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Mushtaq Gunja: Hello and welcome to dotEDU, the Public Policy Podcast from the American Council on Education. Mushtaq Gunja here from frigid, single digit. When I went out for my walk this morning, windchill of two, that was a big mistake. Here with my co-hosts, as always. Sarah Spreitzer, Jon Fansmith. How are you two doing?
Sarah Spreitzer: Well, happy to do this podcast and talk to somebody from the outside world. We've been stuck in our house since last week when we all had the flu, and now the snowstorm, so that's been a lot of fun.
Jon Fansmith: Yeah. I'm here in my fortress of solitude, otherwise known as the basement of our house, where my wife pointed out, there's some strong pandemic vibes going on right now with two kids teleschooling, asynchronous learning, and my wife and I are trying to find different places to work in the house where we can't hear the other one in the background. So it's cool, it's good times. Get to walk my dog over sheets of ice. Everything's fun here, Mushtaq.
Mushtaq Gunja: I love snow days. I don't know, but the kids, ours aren't-
Sarah Spreitzer: We're on day two though, Mushtaq. We're on day two for our listeners, and I think we're going to have a day three with another snowstorm coming. Oh, John's shaking his head no.
Jon Fansmith: I don't know, it's getting better. Around here, it seems not so bad. I think we might have delays tomorrow. That's my guess.
Sarah Spreitzer: Okay.
Mushtaq Gunja: Yeah, I think so too, and our friends down in Tennessee, including our friend, Sarah Gast, is dealing with no power and a much, much worse situation, so we should be thankful, Sarah Spreitzer. Friends, we are coming to you on Tuesday, January 27th, second day of no school for the kids at home for Sarah and John, and me I suppose too. We've got a wonderful show today. We are going to be talking with the president of COE, Kimberly Jones, in a little bit. Before that, just a couple of quick reminders up top.
First, our ACE annual meeting, the ACE experience is just a month away, so if you haven't already, please, please register. The program just has a really fun, strong lineup of speakers, so please register if you have the ability. Second, in our last episode, we spent a lot of time discussing the harmful impacts of loan limits on programs that Department of Education does not consider professional, and since that podcast, we've launched a Contact Congress tool that makes it easy to let your lawmakers know why this definition needs to be expanded. So we're always saying, "What can we do?" I'm always asking John and Sarah, what can we do to help? Using this Contact Congress tool will definitely help. Our producers are going to drop the link in the chat if they haven't already.
Finally, last week, we released our latest pulse point survey, which includes a bunch of responses from something like 400 higher education leaders, and we asked about the most pressing topics of the day. Lots of really interesting information in that survey, so check it out.
All right, friends, before we get to Kim Jones, I was hoping that we might be able to talk about what the state of appropriations is, where we are federal funding-wise, talk about the latest accreditation, and then just a couple of legal updates if we have a minute. So friends, just to set the stage on federal funding, we of course came off that government shutdown late fall, and then Congress actually got to work and actually passed six spending bills, including, you guys are going to correct me if I'm wrong, but Ag, Justice, Commerce, Interior, VA. But what's pending is still some big ones, including Defense, HHS, Homeland Security, State, HUD, and then crucially for us, Labor and Education. So it felt like it was on track. The House passed those six bills, sent them to the Senate, but then all things Minnesota happened. Now funding, I think, you guys are going to correct me if I'm wrong again, funding is set to expire this Friday. Friends, where are we? What's the latest?
Sarah Spreitzer: I'm going to let John talk about the boring parts of this, but basically, Mushtaq, you talked about the fact that they were able to move a bunch of bills, and the way that they did that is they bundled the bills together. And so with the last few, like Labor H and Department of Defense, they put those together with DHS as well as THUD. So what's derailing the process right now is the fact that you have that funding for the Department of Homeland Security. That package already passed the House, and now it was expected to go to the Senate and be passed along bipartisan lines.
As you said, Minnesota happened. There's not a lot of support for funding DHS right now, but because the House passed it as one package, it's unclear if they can move those other bills like the Labor HHS Education one alone, or if they'd have to separate them out and go back to the House.
I'm of the opinion that they can do whatever they want. If last year has taught us anything, it's that Congress doesn't have to play by their own rules, so I'm less worried about a shutdown, but I'm sure John is going to disagree with me.
Jon Fansmith: Yeah. In this case, you've said that many times recently. I'm like, "Oh no, actually I agree with Sara," but no, I disagree with you. I think we're going to get into a shutdown. It may be a short shutdown because nobody wants a shutdown, but the problem is they have a bill to consider that is all six of these appropriations bills. You would think there would be a process by which they could just strip one out and say, "We're not going to deal with that. We'll deal with it separately." It doesn't exactly work like that. If you want to do that, you can, but you need to do a vote, which would mean you'd need at least 13 Republicans to join Democrats in stripping that out. Even if you do that, that's not the bill that the House passed. So even if you strip it out and put Homeland Security to the side, you still have to send it back to the House to vote on, which again, wouldn't be a big deal except the House isn't here this week.
We've had a lot of weather. Getting members of Congress back in on an expedited basis could be a challenge, and that's if they wanted to do it. So far, Speaker Johnson has essentially taken a version of the line of, "We did our work. The Senate agreed to these levels, they agreed to these bills. They need to finish the job. That's not our problem. They need to get this done and passed." And I think you can already see some of the political positioning, which would be if Democrats refuse to pass these remaining six appropriations bills as they're currently structured, well, we'll blame them for a shutdown. Democrats, of course, very clear that they do not want to let Homeland Security Funding go forward without changes, especially in the policy, around oversight of deployments of ICE, how ICE actions are investigated, who's responsible for those investigations.
