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Mushtaq Gunja: Hello, and welcome to dotEDU, the public policy podcast from the American Council on Education. I am Mushtaq Gunja, along with my co-host as always, Sarah Spreitzer, Jon Fansmith. How are you guys?
Sarah Spreitzer: Great.
Jon Fansmith: Sarah's only great because she's out of the office.
Sarah Spreitzer: I'm out of Washington DC, and I'm not there for the traffic. Yeah.
Mushtaq Gunja: This is friends, the season finale of the seventh season of dotEDU.
Sarah Spreitzer: Only the seventh?
Mushtaq Gunja: Seventh.
Sarah Spreitzer: Are you sure?
Jon Fansmith: Only the seventh?
Sarah Spreitzer: Are you sure.
Jon Fansmith: Good God.
Mushtaq Gunja: Jon, Sarah, this is episode 159 in our seventh season, which seems-
Sarah Spreitzer: It's flown by.
Mushtaq Gunja: It has flown-
Jon Fansmith: And I just want to point out, I was there for number one, unlike the two of you.
Sarah Spreitzer: I wasn't on for the first one. Let's go back and listen to that episode now. See how Jon did.
Jon Fansmith: Yeah.
Mushtaq Gunja: Let's go back and listen to that episode now.
Sarah Spreitzer: They got that teed up, Jon. Hold on one second. Your hair was a lot less gray.
Jon Fansmith: Yeah, it really was.
Mushtaq Gunja: Okay. So brief overview of today's topics. We're going to be tackling international students, including duration of status and some inter-agency agreements in Section 117. Sarah, we're going to lean heavily on you for all of those updates. We're going to talk a little appropriations and what's happening on the Hill as the House has broken for recess. I think the Senate's about to go. Got to tackle a chaotic few weeks in the world of research, including OSTP's new report, a variety of court cases, a little bit more.
We'll close with a few predictions for the fall and tackle some of our audience's great questions, including maybe right now the first one, which is loyal listener Sarah Gast asked, "Where are we off on vacation next month?" Jon, you first. Where you heading?
Jon Fansmith: I am doing what I always do every summer, going to Cape Cod with family and looking forward to beach time and reading and quiet.
Mushtaq Gunja: Sarah.
Sarah Spreitzer: I am heading to the beach, but in the Outer Banks for August and praying that the Senate actually takes a recess and that it's fairly quiet.
Mushtaq Gunja: I'm off to the beach too. I'm off to Rehoboth. I'm going to try to-
Sarah Spreitzer: Oh, all three different beaches.
Mushtaq Gunja: Going to try to run into President Biden at the ice cream shop.
Sarah Spreitzer: Nice.
Mushtaq Gunja: If I do, I'll ask him about Section 117, Sarah, in your honor. How about that?
Sarah Spreitzer: Please don't. No one wants to hear anything more about Section 117. Well, you guys make fun of me about Section 117, but it's a pretty important issue that keeps on going.
Mushtaq Gunja: Oh, for sure. And we're going to talk about it in just a second.
Sarah Spreitzer: Okay.
Mushtaq Gunja: Hey, can we talk about duration of status first?
Sarah Spreitzer: Oh, first.
Mushtaq Gunja: Okay. So Department of Homeland Security published their final rule on duration of status, I think in mid-July, I think. Sarah, you're going to tell me, but I think it's effective September 15th of this year.
Sarah Spreitzer: Correct.
Mushtaq Gunja: It's a fundamental shift. I think some would say a seismic shift in how international students are admitted to the United States. It affects how long they can stay, how they can extend their applications, how much this is all going to cost. Sarah, tell us about this rule.
Sarah Spreitzer: Yeah. Mushtaq, this was a rule that we were expecting. It had been proposed at the end of the first Trump administration and then never implemented, never finalized. But it basically does away with what we call duration of status. So duration of status is a student comes in on an F or a J visa, and what has happened for the previous past decade, I think, is that you're allowed to stay as long as you're making sufficient academic progress in your education.
And so that means that you could come on a student visa and that you're staying to do your bachelor's. Maybe you're going to start a master's after you finish that bachelor's, or even all the way up to a PhD. You may take advantage of optional practical training, which is considered part of your education after you complete your educational program. And so what this final rule does is it is going to put a four-year limit on a duration of status on your student visa. And that's for an F-1, which is usually what our undergraduates have, or a J-1 visa, which is the visa that our graduate students usually have.
I think for many international students, especially for graduate students, that four-year time limit is going to be very difficult, if not impossible to make it work. I worry about prospective undergraduate international students because they're making an enormous investment in their education. They have to demonstrate that they can pay for all four years of their education. By putting a four-year limit on it, it means that they're not going to be able to take advantage of a study abroad program, a co-op program, or even the optional practical training program.
