarah and John, on some new policies impacting international students and some major changes that are coming in the OBBB on student loans. Maybe just do a little bit of time on that. Hopefully we'll have some time for some questions. There were some wonderful questions, as always, that were submitted by the audience ahead of time, so a couple of things that I'm going to want to dig in on.
Before we get started, though, just wanted to do a quick plug for our AC annual meeting, which is happening February 25th to 28th here, in Washington. And among other things, we're going to address the array of pressing challenges to facing our institutions from federal funding cuts to other policy issues. So please come hang out. The three of us will be there and we have been teasing John that we are going to do some version of getting to hopefully meet many of you there and probably be hanging out at the hotel bar. So Sarah and I will want to be there. John will have to be there.
Jon Fansmith: This is all a ploy for Sarah to try and get her Team Sarah, Team Mushtaq, Team John t-shirts idea off the ground.
Sarah Spreitzer: No, Mushtaq, the biggest thing is we're going to do at least one live podcast, so we will be doing live podcasts from the annual meeting.
Jon Fansmith: I think that is still to be determined, and I am not involved in that discussion. I'm just saying I don't know that that's been finalized, but I think we would certainly be open to it.
Mushtaq Gunja: You're going to try to make it happen, but more updates as events warrant and as plans finalize there. But we will be there and you will get to ask John why he's the least cool of the three of us. I've already asked his daughters why and they gave me a whole host of answers.
So friends, let's talk Compact first if that's okay. On October 1st, just to remind everybody, on October 1st, the White House sent a letter to nine institutions inviting them to enter in Compact for academic excellence in higher education. The basic idea here is that institutions would agree to receive some vague preferential access to federal funding. In exchange, they had to make commitments on a number of areas including, but not remotely limited to, a freeze on tuition for five years, CAPS on international students, requirements to use the SAT, promising not to belittle conservative ideas on campus, et cetera. The nine schools that were given this letter were Brown, Dartmouth, MIT, University of Arizona, U Penn, USC, University of Texas, Austin, UVA, and Vanderbilt. Universities were asked to give feedback by October 20th. I think the administration originally had this idea that a signed agreement would happen by November 21st. John, Sarah, where do things currently stand with the administration in this Compact [inaudible 00:04:48]?
Sarah Spreitzer: Well, I would add that they sent out an additional three letters, I think maybe about a week after they sent out the original Compact. And those additional three institutions were ASU, Wash U in St. Louis, and what's the third one, John?
John Fansmith: Kansas. University of Kansas.
Sarah Spreitzer: University of Kansas. And to date, I believe at least nine institutions have said that they will not sign the Compact. The other institutions I don't think have not said yes, have not said no, but have indicated that they're not likely to sign the Compact as it is written. I think it's also important to remember, Mushtaq, is this was not public until it was made public by a news source. And then the Chronicle of Higher Education posted the cover letter, which was only a page long and very vague about what you would get in agreeing to this Compact. And it included things like preferential treatment, perhaps, in grant programs, federal research grants, a more favorable indirect cost rate. So a lot to do with research. It was all sent to R-1 institutions, but the letter was signed by the Secretary of Education and two people within the White House Domestic Policy Council. So the Secretary of Education putting restrictions on research grants I thought was very interesting.
John Fansmith: And in terms of where it stands right now, eight of the original nine, well, seven of the original nine have formally declined to participate in the Compact. One of the additional three schools that was subsequently sent to has declined to join the Compact. And Vanderbilt of the original nine has put out a statement essentially saying, we're not saying no, but a lot of the elements of this we have serious concerns about. We know a number of those institutions and publicly the University of Texas at Austin have talked about ongoing discussions with the administration. And we know that the administration met with a number of the schools, the ones not last Friday, but the Friday before they met with the institutions that had not yet declined at that point, which included some schools that have subsequently declined, like Dartmouth and Virginia and some others to talk about this. And the administration, I think, was relatively clear and this has been reported in a number of places that they get, to a certain extent, why institutions will not participate and they ask for feedback on the process and the conditions that would be applied.
I think it's still very unclear the degree to which the administration would be willing to make changes. Again, we've talked about this from the beginning. If it's a true Compact, if they wanted to work with institutions on ways to promote quality and improve the prospects of students in post-secondary education in this country, you start at zero and work towards things that you can do collaboratively to solve those problems. You don't generally issue a list of demands and say whether people accept them or not. So who knows, this may be a step back to more of an actual approach at common ground. I think probably my guess is that it's not, that they're more looking at ways to tailor what they've done that could find broader acceptance.
The other thing is as of yesterday, one school, new college in Florida, been in the news quite a bit because of the takeover of the institution by the DeSantis administration there in their very deliberate repurposing of the institution's mission and structure, they announced that they would be happy to be the first institution to sign on to the Compact, and in fact, find themselves very much in alignment. And I think that's probably not a shock coming from that institution. Also not a shock that there would be some institutions in this space that will look at this as an opportunity to say, "We are aligned with this administration's goals. We're doing the work they want done." I would be somewhat surprised if New College was the only one that we hear about at some point. So still a lot to figure out, but moving forward.