So far, a lot of concerns. I'm not going to get into all the Minnesota stuff, but it is a real substantive disagreement about how to deal with that agency at this point, which is really strongly driven by popular opinion in this case. I don't see either side breaking down.
Now, Senate Republicans have floated a couple of different alternatives. They said, "Look, pass the bill and we'll come back and we can agree to do a bill on oversight later, or we can get executive action in place to assure that the money will be appropriately spent." It doesn't seem especially likely that Democrats would agree to that without something in hand, especially after what happened with the last shutdown where the moderate Dems conceded in a lot of position, the longest shutdown in history, a lot of backlash, especially among Democratic base as to how that was resolved. This one seems really hard to envision Democrats accepting anything other than what they've put on the table at this point.
Mushtaq Gunja: I guess I want to take this question in three parts. One, forget the shutdown part of this. Where are we funding-wise? What ended up getting funding? What were the levels for education? What are the things that our folks should know about where that is? And is there any substantive disagreement about education funding levels in the Senate? Second is the politics of the shutdown. Is it going to happen? And it sounds like you two are in different places on that. Sarah says they can do whatever they want. John is worried about the actual process.
Jon Fansmith: Yeah, process. So boring.
Mushtaq Gunja: He's so boring. Yeah. No, hold on. Let me just say, and then to note, and then third, if this thing does shut down, I just want to make sure that we spend a second helping the audience understand what that might mean for their campuses, especially in light of that funding. So I do want to do one, two, and three, but go ahead, Sarah.
Sarah Spreitzer: No, I think that we may have some sort of shutdown. I just don't think it will be as long and as protracted as we had it before, because we are talking about more the process as opposed to the numbers. The numbers that they agreed to on a bipartisan basis are really good for institutions. I'll let John talk about the education programs, but the National Institutes of Health actually got a $3 billion increase, and that was a over 40% cut that the president had proposed for that agency. In the State Department, because the SFOPS bill is in there too, they put money in the Fulbright program, which has been another program that saw grant terminations or delays happening. So Congress heard from higher education advocates and restored that funding, and so we want to see these bills pass. Also, there's a lot of language in there about how the administration has to spend out money as it is allocated by Congress, which is very different from what we had in the CRO last year.
Jon Fansmith: Yeah. I think that's the really frustrating part about this is that we'd almost gotten to the finish line with bills that were not just good levels in terms of the education programs, generally level funding, which is not what's needed obviously, but in this environment, is a pretty good outcome. But that language curtailing the administration's authority to do things, which really, to be abundantly clear, these are passing in strong, we talked about this last time, passing in strong overall numbers is a Republican Congressional rebuke of what the administration has done on spending. Of course, Democrats would support these things, but the strong support among Republicans in Congress is a pretty meaningful statement. And obviously, lots of reasons why, and certain understandable reasons why we're hitting this wall now, but we were close to having something I think we could feel pretty good about when there was a lot of uncertainty facing it.
Now, in terms of what a shutdown might mean for campuses, if Sarah and I - see, Sarah, we're together on this - see a short shutdown, the impact will be pretty nominal. If this is the sort of thing where they work it out into next week, they might even give themselves a CR on these six remaining bills, a continuing resolution to push the deadline further back to buy themselves more time. Maybe they strip out DHS and do that separately, maybe they come to an agreement, but we would be talking a matter of days for almost every aspect of higher education programs.
And certainly, for a lot of the programs like SNAP and others that we may have students who rely on, you won't see an immediate impact. Usually, you start to measure the impact of those programs beginning of the next month or through a specific funding cycle. We're not really in a primary funding cycle for, say, federal financial aid programs. There might be grants that are impacted just because of the timing, but really, they would be very few in number, and again, would be picked up in a couple of days.
So short-term, not a problem. Long-term, we begin to wonder. I don't think anyone thinks this will be a long-term shutdown, but it's worth pointing out, a second shutdown in one year when we've already passed the fiscal deadline, there are people working at lots of agencies funded by those six bills, the largest agencies in the federal government, that will have to calibrate who goes into work, who's essential. I don't think there was a lot of preparation, unlike the last shutdown where everyone saw it coming. This one came by surprise, so a little bit more chaos in here that's already been exceptionally chaotic.
Mushtaq Gunja: Okay, so let's get you two on the record. We'll record our next podcast in a couple of weeks as we always do, and let's just note, six of the bills have passed, so we really are talking about a partial government shutdown, though they are enormous parts of the government. Are we going to be fully funded? Are we going to be in a partial shutdown or not?
Sarah Spreitzer: I think for a week. I think given the weather, the fact that they are going to have to change the packages and likely put DHS on the back burner, I say we get maybe a CR or a shutdown for a week. It's also interesting that the White House doesn't seem too bothered. That's how they were with the first shutdown. This really is they're leaving it up to Congress to figure it out, and often if they were engaged, that could cause more delays, and I think the fact that they haven't said anything allows Congress to work out some sort of solution.
Jon Fansmith: Yeah, I think the politics of this are fascinating. We talked about it for a long time. I don't think we'll have a long shutdown. I think we'll have funding for five of those six bills definitely by the time we record again. I do think there's the possibility of a CR for Homeland Security. There's what Democrats would want in place, they might get a lot of Republican support for, but as part of a bigger package, if it becomes a standalone issue where they're fighting over Homeland Security funding, the politics get more complicated, especially for the administration. This is the administration's signature domestic policy effort, and even as the president has recalibrated the way he's approaching this publicly, they're not going to want checks on their authority. They're not going to want Congress boxing them in on what is, I think politically, certainly to their detriment, but they don't see it that way, especially among theor base.