What DHS has put in place is after the four years, you have to ask for an extension of stay, which would be a new process. And we haven't seen how this is going to work, but the examples that were given in the proposed rule were things like, you get sick, you're unable to take your final exams. So therefore, you're going to ask for a two-week extension of stay from DHS, not like a one-year or a two-year delay to finish your studies.
If you get to the end of the four years, even if you're not finished with your studies, you're going to have to leave the United States and reapply for a brand new visa. This is also going to apply to our existing international students if they are not in the US before September 15th. Those that are in the US by September 15th can't leave the US because once they leave and try and reenter the US, the four-year clock will start. And then also the DHS has said in 2030, the four-year time limit will start. So even if you're in the US now, once you hit 2030, the four-year clock is going to start. But if you leave the US and reenter, then the four-year clock would start.
They also made some changes and put in some limitations on international students. You're not allowed to change major in your first year. You're not allowed to transfer between institutions, and you're not allowed to move from a higher degree program down to a lower degree program. So you can't move from a master's degree program down to a bachelor's degree program on the student visa. So a lot of changes. I think many of our international officers and our campuses are working to prepare for these changes.
Mushtaq Gunja: Sarah, can I ask just a couple clarifying questions?
Sarah Spreitzer: Of course.
Mushtaq Gunja: Because whoa.
Sarah Spreitzer: Yeah, it is whoa.
Mushtaq Gunja: Wait, so the period that our students can stay is four years.
Sarah Spreitzer: Mm-hmm.
Mushtaq Gunja: The plurality, if not the majority of our students who are seeking a bachelor's degree take longer than four years to complete.
Sarah Spreitzer: International students are actually faster than domestic students, but it's about 4.5 years.
Mushtaq Gunja: Right. And they can't change majors.
Sarah Spreitzer: Yeah.
Mushtaq Gunja: What?
Sarah Spreitzer: I worry about the fact that you're creating this second class of students because things that domestic students are able to do, changing your major, doing a double major that might take longer than four years. Doing a BA plus a master's degree program, or taking advantage, like I said, of a study abroad program or even an exchange program with another institution of higher education that may extend the length of your degree. They're just not going to be options anymore. And so I think prospective international students are going to be looking to other countries like Canada or the UK or Australia, where they can do all of those things and more and really take advantage of that education.
Mushtaq Gunja: One last question and then Jon, I want to get your take on all of this. One can file for an extension of stay, and you noted a couple of examples of things that DHS would say might be approved. You got sick during finals.
Sarah Spreitzer: Mm-hmm.
Mushtaq Gunja: I mean, do you have some sense ... Do we have a signal from the administration about how generous they'll be on the extensions of stay? I haven't been able to-
Sarah Spreitzer: Yeah, the only indication is in that proposed rule and the examples where they've offered ... And the fact that it's going to be a long process to go through the extension of stay. There are concerns about the impact that this is going to have on US citizenship and immigration services, USCIS, because they would be the ones processing these extensions. And they're already pretty slow on processing OPT and work authorizations for our institutions. And so there's a real concern that they're not going to be able to take on this extra work.
Mushtaq Gunja: Jon, did you have the same whoa reaction that I did when I first was reading about this?
Jon Fansmith: Yeah, no. And then I had the advantage of having Sarah go into even more detail and explain it and deepen the hole that it seems the administration's digging. Look, this is clearly very bad for institutions in the United States. It's clearly very bad for international students. The other thing we've talked about it a lot is international students right now ... I should say, students abroad looking to come to the United States are paying very close attention to these announcements. And if you are thinking about coming to the US, certainly for graduate programs, but also for a bachelor's degree, and suddenly the idea that you may not be able to complete what you started on what's a pretty reasonable academic pathway.
This doesn't allow a lot of flexibility for what is the experience of most students. It's yet another barrier to seeing the US as a valid option. And I don't think that's an accident. I think this administration has signaled in a lot of ways that they really want to limit the US as a destination for international students. It doesn't make any practical sense. It's self-defeating. It's sabotaging a pipeline of talent to our country that's existed for decades, but it's very much aligned with this administration's views.
Sarah Spreitzer: And Jon, to that point. This was mentioned in Project 2025. We saw limitations on the number of international students at campuses in the Compact, which circulated last year. I think it really is in the interest of this administration. They will say that they are still supportive of the best and brightest coming to the United States, but that they are ... They are going to narrow it very much because they want to limit the numbers.
Mushtaq Gunja: Hey, Sarah and Jon, practically speaking, given this four-year clock and given that we're in 2026 and that President Trump will not be in office in January '29. How long-lasting and how longstanding, how cemented is this rule? How much do our institutions need to ... What do we do now and how might we be able to-
Sarah Spreitzer: Yeah. So Mushtaq, Lisa Freeman in the chat just noted that this has been tried before. There have been times when the federal government has tried to limit student visas, and they pretty quickly find that it's really difficult. Our students are very much tracked through the student exchange and visitor program. I could see the administration perhaps backing off once they realize the economic impact. Remember, President Trump has talked in support of international students, especially those students from China, and that they often are paying the full tuition and supporting our campuses.