Sarah Spreitzer: So I would say, Mushtaq, that what was in the Compact, though, there are all things that we've already seen from this administration. They were all things that were being proposed in Title VI investigations in the resolution documents that the administration was putting forward, the one that Columbia signed, the request that they have been making to Harvard to try and resolve their Title VI investigation. I think some of the Title IX investigations, their resolution documents have looked similar, but this Compact brings everything together. And so I thought that, that was really interesting.
But to John's point about whether or not somebody could sign this as-is, I think any general counsel would look at it and say, "I don't think we could actually comply with it." There's a provision that would basically ask the institution to restrict free speech for faculty, staff, and students, which would seem to immediately have first amendment issues. So I think the document was like 10 pages, the Compact's 10 pages, and then the cover letter was only one page. So there's a lot of questions. Even if New College, you were to sign it, how is this going to be implemented? And also I think there are provisions in there that would likely be tested by the courts.
Mushtaq Gunja: Sarah, I think you're quite right. There are some serious constitutional problems here and then there's just a basic problem of vagueness. I mean for all of the things that are related to free speech, viewpoint diversity, that sort of thing, there's very little guidance in the document about how and what that would mean and to the extent they could put guidance around it, it almost certainly would conflict with the provisions of the First Amendment. And so I think it's going to be very difficult for an institution to sign on to everything here, and that's not surprising, I think.
The requirement for instance, that our institutions require the SAT, two thirds of our institutions are fully open access institutions. What does that mean to require the SAT? Why would we do that? I think as you can see, this set of demands to me feels like it was really written for the nine institutions that were first granted this letter, highly selective private and public institutions. And the thing that's a little bit troubling is that they appear, and you guys, please tell me if I'm wrong, they appear to have opened this up for the rest of the higher ed space to be able to join. The question is are they supposed to join the whole thing? Can they join just portions of it? John, Sarah, New College, what did they say exactly? What precisely are they going to sign onto? They're freezing tuition for five years. They're going to refund the tuition for students who drop out in the first term. Term, by the way, is not defined, either. What exactly?
Jon Fansmith: Yeah, and I think your questions in your confusions speak to a lot of the problems with this approach. There isn't a place, none of the institute, they've said, the administration said that we're going to open this up to every institution, New College's statement about this, "We'd like to be the first to sign on." There's no sign on form. In fact, the only reason we know what was in the memo sent to the schools and then the cover letter sent to schools is because those were two journalists. The administration hasn't posted this publicly. The administration hasn't issued any process for signing on. It's not even clear since they have a deadline of November 21st for sign on and the deadline of October 20th for feedback that the administration even sees the terms they initially offered as what will be the final terms institutions would be combined.
Would they vary school by school like they've done in the settlement space? Maybe. It's not abundantly clear. So a lot of this is very, very much up in the air, and I think part of that is, just to be candid, the administration did something. It did not work the way they intended it to. They very much went after, as you pointed out, a handful of like institutions, both public and private, but similar profiles, large brand name institutions, research institutions where they thought that this offer of research preferences might be appealing. And what they heard back again and again and again is not only are the offsetting requirements so philosophically and intellectually and financially harmful, but the reward, competitive preference for things that should be awarded on merit, that, in and of itself, is offensive to a lot of these schools. These schools are competing intentionally to produce the best science and they want the best science to be rewarded. They don't want lesser research to be rewarded because of political affiliation.
So across the board, it's a bad deal for the schools they thought would be most receptive to it. Now we open it up, to your point, what is the advantage for a community college in participating in this Compact? You now have to require the SAT, which can be a barrier to admissions for low-income students who otherwise wouldn't have taken it. There's a million things about this that just simply don't apply to most of higher ed. And so this effort becomes a lot more muddled in terms of what it's trying to accomplish, what success could possibly look like, why anybody would get behind it. And I think that's one of the reasons I'm surprised we've gotten this far in this discussion. AC and about 36 other higher education associations put out a statement expressing the concerns we have with this and opposing this approach.
We had a statement with a number of other associations from much earlier in the year talking about we want to reforge this historic agreement, this partnership we've had with the federal government that has been enormously beneficial for our country in every way, economically, militarily, healthcare wise, everything that this administration is really demolishing, we still want that. That is the best possible outcome. This Compact approach is not that. It's, in many ways, the antithesis of a collaborative approach. So we will see where they go, but clearly the administration has to recalibrate what success looks like at this point.
Sarah Spreitzer: So I disagree with John on one point. I think they expected it to be rejected, or at least parts of it to be rejected. I think that this is likely going to be a longer effort and this is their first foray and see what's acceptable and what's not. And then when you move it back a little, it looks more acceptable. We've seen this, I think in the first Trump administration, you come out with an idea that's so far in one direction and then if you move just a little more over, it becomes something that you're more accepting of. And I also think that there are things in the Compact that our institutions are already doing. There are institutions that have frozen tuition. There are institutions that have committed to certain things that are included in the Compact, so we're not going to disagree with the whole thing. So I think this is going to be a much longer conversation. I don't think, given the fact that none of the original 12 have accepted it doesn't mean that it's going away.