So they may fight over DHS funding in a way they wouldn't over package the bills. So I think there's some more uncertainty around DHS funding, but for what institutions care about most, I think this will be resolved pretty quickly.
Mushtaq Gunja: Good, and I think you're both wrong. I think we're in it for a while, but-
Sarah Spreitzer: Oh, interesting [inaudible 00:15:32].
Mushtaq Gunja: I'll be a guest next time. One of you two can host this.
Sarah Spreitzer: Okay.
Jon Fansmith: All right.
Mushtaq Gunja: Let's talk accreditation, if that's okay. One of the things that's interesting is I think it's been clear that the administration, really from the beginning, has been thinking about accreditation as a significant lever for some of the institutional change that they would like to see, and they spent a little less time. They did a lot of bloviating, a lot... That might be too strong a word. A lot of signaling that this was going to be a big thing, but hadn't done very much yet. But it seems like we have some significant moves in accreditation, including the announcement of a new negotiated rulemaking around accreditation reforms that was announced I think yesterday, on Monday. So John, Sarah, where are we as it relates to changes in the accreditation landscape?
Sarah Spreitzer: Well, I think you're right, Mushtaq. I think that they finally started to move on accreditation, and for those of you that don't remember, accreditation was actually talked about on the campaign trail, which is crazy, right? That this very kind of wonky issue within higher education was actually discussed by President Trump on the campaign trail. So it has been a focus, but I think we have to go back to the end of 2025 for the first action, which was to make some changes to the NACIQI group, which is the... What does NACIQI stand for, John?
Mushtaq Gunja: Council on Institutional Quality-
Sarah Spreitzer: Yes. Institutional Quality.
Jon Fansmith: [inaudible 00:17:17]
Sarah Spreitzer: They're basically the accreditors of the accreditors, right? It's this federal board that's going to examine accreditors and say, yes, you are allowed to accredit institutions of higher education or programs at institutions of higher education for the purposes of Title IV eligibility. John is grimacing, but I'm pretty sure that's right. But they waited to have the first NACIQI meeting until the fall of last year because that was when you were going to see some rollover of President Biden appointees to President Trump appointees, and I think for the first time in NACIQI history, it was actually a pretty spicy meeting where we saw the chair replaced, right, John? And some clear direction from Under Secretary Nicholas Kent about the direction that NACIQI would be going in.
Jon Fansmith: Yeah. And then I think obviously, if you follow accreditation, there's been some other NACIQI meetings that have been pretty charged and there's been some moments around accreditation in which I think historically, it's safe to say has been a relatively quiet area of pirate policy that has moved to the forefront. But I think Sarah framed it in a really nice way. The administration on the campaign trail talked about accreditation. They were doing other things early in the administration, but now we're seeing all these multiple efforts tying together, and the NACIQI meeting was a good canary in a coal mine about this. They seated the members by who they'd been nominated by, so all of the Trump appointees were seated together. There was a designation as to where they've been appointed from. Certainly, Under Secretary Kent spoke to the committee and talked about, leveled a lot of the criticisms this administration has about accreditors, not just what their role is, but their failure to perform their role in a way that they think is appropriate.
So very charged from the beginning, a contested vote in which a lot of pressure was put on to elect a new chair of NACIQI from one of those new Trump appointees. A lot more partisan. Historically, NACIQI has been a relatively nonpartisan body, regardless of whatever else is happening, and with a pretty clear mandate as to what they're supposed to be working on. So the irony of that was after such a charged meeting around who's sitting where and the politics of the people at the table and everything else, the reviews of the accreditors that went forward were pretty by the books. It wasn't actually very contentious or highly critical. So there might be an ability to separate out some of the politics in the rhetoric side from the function of NACIQI, but again, first meeting.
As of Monday, the administration had requested comments. That was the deadline for comments on revisions to the accreditation handbook. If you don't follow this stuff, that's basically just a guide to accreditors as to how to understand and interpret the requirements on accreditors as they review institutions or programs. They asked a lot of questions for feedback as part of the comments, and I'm rolling these together because they're very much related. They also, at the end of last week, I think on Friday, announced that they would be doing a negotiated rulemaking session to one week sessions starting in April on accreditation, and then listed out the topics they wanted to cover. And both the handbook questions and the rulemaking sessions are covering a lot of things that we saw in the executive order: intellectual diversity on college campuses, opening up accreditation to new accreditors so as to promote competition and innovation.
I'm mostly quoting what they're saying here. Looking at focusing accreditors review of programs and institutions on student outcome measures specifically and weighting less, some of the things that accreditors are required to do by law when reviewing campuses or programs. Looking at things like diversity, whether that's under the rubric of diversity, equity, inclusion, how that plays into accreditor standards. A lot of these things, how difficult it is to becoming a accreditor, making it easier for institutions to switch accreditors, things that have been a part of the policy emphasis for institutions.
And I've been going on for a while. I'll stop in a second, but I think certainly, I'll stop where I started. Sarah's framing was they talked about this, we knew coming in. They've put a lot of pieces in place when you combine all of those pieces into one element. What is abundantly clear is they are looking for a pretty comprehensive overall of the accreditation process, reshaping it in a way that, and I'll say, which concerns me because of putting a very heavy federal hand on who the accreditors are, what their work looks like, what they should be prioritizing, in ways that historically they haven't.
And we, I think, don't want, we don't want a politicized process that says these are the good schools, these are the bad schools. And with this administration, with things like the Compact, with the tax on individual institutions for prioritizing diverse campuses, these are very problematic approaches to take. And if it becomes substantively part of the process of accreditation, it's a powerful lever to use over colleges and universities and what policies they implement, and maybe more importantly, what policies they feel they have to abandon.
Mushtaq Gunja: Yeah. If there were one surprise, the biggest surprise for me maybe in 2025 was actually that they didn't start out thinking about doing more on accreditation right away. As Sarah said, the Trump administration or the Trump campaign campaigned on this, so I thought that maybe we'd be fighting a whole bunch of accreditation fights in that first year, but it looks like it all got pushed to the second. And there's some stuff. Some of these, and John Sarah, please correct me if you guys have a disagreement about this, but there are approaches that we can support, I think. I think an increased focus on student outcomes, that seems right. We should have some agreements about what the right data measures are, but I think that's good. Undoubtedly, there are things that could be streamlined. It's just that the little bit of the heavy hand of the federal government I think is what we might be worried about. So looking forward to engaging with the Trump administration, the negotiators about this, I think. Go ahead, Sarah.
Sarah Spreitzer: I was just going to say, remember, the overall goal of the administration though is to dismantle the Department of Education, so they're walking a balance of how much do you use these tools that you're eventually hoping to transfer to, say, another government agency or to sunset. So I think part of why they didn't move as quickly is because it took them a while to get the under secretary in place, and again, their focus really is more on the hollowing out of the Department of Education rather than strengthening rules, I think. Well
Jon Fansmith: And this goes back to that perpetual... I won't prolong it, but that perpetual kind of disagreement we have about is the Department of Education a tool and do they realistically think they can get rid of it, versus what are the more politically theatrical aspects of going after the Department of Education? And I think Sarah and I disagree in that area at least, but there's, I think, a lot of validating in what she says too. So I don't think either one of us is 100% correct here.
Sarah Spreitzer: Aw, thanks, John. That was kind of agreeing with me.
Jon Fansmith: That's as nice as I'm going to get.
Mushtaq Gunja: I'm going to leave this aside. I'm going to turn us to a question from the chat that I don't think I prepared you all to answer, but I think a few days ago, end of last week, the Trump administration put out a memo, or at least OMB put out a memo, and I think the president himself threatened to cut off all funding, federal funding to states that have sanctuary policies, and he said both cities within the states and then maybe just states that have municipalities that have sanctuary policies, vis-a-vis undocumented immigrants. John, Sarah, what do we know, if anything? Is this a thing? How worried should we be? What will this mean?
Sarah Spreitzer: This is following the playbook that Russ Vought has used at the Office of Management and Budget, to use federal funding as a way to enforce policy changes like DEI, like definitions on gender, on places, organizations, individuals that accept federal funding. So this is very similar to what's been done previously. I think he's talking about funding going though to states and localities, and obviously this is a lot of the blue states. And I think it's setting up, as a lot of the things have been moving towards, the setting up this state versus the federal government and how much say does the federal government... I'm not a lawyer, Mushtaq, so sanctuary cities have to do with whether or not you're going to actively work with federal agents, I think, around immigration. I would guess that governors and mayors would review those policies fairly well to understand where they might cross over with federal obligations, but I'm not surprised OMB is trying this.
Jon Fansmith: Yeah. So I would say I'm not, famous words to bite me later, but I'm not tremendously worried about this. I think it does follow a playbook we've seen, but we've also saw at the beginning of the shutdown, the administration canceled already approved funding to New York for a transit project to Colorado for a water project, really seeking to punish blue states for the shutdown and make the pain felt in blue states of not continuing funding. And then those cases, I cited those two cases in particular, the number of them, but in New York, a court quickly overturned that effort. And in Colorado, we saw one of the rare vetoes of the administration where Republicans and Democrats united to restore the funding in Colorado which had been withheld on a political basis.
So I don't think... I'll defer to you, Mushtaq. I don't think it's legal to do this. You can't simply characterize a state or a city as a sanctuary city and not have some clear definition as to how that's actually in violation, both of existing law and the 10th Amendment in terms of what the state's policies are, but even if you could, I don't think that's the basis for suspending funding, especially funding when they talked about it was programmatic formula-based funding for things like TAMP and SNAP and other benefits to individuals who qualify as residents of that state. So it's going to the state for distribution, but it's not a state funding program. So lots of problems with their approach. Just seems a spiteful political maneuver.
Mushtaq Gunja: Yeah, I agree with that. It's patently illegal. You can't condition federal funding for unrelated matters on some priority that may or may not be illegal for the states to engage in, and famous last words, but I would think that this is going to be enjoined. Even in a world where there are fewer nationwide injunctions, this is the sort of thing where a lot of lawsuits would fly immediately and we would have temporary restraining orders. So I want to move us just because I want to ask about one last thing, but I don't think this is... Not that we shouldn't worry because we should worry about everything, but I wouldn't worry too much about this, at least at this moment.
One other thing that jumped out that happened over the last week is that the White House backed down a little bit. So the administration decided to drop its appeal of that federal court ruling related to the DEI guidance that came out way back, I think back in February, one of the original things that the department issued around the... Well, actually, let me ask you. John, Sarah, what was the original guidance and what did the Trump administration do?