Mushtaq Gunja: How do we think about our, where AC and our higher ed institutions are vis-a-vis this Compact? Obviously we put this statement out, we're not in support, but to Sarah's point, I think that there's some nuggets within this Compact that our institution has been working on, and they're certainly presented many of them in ways that I think could resonate with public who wouldn't like a tuition freeze for five years, who wouldn't like refunds for students that try college and drop out? Who doesn't want our institutions not to discriminate? They're written levels that might resonate a little bit with the public and generally we want to be collaborative and be able to work with all sides of the political spectrum.
Sarah, John, how do we deal with this over the course of the next couple of months you think?
Jon Fansmith: Yeah, I mean, I'll just say, and I've said this before, I think maybe to the two of you at least, this is a little bit like going to a doctor who can diagnose all the right symptoms and then it's prescribing bleeding and leeches and mercury doses. Well, maybe it was just in my own head, but look, they're not wrong. When they say broadly, what are the things quality of the education? Affordability of post-secondary education, alignment with the workforce, real equity in terms of opportunity. These are the things they're speaking to.
And we can sit here as people who think a lot about higher ed and know a lot about higher ed and hear from our institutions all the time that the idea of a five-year tuition freeze is not a meaningful or serious way to control the cost of college. We know all the different things that go in around tuition pricing and how that works, but they're not necessarily diagnosing problems that won't resonate with the public. The problem is all their solutions are the wrong ones. And this goes back to that point I made earlier, had they put those ideas, the concepts on the table and then invited those 12 schools to talk about how do you address that? And from that had built out a framework, a set of principles, something like that, that could be, I'm not saying it would have been, but that could have been the basis for a post-secondary policy structure that would certainly get a lot more interest and buy-in from the community.
Instead, they've done this thing where they've painted themselves into a corner by saying, these are the specific things we want. When those are not good things, they're not good things for the institution, they're not good things for students, they're not good things for our system in this country. So we're stuck with a set of bad ideas that are their principles. To Sarah's point, I don't think they will back away from it. This administration doesn't like to back away from things that said they've put it in a place where it becomes very, very hard for institutions operationally just to get on board with this, much less philosophically.
Mushtaq Gunja: Separate from this, but certainly related to this, there was a report this week that the University of Virginia reached an agreement with the Trump administration. I think that happened last week. What happened there is that is not part of the Compact to the UVA is one of the institutions that was invited to sign on. What were the results of the settlement? What was the nature of that settlement? Either of you, John and Sarah.
Sarah Spreitzer: I'll let John speak to it because I haven't read the settlement, but it was in relation to a Title VI investigation which this administration has been carrying out at many of our campuses. But yes, very different from the Compact. It was not the Compact.
Jon Fansmith: Right, and it's worth keeping in mind, there's a lot of overlap with some of the parts of what the Compact would require of institutions, but the UVA settlement is much more in the line of the settlements the administration has reached with Penn and Columbia and Brown, where essentially, they launched an investigation or at least announced an investigation into UVA for to the administration's allegations were that UVA was improperly considering race in terms of hiring and I believe in terms of admissions on the campus post-SFFA, and so to resolve that investigation, UVA reached agreement with the Department of Justice, I believe. I don't think it was actually with ed. It's also worth keeping the background on this one. UVA's president, he resigned, but resigned under immense pressure, in part because of this investigation, in part because of how the negotiations between UVA and the administration were going, and the administration's explicit demand that the president be forced out. That is the backdrop.
It's also worth noting that two of the attorneys at the Department of Justice who have been driving both this investigation, and the negotiations are UVA alums who, prior to joining this administration, had led an independent effort to criticize UVA's handling of race and diversity. There's a lot of complicated backstory around this one. The ultimate agreement between the institution and the administration in many ways, I think, looks very favorable to UVA. They do not have to pay a fine like other institutions have, not to the state, not to anyone. They do not have to submit to an external monitoring of their institution's considerations of race. They must self-report on the basis of being in compliance with the administration's, they would say with the law. Certainly what we're talking about more is this administration's interpretation of what the law means.
That said, there are some other concessions UVA made. The biggest one is agreeing to the Department of Education guidance around the consideration of race on college campuses, which, when I talk about the interpretation of the law, there's no real legal precedent that backs up what this administration has put forward in executive orders and in that guidance, or I probably overstepped that line a little bit.
Mushtaq Gunja: Oh no, you're right, you're right.
Jon Fansmith: You're right. And they, UVA is essentially saying will comply with that interpretation going forward. So that seems, maybe, hair-splitting a little bit, but it is a significant concession in terms of how they'll treat things like race and gender and national origin and ethnicity in terms of admissions and hiring processes. So it's not as if UVA escaped without any consequences. That is a significant concession.
Sarah Spreitzer: And John, when you were talking about the overlapping interests, and I think people should remember way back on January 20th was when we got the executive order on DEI, we got the executive order on gender and this is the implementation of those executive orders, and also with overlapping worlds. The two signatures from the Domestic Policy Council at the White House DPC on the Compact are two of the people that have been leading some of the Title VI negotiations. So none of this is different from what we've seen at the start of this administration. They've been very clear that these are their priorities and this is how they're interpreting existing law and they are going to try to implement this in whatever way they can.