Jon Fansmith: This was the famous February 14th love letter to higher ed, which essentially said, "This is how you are supposed to treat efforts around diversity or inclusion on your campuses." It took this incredibly expansive definition of SFFA versus Harvard to say affinity graduation ceremonies are discriminatory. Allowing for themed housing is discriminatory, even if you open it to students of all races. I think at the time, everyone's reaction was the same. This is so far over the line as to not only be ridiculous, but unenforceable. Long and the short of it is the administration withdrew this I think because it was abundantly clear that they would not prevail. It was badly written legally, it was overbroad. It was just a bad piece of guidance with no force of law behind it, a massive overreach early on, and so they didn't really have much choice but to withdraw.
Now, I want to be really clear, that means that they can't come after institutions for not following those policies that they demanded. Things like whether grant funding, that included references to diversity or other things or studying a diverse population, those aren't protected by this. The administration can still assert what their policy priorities are and fund along those lines, so this is not a blanket bar on the administration from going after diversity. It just narrows what institutions and K-12 schools too have to do in terms of what legal compliance looks like from this Department of Education in this area. It's a win no doubt, but it's not a universal win.
Mushtaq Gunja: Well, I'll take the win. We'll take the win I think, at least a partial win here, because I think it's really helpful for... It's good to be able to see that the legal system and the political pressure and the reality of the situation about how diversity, equity, inclusion plays out on college campuses, it's not exactly maybe what the Trump administration thought they were doing. But I'm going to pause us and move us to our guest, Kimberly Jones, the president, CEO of the Council for Opportunity in Education. Kimberly's a great friend of the higher ed sector of ACE, and Kimberly, welcome to the podcast.
Kimberly Jones: Hello, hello, hello. It's great to be here. I'm thrilled.
Mushtaq Gunja: So Kimberly, for those of our audience who don't know very much about the Council for Opportunity and Education, would you tell us a little bit about the organization?
Kimberly Jones: Sure. So COE, as we go by, we are actually 45 years old this year. We were founded in 1981, and it was founded by a group of TRIO directors who really wanted to be more involved and have more autonomy in their work. And so while COE is probably primarily known for our advocacy around TRIO, that's certainly not all we do. A big piece of our work is professional development for TRIO educators, making sure they are up to speed and implementing all of the latest technologies and trends in higher education to make sure first-gen low-income students get to and through college.
And also, one thing I'm supremely proud of, we have a number of student opportunities that we provide. We host student leadership conferences for both our high school age as well as our college students. We provide a study abroad program for low-income first-gen college students. We provide internship opportunities, paid internship opportunities for undergrads and recent college grads who are TRIO alumni, and we have our Pell Institute, which is our research arm, which produces a lot of work around what is happening in higher education with respect to low income first-gen students.
Sarah Spreitzer: So Kim, I think you probably have to be under a rock in the world of higher education to not know what TRIO is, but I've advocated for TRIO throughout the years, but even I thought TRIO stood for something, like it was T-R-I-O. Can you give us a 101? What do you mean when you say TRIO, what are the programs that we're talking about, and what do they do on our campuses?
Kimberly Jones: Sure. And yeah, it took me a long time. I was like, "So what is it? Is it an acronym?" And I've seen people use it, turning roadblocks into opportunities. But no, the name TRIO actually emerges from the fact that by the time we had the 1968 reauthorization, there were three programs, and the name was formally changed to the federal TRIO programs in 1992. But TRIO is a compendium of programs which serves students from as young as the sixth grade all the way through adult education, starting with sixth through 12th graders in our talent search program, which is a outreach program to identify young people who have the potential to succeed in higher education, but not the family background or the income.
At the high school level, most people know this program, it's called Upward Bound, and in addition to doing a lot of what our talent search program does, it's even more intensive, which includes Saturday academies which have academic classwork, assistance with SAT, ACT prep, scholarship research, and then the hallmark of Upper Bound is a six-week residential college experience, and that's really where students have the opportunity to feel like a college student and learn that they can do that work. Similar to Upper Bound is Upper Bound Math Science, same model but it targets students who are interested in going into STEM fields and preparing them for that as undergraduates.
Once a student is in college, we have our student support services program. It is the only national undergraduate retention and completion program. Again, low-income first-gen, as well as some special programming for students with disabilities, students who are military veterans, students who want to go into certain disciplines like nursing or teaching.
Also for our undergraduates is the Ronald E. McNair Post-baccalaureate Achievement Program. That's for undergraduates who want to go on to doctoral study and ensuring that they have the research opportunities, the faculty mentoring, the research experience so once they get to graduate school, they are ready to go and to become scholars.
And for our adult learners, we have educational opportunity centers. Those are places, sometimes you only see a client once or twice, but that's for people who might have dropped out or stopped out of the education pipeline who want to go back to school. Everything from how do I take the GED to how do I apply for financial aid? How do I make sure my old credits get transferred? So that's a program for adult learners to get them back into the education pipeline.
And then finally, we have Veterans Upward Bound, which serves returning servicemen and women, people who left the education pipeline to go onto the service, and now we want to go onto higher education but need to be reoriented to the academic environment. And so that's a pre-collegiate program that, again, helps people get back up to speed in terms of their academic skills, testing levels and things like that.
Jon Fansmith: So Kim, it is a impressive list of things the TRIO programs are doing, and a lot of love for you in the chat, by the way, including references to Kimberly is a hero. Love you, Kim. I'll say for those of us who have worked with you here in DC, it's been a long time working with you. We certainly share and echo those sentiments, but one of the things that's also popping up in the chat is one of the reasons you are so appreciated is it's been a tough year for TRIO. It's been a tough year in a lot of areas, but can you talk a little bit about this administration has come in, there's been some targeted attacks on TRIO. Some of the patterns we've seen more probably, some of it seems very specific to the TRIO programs. How are things going? What is the pattern here? What have been the ups, the downs? What are you seeing?