Mushtaq Gunja: I want to segue us over to the shutdown, but maybe there's a bridge question here, which is this UVA settlement is a settlement of some open Oof Civil Rights, OCR, investigations. What is happening with the rest of these OCR investigations as far as we can tell, there's a lot of the attorneys at OCR, their jobs have been cut. We've seen some cuts to the regional offices and some, I think, at the main department of ed as well. What is the state of these investigations right now?
Jon Fansmith: So OCR has been gutted. The majority of the regional offices have been closed. Large numbers of OCR staff both regionally and at the home office have been either retired early through the buyout plans or have been forced out through the pretty massive reductions in forces enacted at the Department of Ed in a number of remaining OCR staff after those first round of eliminations were targeted in this wave of eliminations that we just had, and I know we'll talk about that during the shutdown. So it's a weakened branch of the office at a time when the administration has been filing, often in mass, 60 or so notices at a time of investigations into institutions we'll talk about it. During a shutdown, investigations can't go forward. They are not compliant with the shutdown. So it freezes those investigations, but you've also gutted the staff who will do the work even when we're operating, while at the same time leveraging the Civil Rights Investigative authority of both ED, of course, injustice to try to impose your will on institutions.
So they're creating a massive amount of work and uncertainty among hundreds of institutions while at the same time eliminating the people who would move those processes forward and work to address them. So it's a very conflicting set of actions, to put it mildly.
Sarah Spreitzer: Except Project 2025, they talked about shutting down the Office of Civil Rights at the Department of Education and moving everything to the Department of Justice. And I think that that's what we're seeing happen is that Title VI obligations, previously, if there was a complaint against an institution of higher education, it always went to the Department of Education. But every federal agency has a Title VI office and I think that there was the anti-Semitism executive order that created this Department of Justice task force, which was pulling in people from various agencies and really empowering them. So it's almost like ED, yes, they've gutted OCR, they have fewer lawyers working on this, but there's an enormous amount of activity coming from the Department of Justice. And so even though there's nobody home at OCR at ED, it doesn't mean that they're stopping these investigations.
And then on the shutdown, we were just talking about today, it doesn't seem like a shutdown from the administration's point of view, I have not seen any slowdown in any regulatory action. My understanding is meetings are still happening. I've had to submit comments on every proposed rule out there, even though I thought I'd get a break during the shutdown, deadlines are still moving forward. So I think the administration is not acting in any way as if there's a shutdown. Negotiated rulemaking is going forward. I know we're going to talk about that later, but it's a very weird shutdown.
Mushtaq Gunja: Well, we are, I think, in day 29 of this shutdown, if I have my math right, I think the record was 35, at least in modern history, was a 35-day shutdown in the first Trump administration. Feels like maybe we're going to blow past that, though. A couple of things happened or about to happen this week. November 1st is around the corner and SNAP benefits these Supplemental Nutritional benefits, food stamps, are to be cut. There's some pending litigation around whether or not that will happen, whether we'll have some version of a lifeline and some agriculture discretionary funds.
Premiums for all of our health insurance are probably going up on the natural and certainly without some of the subsidies for ACA, the Affordable Care Act sticker prices. Well the price of health insurance is about to, could really skyrocket. I think yesterday we also saw maybe two days ago the Federal Union, Federal Employees Union urged for a resolution here and for a clean continuing resolution vote, which was a little bit of a surprise and I think had the Democrats, at least Dick Durbin, Senator Durbin take a step and say, "Hey, we really need to think about this."
And then also happening this week, I think, is the first full time that our federal employees will miss a full paycheck or at least the second paycheck will be affected by the shutdown. So many things happening. Before we get to, I want to frame this out in a couple of ways. We can talk about how this is going to end and when it might end. But before we get there, what are the impacts on our campuses right now with the government being shut down? Why should we care? Why should the audience care?
Jon Fansmith: So there are some things, and we've always talked a little bit about this short-term/long-term, and the long-term historically has been relatively academic because we are heading into new territory in terms of length. And worth also noting, while this is not as long as the first Trump term shutdown, this is actually full shutdown. That one, the Department of Defense was funded, which actually was part of the reason it went so long. There wasn't this pressure to fund the salaries of active duty service members and others around defense, that was covered. So it's a little bit more, you would think of an urgent dynamic here, yet, it's really been the exact opposite so far. But for institutions, a lot of the things short term are not a concern with the shutdown. Federal student aid is still being dispersed. FAFSA applications are still being processed, adjustments are being made to aid, student loans are being repaid and collected and overseen. Contractors working for the federal government, those areas continue to be working on their behalf and grants that have already been awarded, funding can be drawn down.
The things where you do see an impact, we talked about OCR. If you are in the process of trying to resolve a federal investigation into your campus, you no longer can contact the agency about guidance or compliance issues or where you might stand or what needs to be done. You can't talk in many cases to your program officers around grants, in terms of administration of that or other steps. And certainly if you had been anticipating applying for a new grant that would've been made available, that's no longer an option.
Long-term, there's a cascading effect of multiplying factors. All of the things we talked about in terms of implications will continue the longer they go on, the more complicated. If you are going a couple months without working on advancing your investigation, that's a bigger challenge than a couple weeks. The further you go into the grant process, even on existing grants where you can't interact with the agency, that becomes a problem. The longer you go in, the more grants that aren't being awarded, that's a problem. And then all the other things the federal government does, a lot of them in Sarah's world, processing visas for international students, processing visas for international scholars or researchers coming to this country. Certainly all of the federal functions that impact all Americans; flight controllers and TSA folks at airports and travel restrictions, they impact our students and our staff, as well. So you start to get this tidal wave, or I guess more like an avalanche effect where it grows in significance and impact the longer it goes on.
Sarah, I think you probably have a few others.
Sarah Spreitzer: Well, it's interesting because on the research side, yes, they're not making new grants, but there's been so much uncertainty in the research funding cycle. It's hard to know whether or not anybody was really waiting to submit a grant application given that they've really slowed down the entire process this year. On visa processing, that's going forward, but those workers are unpaid. And so just like with TSA, I think if those workers stop showing up to work, what about social security offices, right? If somebody doesn't show up to open the office because it's been two months without a paycheck and they have to do something to get money coming in, then we're going to see a much bigger impact.
And John, you also didn't mention not Congress traditionally provides back pay for furloughed workers, especially because they've been working, many of them have been working during the shutdown without getting paid. I don't think there's any guarantee this time. And so what's going to happen once they reopen? The President has been very open, and Russ Vought at the Office of Management and Budget, have both said that they're going to use the shutdown to reduce the overall size of the federal budget beyond the original RIFs and the original dissolution of grants or termination of grants and other things. And so it's going to get bad, but then I don't know if we're going to return to a "normal" unless Congress can step in and actually pass some appropriations bills which have directions to the administration and to the federal agencies.
Mushtaq Gunja: I see a lot of chatter in the chat here about the impacts that institutions are already seeing to their food pantries and our good friend, President McGuire here at Trinity, is noting the impacts to some of her students who are federal workers, and that probably particularly impacts folks here in Washington. But as we know, federal workers are across the country. They're not just here. And so I am not at all surprised that we're seeing institutions being hit in multiple ways and I think this avalanche worry is a significant one. You can take a couple of pieces out of this Jenga block, but if you take too many of them out, we could really see the whole thing fall down in a pretty significant way.
And so where are we? How is this thing going to resolve? So let me tell you what I see, which is I see the President not here physically, literally not here in DC, and really been absent from this entire discussion. I see Hakeem Jeffries saying, "We're ready to talk anytime," but not really having anybody to talk to. And I hear the Republicans Speaker Johnson, John Thune saying, "Happy to talk. We're just not going to talk until after the government's open." Let's open the government. I feel like we've been saying the same things for the last 29 days. There really hasn't been much improvement here. Now these things that we talked about, SNAP benefits expiring folks not getting their paycheck could create some pressure this week, potentially, for us to be able to have some additional discussions. It could be that we just got to wait until right before Thanksgiving and travel could be that this is a Black Friday problem, when people, we see a slowdown in government spending. And where do you see this going and how do you see this resolving? Let me do Sarah first and then John.
Sarah Spreitzer: I will say, I think that we're already at a point where they're going to have to start moving off the idea that the Senate needs to pass, the House passed clean CR because that CR, or Continuing Resolution, goes until November 21st. And so that's too quick. They need to start talking about a CR that goes further than November 21st. Mike Johnson, speaker Johnson has kept the House at [inaudible 00:38:23] the last 29 days. He's going to have to bring them back. So I think once we see those things, I think that's the pressure that's building on Congress. They have to bring the House back and they're going to have to start having conversations because basically, they're out of time on the clean CR. And we've been hearing that they've started discussing another continuing resolution until December until early 2026 or even one until December, 2026. I don't think that's going to happen, but they are having those discussions.
Jon Fansmith: Yeah, I think trying to draw from history is a little bit fraught with this administration, but generally, what we have tended to see is that these are not negotiations among Democrats and Republicans in Congress. These are negotiations between, and historically, it's been the leadership of the opposing party and Congress and the President. In this case, Republicans control both chambers but Democrats because of their positions, and it can block the bills from going forward, the President has to be involved. The House will not move on a compromise until the President has given his approval to it. His absence from any negotiations at this point and his failure to indicate any terms he would accept as a concession mean there are no meaningful discussions happening. And we've seen that announced in the last week. Some of the people who were acting on his behalf in the Senate dropped their discussions because they weren't productive because they couldn't guarantee anything that was being put on the table.