Kimberly Jones: Sure. So we weren't entirely surprised at the top of the administration when a proposal was put forward to zero out the programs. During the last Trump administration, there was also an attempt to eliminate TRIO, or certainly to shrink it sizably, and so we weren't entirely surprised. I think what took us most by surprise as a community, and as you mentioned, this was also happening in other federal grant spaces, was the significant interruption of administration of the program. So grants being issued not just late, but instead of getting your notification that the next year of grant funding was available, you got what's called a no-cost extension, which means you can still operate but you have no money.
We saw for the first time ever the cancellation of TRIO grants. About 120 grants were just canceled without a meaningful opportunity to get that reversed, and so for that reason, we did go to federal court and we were granted a preliminary injunction around that.
So definitely... And then with everybody else in the education arena, fighting for your appropriations. I was really gratified and grateful and just honored to see the level of support we received from the Congress, and on both sides of the aisle, on both sides of the Capitol, because the members know that TRIO works, as they say, and they were both, on both sides of the chamber and both sides of the aisle, very adamant that TRIO was something they wanted to see maintained.
Mushtaq Gunja: Really, just on that point, one of the things that has always struck me about TRIO is the bipartisan support. What do you think happened here? Why did the Trump administration go after these programs that impact so many students and tend to be pretty popular, I think, among at least practitioners?
Kimberly Jones: Well, again, it was something that we weren't surprised about because of past experience with the administration, and it said in there, it wasn't even a budget proposal. I think it was almost a skinny proposal they put forward to Congress. Some of the talking points were that TRIO was peddling woke ideology, that it's no longer necessary because the same barriers don't exist for low-income students to go to college, or the idea that it should be up to the schools to take responsibility for providing these services and not the federal government. And so that's the rationale that was provided, but I think if we look at the data, we know that even though there's been improvement, low-income students are still far outpaced by their middle and upper income peers in terms of college enrollment, college retention and college graduation.
And then we don't subscribe to any ideology in TRIO. We are teaching just academics, and so even within our law and our regulations, it's clear we're doing foreign language, English composition, math and science, so there's nothing particularly woke about what we do. TRIO programs look like the communities they're in, and so if you ever come to one of our national meetings, you will be struck by, and I know this is a bad word, but the diversity of the crowd, and when I say diversity, I mean literally everybody from every type of community is represented. Within TRIO, the actually largest demographic of students served are Caucasian, followed very closely by African-American and then Hispanic, and then other groups, Asian-American, Native American, et cetera. So we look like the whole country and we are in every state, we're in many territories. We are in every place the American flag flies.
Sarah Spreitzer: When you were describing the TRIO programs, it sounds like it follows the student from middle school when they might start considering college, all the way through. It provides those support services for students, first generation or others that may need it. What did that mean to see grant terminations then? Was the bridge suddenly made uneven? Were students losing services that they were expecting at a certain place in their education? How are schools responding?
Kimberly Jones: Sure. So just to be clear, a student doesn't necessarily go from one program to the other. It depends on whether the school that they're particularly attending has the program. I will say one fabulous example of a TRIO alum is Congresswoman Nikema Williams. She was in every TRIO program that she was eligible for, from talent search to Upward Bound to Student Support Services to Ronald D. McNair, so she truly followed the pipeline. But it really was devastating to see programs stop, and for the first time ever, and you saw the postings on social media and elsewhere, "Due to a grant being canceled by the federal government, our offices are closing," and it was devastating to the students, to the institutions.
There was one institution I can think of that because they got their grant cancellation maybe two days before the program was supposed to start, they honored their commitment to serve students over the summer, but since that time, has had to fold its operations. And so from time to time, we even get students who call our office to ask for guidance and for help, because in some communities, TRIO is the only game in town, so it's been quite devastating for our community.
Jon Fansmith: And I want to maybe ask a little bit about the flip side of Mushtaq's question. As somebody who had the privilege of sitting on a panel at one of your national meetings, and I think there was 1,100 truly diverse, in all meanings of the term, in the best possible sense of the term, people in the audience. Clearly, you're a very motivational leader, and a lot of that is coming out to see you. Clearly, there's a lot of investment in the work, but Tom Cole, House Republican chairman of the Appropriations Commission, close ally of President Trump in many ways, when he announced the Labor H budget with TRIO funding level funded, when the president's asking for the complete elimination, he singled out TRIO as one of the areas that he was most proud to fund. And so I guess as somebody who spends a lot of time thinking about how do you influence members of Congress, how do you get those 1,100 voices? How do you get them all unified and working in a way that you have this really strong bipartisan support, even from incredibly strong voices?
Kimberly Jones: Sure. Well, I'll tell you, as much as I want to take credit for being such a good lobbyist, with someone like Tom Cole, his support and championing of TRIO predates his time in Congress. He's talking about it publicly. When he was an academic at the University of Oklahoma, he actually had TRIO students in his class and was able to see firsthand the difference it made for them and their experiences. Another example, I'm going to do a little bit of storytelling here. One of the first congressional champions for TRIO back in the 1970s was Shirley Chisholm, and we all know, she was the first Black woman to serve in the US Congress. And so what she did, because she believed in TRIO, she introduced the programs to Congressman Lewis Stokes, who as most of us know, was the first African-American to serve on the Appropriations Committee.