You need the president to be involved, especially this President and this Congress. You need him to be involved. That said, generally drawing from history, what happens is these pain points we're pointing out, people losing food benefits and again and again and again, the chat people pointing out the demands in their food banks, this is already hitting people before the availability of these programs goes away, before SNAP and WIC starts to drop out, before people start to see their insurance premiums skyrocket, second paycheck lost. A lot of people in this country can't afford to miss one paycheck. Very few people can afford to miss two paychecks and there will be a great amount of anger and frustration with the government. Will that be directed at Republicans or Democrats? Probably both, but at least in terms of where you're seeing public polling going, it's more directed at the administration, it's more directed at Republican. So you will probably start to see something along the lines.
Sarah's point about the November 21st CR, it's become irrelevant. They need to do something else even as an alternative. But would that be bundled with something that reopens the government? Is there a concession that Democrats could get a six-month extension of Affordable Care Act subsidies in exchange for a CR into December with a promise to work on a longer term extension? You don't know, but those would the bridges. I think we're looking mid-November as the timeframe for where the political pain gets to be enough that both parties say, we have to just get to the table. We have to resolve this because either we make a concession or we get annihilated and we're less than a year out from midterm elections. They are thinking very heavily about that in all of their calculations. Nobody wants to carry the blame of destroying the economy and direct harm to individuals as the lasting legacy of their first year.
Mushtaq Gunja: And election Day 25 is just around the corner. Gubernatorial elections in the Commonwealth of Virginia and in New Jersey, you got mayoral elections of course in New York and in other places. But especially, I'm curious whether or not the results in Virginia and New Jersey might impact, it'll at least impact the political discussion for a day or two, and I wonder if that'll force whichever party is deemed to have lost the night, whether it might force them to try to reverse course a little bit. It's hard to tell, but I hate to think about the millions and millions of folks that are going to be impacted that aren't getting their paychecks, that are going to have their benefits cut, that are going to see their health insurance premium skyrocket as we try to work this thing out. And the lack of progress is just maddening.
In one way, this shutdown is so different than any other, I just cannot remember one in which neither party was trying to where there wasn't any real action. We are just stuck in the same conversation over and over and over again. Hopefully something will change sometimes soon.
Sarah Spreitzer: Well, and with no discussion from the President, that's been, and it almost feels like he's leaving Congress up to figure it out with the thought that it's going to be their polling numbers that are going to take the hit. And I don't know, maybe he's right, but yeah, to have an administration that's completely unengaged is very odd. And then the administration acting, as I was saying before, that everything's fine moving forward with regulations, it's not hurting them. I agree with you, Mushtaq, it's not like any shutdown I've ever seen before.
Jon Fansmith: I just want to jump on that because that's such a great point by Sarah. Part of the pressure for an administration to negotiate is that if you follow the rules of a shutdown, your entire agenda is being waylaid, right? And particularly in the first two years of your administration, you have a Congress that's controlled by your party. You want to be accomplishing things. This is the ideal time for this administration to move things forward. And so a normal administration, which is essentially, essentially on there, keeping essential workers at the definition of it, they would feel a need to resolve this to move forward, to try to get the government reopened so they can just work on the things they care about. This administration has broadly ignored the rules of a shutdown and is continuing to pursue their agenda so they're not feeling the impact the way a normal administration would because they're not complying with the restrictions that they should be operating under.
Mushtaq Gunja: There are a couple of mentions of the ballroom renovation in the chat, as well, and just curious to see what the polling is going to look like on that in the midst of the government being shut down. Again, I think you both are right. It feels like the administration might not move. The White House might not move until they feel some sort of political pain here. And not to put this all on the President, but John, you're very right. Most shutdowns, the way they get resolved is the president actually has to step in. I remember this with President Obama, this happened with President Trump in the first instance. It's the way that it's going to have to happen, and I don't know why we're pretending otherwise, but I guess that's what we've been doing for 29 days.
Guys, just keeping an eye on the clock. I want to move us to just a couple of issues that I'm not going to have us spend as much time as either deserve, but maybe just to tee it up and give a couple of quicker answers. Let's do H-1B first, Sarah. So we've talked a little bit about the changes that have happened to the H-1B visa and fees processing, but can you give the audience a little bit of a sense of what are the changes and what's happened in the last couple of weeks?
Sarah Spreitzer: And I think that this is part of the Trump administration's broader immigration plans, things that were offered in the first administration. I was telling some folks, it's interesting because I think a lot of the things that were tried at the end of the first Trump administration are now being tried in this first year of the second administration. So I have no idea what lies ahead for the next three years. But on H-1Bs, there was a Presidential Proclamation, I think it was in September that announced a new $100,000 fee for new H-1B petitions. H-1B is a work visa, so an employer sponsors somebody for it. They generally pay the fees for the employee. For most people, it's through a lottery. There's only 85,000 H-1Bs that are issued in one year. Institutions of higher education, we hire faculty and staff on H-1Bs, but we are what's called cap exempt. We don't participate in the lottery. So we have, I don't want to say unlimited of H-1Bs, but we do use H-1Bs pretty regularly.
When this proclamation was announced, it was the Secretary of Commerce that was in the White House with the President. DHS seemed to be caught a bit by surprise. There was a lot of confusion about how it was going to be implemented, how it was going to be applied. So they finally, I think a month later, have created a website with a few, a little bit more information that basically says it will apply to any new H-1B petition for a person outside of the United States, and that would be under the cap and through the lottery or for cap exempt employers. The website that they set up takes you to a pay.gov website where you would pay it. And it's interesting because it allows either the employer or the individual to pay the $100,000 fee. And I think that there will be a lot of concerns about fraud having an employee pay that $100,000 fee for an employer to say, "Hey, we'd hire you, but you would have to pay this $100,000 in order to get the job." I do worry about that.
There's also questions about whether or not an F-1 student, international student who's here in the United States, if they could transition to an H-1B and, therefore, avoid the $100,000 fee given that they're in the United States, and it would be a change of status. So we sent a letter to the Department of Homeland Security last week asking some questions about the guidance that's been issued so far, and also asking for an exemption for higher education as employers, because I don't think we'll be hiring any H-1Bs with that fee now. There's been two lawsuits that have already been brought. One is led by the AAUP and includes healthcare workers, and then there's another suit that's been brought by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and our colleagues at the Association of American Universities. So I don't know, Mushtaq, I would think both of those are likely seeking a TRO so that they can hire H-1Bs without paying this $100,000 fee, but I think we'll have to watch that.
Mushtaq Gunja: Sarah, thank you for that overview. Quickly, what do you think, what should our institutions be doing and what should they keep their eye on as it relates to H-1B? What advice do you have for them?
Sarah Spreitzer: So I think our HR professionals are discussing whether or not they can use other visas for H-1Bs that they were planning to hire. I think they're likely looking at hiring international scholars that may be in the United States already since they may be exempt from that $100,000 fee I should have mentioned as part of that proclamation, it also asked DHS to take steps to change the lottery process. And so there's a proposed rule that would make it a weighted lottery, meaning that only people that were offered the highest salaries would win the lottery. We're very worried about how that could impact our international students because obviously they may be at entry level jobs that may not have the highest salary. So this is going to change all of the H-1Bs. I think that it was very much, the proclamation was very much focused on tech industry and private industry. I don't think it was really thought of as impacting higher education, but it's really going to change, I think, how they hire international talent across the United States.
Jon Fansmith: And Sarah, can I ask, because I know this has come up a lot when I've been talking to people, the executive order, in the guidance, doesn't apply to renewals of existing H-1B visas, but I think you and I have talked and there's a little skepticism about whether that will ultimately be the policy.
Sarah Spreitzer: Correct. It's not supposed to apply to renewals or change of status if you are in the United States. So I think it could also be very limiting for international students and scholars, again, from leaving the United States while anything is in process.
Jon Fansmith: But you think they'll maintain that it won't apply to renewals, right?
Sarah Spreitzer: I don't want to make any bets. The only guidance that's out there, and it did not go through notice and comment is on the USCIS website and it's about half a page. So you would expect with one of these big changes that it would go through a notice and comment process and it would be bigger than just half a page where we would be able to ask these questions through the regulatory process. My guess is one of the court cases is going to likely say that this does not follow the Administrative Procedures Act. I'm not a lawyer like Mushtaq, so that's just my guess. But yeah, God knows what we have right now is just a very general outline. I don't think we'll get further guidance unless people start trying to pay this fee.
Mushtaq Gunja: Yeah, there's so much to dig into here, including, but not limited to, why can the executive just do this and where's Congress on this?
Sarah Spreitzer: Yes, good question, Mushtaq.
Mushtaq Gunja: Relatedly, Senator McConnell yesterday, Senator, former Senator Majority Leader, Kentucky, came out talking about the Trump Administration's unilateral move on tariffs. And I think I wonder if, at some point, Congress will want to assert reassert some of their authority in this space. You're saying [inaudible 00:53:31]-
Sarah Spreitzer: No, they haven't asserted their authority on appropriations. The administration came in and gutted programs that are authorized and were funded in the FY-25 appropriations process. To me, that's the biggest thing that they would assert their authority on. They feel a lot of loyalty to programs that they've created, that they have sought funding for to allow those to be completely bulldozed says to me, they're not going to assert their authority on anything. I don't think they're going to call up Secretary Noem to say, "How could you put this new fee for H-1Bs? It's not authorized by Congress." Previously, fees for H-1Bs or F-1s or anything, they're set up in the statute as funding USCIS activity. The $100,000 fee will go straight to the Department of Treasury, doesn't go to DHS. That's not anything that's created or even considered in the statute.
Jon Fansmith: I will just say on the Congress asserting itself, we know there are a lot of conversations that are not public conversations between Republicans and Congress and the administration. And it's going to be an interesting plot around this. H-1B, if it moves forward, if it's not blocked by the courts, there will be a lot of members of Congress who will have industries in their districts who will have employers in their districts who will be severely impacted by this, who will be lobbying behind the scenes and they may not publicly stand up, but there's going to be a lot of activity. And I will say on your appropriations point, we've seen a very marked difference in how Republican appropriators have talked about the administration, what they've done, where they've funded things in response to President's Budget. It is absolutely normal for a majority that is the same party as the President to give them some deference early on.