He was a Democrat from Ohio, and when he served on the Appropriations Committee, he was joined by the first TRIO alum to serve in the US Congress, a Republican from Texas, Henry Bonilla, who came to the Congress in 1993. And so together, this Black Democrat and this Hispanic Republican joined together. They both served on a probes and had a bipartisan goal to make sure TRIO was supported, and that's really been our model ever since. And both of those examples, Tom Cole, Lou Stokes, Henry Bonilla, it's because they had individual experience with the program. They saw it firsthand. Henry experienced it firsthand, and to this day, he tells you, "I would not have gone to college if it wasn't for Project Stay Talent Search in San Antonio." And so the impact that it has on people's lives is what causes them to be such fierce advocates and to stay involved.
I was actually at a community service event on Martin Luther King Jr. Day, and I was at this event just chit-chatting with other ladies about what we do professionally, and when I shared what I did, the organizer of the event stops. "I was a McNair scholar, and I'm still in touch with my McNair faculty member," and she graduated 10, 15 years ago. And so again, it's the impact it has on people's lives that make them such strong advocates.
Mushtaq Gunja: [inaudible 00:47:36] questions in the Q&A about pending shutdown questions. First, there's a brand new TRIO director who is wondering how they might be able to keep track of what's happening with the shutdown and what happens with this individual's role. And then a specific question about the shutdown, how it might affect the TRIO talent search and EOC grant competitions. Kim, take either or both of those?
Kimberly Jones: Sure. So first of all, congratulations to the new TRIO director. They're in the right place. Listening to ACE, staying on top of what's happening and coming out of COE, you're doing all the right things. We're fortunate in that TRIO, like a lot of higher education programs, are advanced funded, and so even though we're in fiscal year 2026, programs are operating on fiscal year 2025 money. And so for the moment, there's no disruption if there were to be another shutdown. Well, there'd be a disruption in the sense that there would not be staff you could contact at the Department of Education, I'm just going to put that in the parking lot, because they would not be working. They would be furloughed.
There is a very real problem though with respect to the TRIO grant cycle. The next TRIO grant competitions that are supposed to take place are the talent search and EOC competitions. That's supposed to happen this year. We are already behind schedule. Every five years, they have the competition and the final application five years ago was published at the end of January, and so here we are at the end of January.
So we were really grateful to see in both the House and Senate report language, there was identical language at the time telling the Congress, indicating to the department they wanted to see those competitions launched by December 1st, 2025. While that date has passed, the spirit I think is still very much there, that there's an expectation that they will host the competitions on time. And some additional language also stated they wanted to see all grant competitions, or not even competitions, all grant awards, competing and non-competing, issued by June 30th. So again, the congressional intent is there that TRIO would operate in a timely manner, but if there is a shutdown, certainly there's no one to move the work forward, so that is certainly a concern.
Sarah Spreitzer: Kim, given all the changes within the Department of Education and the interagency agreements where they're moving higher education programs over to the Department of Labor, if you do see a Labor H Bill pass with level funding for TRIO, do you think it all goes back to, quote unquote, "normal", that they just run the grant competitions? Can you just look in your crystal ball and what do you think happens? You've had this enormous response, bipartisan response saying, "Not TRIO." Is that going to be enough for the administration to back off?
Kimberly Jones: I don't know. There was some language in the LHHS bill that we're still waiting to see what happens with it that put some guardrails, but not outright prohibitions on what the agencies will do, and so I'm not certain. I will say in talking to colleagues who are in the career and tech ed space, because they've already had their programs moved over to labor, it really was just a reshuffling of deck chairs in a sense, picking people up from one agency and plopping them into another. We're trying to gather as much information as we can and trying to keep our community focused, that regardless of where we're housed, the most important thing is to make sure that the programs are administered properly and that the students get the services they need.
Sarah Spreitzer: I think that is one of the hardest things for people on campus is with all this uncertainty, remaining flexible and committed to doing your job, it's really, really difficult. And I worry about just the health of all those people that support folks on our campuses.
Kimberly Jones: Oh, yeah. I think there's definitely been a lot of uncertainty, a lot of anxiety and fear, again, not just in TRIO but in the whole sector, because of all the challenges we've faced this year.
Jon Fansmith: Yeah. And related to that, because I think part of this, and we've heard different reports, that with the REFs, with the early retirements and the reduction in staffing, even more so maybe than these interagency agreements, that there just aren't the people, and I've heard this specific to TRIO, with programmatic expertise who are the people who career, apolitical, were just experts in administrative programs, that a lot of those people just aren't there anymore. Have you heard from your members just the kind of procedural issues of working with the department, even aside from all the other grant cycle things? And we've seen that in the financial aid space in a number of places, so curious if that's true in TRIO as well.
Kimberly Jones: You know what's interesting? I've heard concerns about it, but I haven't necessarily heard people actually having problems that were outside of the ordinary, if that makes sense. So there's a lot of concern. Now, if you talk to another member of my team who's more in touch with our community, they might tell you something entirely different. So I've heard concerns, but I've not necessarily heard an overwhelming amount of dust up because of things being gummed up. But again, that could be... Sometimes they don't tell you stuff when you're president, so that's my understanding.
Jon Fansmith: Sometimes, they don't tell you stuff when you're vice president too, Kim, so if that makes you feel better.
Mushtaq Gunja: Well, that's good. Regardless whether it's in education or it's in labor, we really just want these programs to be able to work, and if they're working well, that's excellent. Now, it looks like TRIO will be hopefully level funded going forward. Is that your expectation, Kimberly? And if there were places where you wanted to push for more or better, where might you do that?