The President continues, popularity continues to sink. We head towards midterms. We're being aligned with the President may have electoral implications. You're going to get a little bit more freedom and you're going to start to see more assertions. But the first year of a new administration, when his party controls Congress, this goes every, whichever the dynamics are. This is not unique to this administration that they're getting an undue level of deference. There's a lot that is unique about this administration. I'm not discounting that, but there is reason to think Congress, the dynamics will change over time.
Sarah Spreitzer: I feel like John's trying to walk me back from my comments here, but I would just say Mushtaq, I think if it's in the immigration sphere, I would guess that Congress would be more concerned about the ending of refugee and asylum status, say, for Afghanis who supported the United States during the war or others that are seeing their temporary protected status ended. My guess is there's probably more quiet conversations going on about that than there is about this new H-1B visa fee.
Mushtaq Gunja: Well, we'll definitely keep an eye on it and thank you. Thanks for shedding some light on all of this, Sarah. John, I am going to say just keeping an eye on the clock that I would love to ask you some questions about loans and how they're going to get implemented, the new set of provisions around Grad plus and everything else, or the elimination thereof. But I think we should table that for next time and make sure that we give ourselves a good 10, 15 minutes to really dive into the topic because I think it's pretty important.
I have a couple of quick questions in the Q&A and in the chat that I'd love. I'm try to hold you to this 45 seconds, 60 seconds on. First, with the Federal TRIO office staff getting cut in a lot of ways, how is this affecting the actual dispersal of current TRIO grants? What does this mean for future TRIO grants?
Jon Fansmith: There's a couple different elements there, and this is a bigger conversation. I actually think much like loans, this is one we should spend some time on because TRIO's really important and really complicated in a lot of ways program right now because of the way the administration has been undermining that program, and they're doing it in a variety of ways. The inside higher ed had a piece yesterday, I think, about 120 institutions have closed their TRIO programs because of funding cuts, eliminations by the Department of Education. Look, staff are being laid off because of these funding cuts. That is going to hurt the ability of low-income students to access and succeed in college. There's no other conclusion to draw from it. Schools are putting their own resources in, they're shifting personnel, they're doing the things they can do, but a loss of money that provides for those services is going to hamper those services or force cutbacks in other places on the institution.
And it's, calling it a shame is a gross understatement. This is a direct result of federal action that is harming students and it's being done for very, very partisan political purposes. Not because of any merits or not because these are not people deserving of some assistance and not because there's no benefit to the country. There absolutely is when we get these students moving up the economic ladder.
Mushtaq Gunja: I made a note. Let's definitely spend a good few minutes next time talking about where we are in TRIO and Care. These are very important grant programs. They're important to... Yeah, they're very important. Period.
I'm hesitant to ask this last question, but it's so good. So maybe I'll just tee it up and you guys can answer it in just a few sentences and then we can really think about it a little bit over the course of the next couple of weeks. But is higher ed on the path to deconstruction/reconstruction in the manner of the White House demolition and intended reconstruction? If so, what is your advice for holding on during these last days of dust and destruction? Maybe I'll put it in a, first of all, I appreciate the poetry, the question, but I might, maybe I'll just go up one quick level. General advice for friends in this time where so much is happening, anything in particular we should do in the waning days of this semester?
Sarah Spreitzer: I always tell audiences when I speak to them to remain flexible. It's not unlike what was going on during COVID when things were changing on a daily basis. It just seems longer this time. I also think planning for the worst and hoping for the best. I know that's really trite to say that, but doing tabletop exercises to say, what if our TRIO funding doesn't come back? How do we sustain these programs? Or what do they look like? What happens if your international student enrollment drops by 50%? What does that mean if you are going to be limited on the amount of international students you're able to welcome, given some of the terms that are in the Compact?
So I think planning. I'm a worrier and I'm a planner, and so even if something bad isn't happening, I'm always thinking, but if that does happen, what would I do? And then just remaining flexible. But John may have some more practical advice or will probably say something completely different,
Jon Fansmith: Probably less practical. Like Sarah, I'm a worrier and a planner, and I will say the one thing from talking to lots of people, and I go to a lot of meetings and have the opportunity to talk with a lot of people, and what I say because it's what I hear people doing that works, is put yourself fully into the moment of the work that you're doing. What we do is really important. It has an impact on students' lives. There is so much happening that we don't have direct control over, especially for those of you on campuses, that getting that sense of reinforcing your commitment to the work that you do, seeing the benefits of it, understanding that there's a lot of noise that's attacking what we are, that's completely misses what actually happens on a college campus and the huge, enormous benefits.
And even people in the chat talking about their progression through life and how programs have helped them do that. Recommit to that in the moment. Focus on that in the moment. It really is the way that you will feel satisfaction and ability to manage all this chaos and noise and dust that's happening in the world.
Mushtaq Gunja: I like it. I like both of your pieces of advice, and thank you so much to both of you for all the incredibly helpful information. And thank you to the audience.
This podcast is available, as always, on all the usual podcast platforms. So if you missed any portion of it, please come find it. Go Dodgers, and we will see you all in a couple of weeks. Thanks, friends.