Kimberly Jones: Oh, you always want more. No, so we have every expectation that once the final appropriations is passed, we will be level funded, and I think, John, you mentioned this earlier, in this climate, I think we recognize politically that's a win. The challenge is that the same dollar today does not buy what it bought last year or the year before, and so it definitely puts a constraint on programs as far as what they're able to do in terms of student services. Sometimes they're having to cut out college visits because they just don't have the resources to do that in the year with last year's money, and so programs are having to scale back in ways that are unfortunate. And so we're certainly... TRIO always asks for more money, because the need is very great and it stays great.
Jon Fansmith: I think that's one of those things where it's hard to explain to people, but there is inflation, there is growing need, and level funding is still a great outcome when there's a real threat, but how many more programs could you stand up, how many more students could you serve if you had the additional resources we know you need. So keep fighting the good fight. I would just ask too, I think we're getting towards the end. I see some people are dropping, but if there are people out there who want to help, I've seen some suggestions in the chat about ways you can advocate on behalf of TRIO, and I don't mean just with the federal government. Within your institution, with other things, what would you suggest? Where should people go look? What should they be reading? What should they be doing?
Kimberly Jones: Oh, that's a great question. Well, definitely please follow us, coenet.org and we're on all the socials. I think we're even on TikTok. We try to keep the community really informed about what's going on, and especially tap into... I think the best untapped resource we have is our six million college graduates that we've created through TRIO. It's only been in the last 20 years, I'd say, that we've done such a good job of really branding TRIO so students understand it's not just one program at one school, but you're part of a national movement. And so helping students understand that... Not so much for advocacy purposes, but it's important to me that when that kid graduates from eighth grade and goes to high school, that they know to look for the TRIO program, and the same thing when they get to college.
And even out in the workforce, I've often said and had it said to me, when you're first gen, you're first gen for life. And so even as you're moving into your professional career, you're probably the first one in your family who wears a suit and tie to work every day, who purchases a home, all of those sorts of things. And so finding those peers in your professional setting as well is something we're trying to cultivate for our alumni.
Mushtaq Gunja: Well, and our producer, Laurie Ernston, has dropped in the chat the coenet.org/takeactionnow link, so I think there are places, if you click through, that you'll be able to help support the effort. Kimberly Jones, it was such a pleasure having you on. Don't give-
Kimberly Jones: Thank you.
Mushtaq Gunja: We're going to have to have you on again, given the-
Kimberly Jones: Oh, yeah.
Mushtaq Gunja: You don't know this, or maybe you do. The number of questions we get every podcast about TRIO, about the effects of the administration's efforts on constraining what TRIO is, it comes every time, so thank you so much for all the work that you do. Thank you for being on, and, well, we look forward to having you on sometime again soon.
Kimberly Jones: Thank you, guys. No, I wanted to jump in. First. "Oh, we were talking about the appropriation." I wanted to jump in so bad.
Mushtaq Gunja:
I love [inaudible 00:57:27]. If you've got a minute, give us your thoughts on the appropriations. What's happening?
Kimberly Jones: Well, again, I don't know if I'd agree with John or Sarah, or actually, Mushtaq, I think I might agree with you. We might be digging in.
Sarah Spreitzer: Really?
Kimberly Jones: I hope not.
Sarah Spreitzer: I hope not?
Mushtaq Gunja: I'm thinking about changing my own opinion now.
Kimberly Jones: Well, the thing is, this is such a hot button issue. I don't think they're going to solve this quickly. I hope they do, but...
Mushtaq Gunja: I'm with you, Kimberly. Look, I haven't seen the Democrats coalesce so quickly around an issue. It took them a long time to figure out that they were fighting for healthcare on the last shutdown. This is clear, and for the lawyers out there, we probably need some sort of Vivid situation, and we've got a qualified immunity problem with our ICE agents, that they can't be basically held responsible, and DHS investigating DHS shootings, that's not going to work, but I think the administration's going to be dug in. Whether they can split up the six funding bills, and hopefully they will fund labor and ed and we'll split this and have a conversation just about THS and not all of them, but yeah, I'm worried.
Sarah Spreitzer: But I do think there's going to be a lot of hearings. I think the Republicans are calling for hearings. I think that they are, for the sake of a functioning government, trying to separate out the other bills.
Kimberly Jones: I hope so.
Sarah Spreitzer: I think you and Kim could be totally, totally right. We could be in for another long shutdown.
Kimberly Jones: No, shutdowns are ugly. Nobody... And I think, and I don't know this, I feel like I read somewhere that a senior Democratic appropriator said, "The problem is even if we shut down the agency, they still have all this money because of the Big, Beautiful Bill."
Sarah Spreitzer: Yes.
Kimberly Jones: So it's not as if it fixes things. So it's a problem of optics as well as just a practical problem of getting fixes in that provide more accountability.
Mushtaq Gunja: Well, friends, we will be together again in a couple of weeks. We will see where we are, and again, thank you, Kim, for all that you do and thank you for being on the podcast. And thanks to all of you who listened in or are listening later, are watching now, and we'll see you in a couple of weeks. Thanks everybody. Stay safe.
Sarah Spreitzer: Bye.
Kimberly Jones: Bye.
Jon Fansmith: Thank you for joining us on dotEDU. If you enjoyed the show, please consider subscribing, rating, and leaving a review on your favorite podcast platform. Your feedback is important to us and it helps other policy wonks discover our show. Don't forget to follow ACE on social media to stay updated on upcoming episodes and other higher education content. You can find us on X, LinkedIn, and Instagram. And of course, if you have any questions, comments, or suggestions for future episodes, please feel free to reach out to us at podcast@acenet.edu. We love hearing from our listeners, and who knows? Your input might inspire a future episode.