I think if we start hearing from people like developers, who are seeing money go out the door that otherwise would've been used to build dorms. Retailers and restaurants around college campuses that aren't seeing the business happening. I could see pressure to push back on this a bit. There were also people that proposed perhaps doing a five-year limit or a six-year limit. But I think it's going to ... That this is going to demonstrate that ... We're just going to not be attractive. We're not going to be competitive for attracting those international students.
Mushtaq Gunja: Okay. And our friends at NAFSA have put one of their forms in the chat. And I think writing your congressional reps on duration of status definitely makes a lot of sense. I'm sure ACE will be circulating the information about what to do here as well, but this seems like a big deal to be paying attention to. I'm sorry, you mentioned Section 117 earlier, Section 117, the reporting of foreign donor names and contributions. There was supposed to be a rule that came out, I think in mid-July. Seems like it's been delayed, maybe tomorrow. Does that sound right, Sarah?
Sarah Spreitzer: Jon's eyes glaze over when I talk about this, but this all kind of-
Jon Fansmith: Because you talk about it all the time, Sarah.
Sarah Spreitzer: It's the only thing I worry about at this point.
Mushtaq Gunja: If it makes you feel better, Jon, our eyes all glaze over when you talk about anything [inaudible 00:15:05].
Jon Fansmith: No. I now. That's fine. I don't care.
Sarah Spreitzer: Or when he talks about ... I don't know, something like loan limits.
Jon Fansmith: You want to talk about loan limits?
Sarah Spreitzer: No.
Jon Fansmith: Can we talk about loan limits?
Sarah Spreitzer: No, I don't. I don't. So 117, there's this legislation that's been hanging out there, the Deterrent Act, that I think that there's a big push to try and move it. And so I think a lot of what's happening on Section 117 is to try and support some of the legislation that's happening. And then also to support ... I think we're going to get into the inter-agency agreements that the Department of Ed has been signing with other agencies.
So Section 117 was moved under an inter-agency agreement to the US Department of State. A couple things have happened. One, 117. They finalized a new information collection request. They had proposed that they were going to collect individual names of donors, which is not in the statute, but they claim that they have the authority to do it. They have now backed off that, and they've said instead what they're going to do is they're going to release more details about donations or contracts with entities of concern. So they have a new website. It's foreignfundinghighered.gov. So foreignfundinghighered.gov, where they have been doing some neat charts to visualize the Section 117 data that our institutions have been reporting since the '80s. It's much easier to read than the spreadsheets that they used to publish.
However, the way that they're portraying some of the things is that ... They don't make it clear that this is cumulative data. So they have one number at the top about how much money institutions are taking from foreign sources. There's nothing to say this is over a 30-year period. They also have this list of entities of concern, which are from various agencies, like the Department of Defense, the Department of Commerce, and others. And for many of those lists, there's no ban from taking funding from those entities. Some of those entities were also not listed until say 2018.
There's information about institutions taking money from Huawei, which is a Chinese company which had ties to the government. Huawei wasn't placed on the banned entities list until 2018. But if you look at foreignfundinghighered.gov, you'll assume that we're still taking the money. So they said on July 29th, tomorrow, that they're going to release many more details about this entity's list and individual institutions that have taken money.
I think an indication of what might happen ... The Department of Justice last week launched an investigation against Harvard University on 117 through the State Department. And then also it's the Department of Justice, Office of Civil Rights, because remember there's the inter-agency agreement that moves OCR over to DOJ. And they are claiming that they now have information through Section 117 to demonstrate that Harvard has a Title VI violation because they were provided scholarships that were funded by the Chinese government for Chinese nationals.
So don't have a lot of details, but I thought it was really interesting that it's state and DOJ taking the lead as opposed to ed.
Mushtaq Gunja: Trudy asked in the chat, has the administration officially backed off on listing individual donors or we won't know until tomorrow?
Sarah Spreitzer: So they're still collecting the information now. When you go into the information collection request, you're required to put in individual names and they removed the box that you could mark to say, "I believe this information should remain private because of privacy concerns or because of proprietary concerns." That box has now been removed. So many of our institutions are reporting individual donor names and the department or the Department of State has that information.
We've argued about how concerning that is because we have anonymous donors, especially if it's retroactive, if those donors believed that they were going to be anonymous and they believe that they could be targeted by their government or by others for donating that money, there's a lot of security concerns.
Mushtaq Gunja: All sorts of reasons [inaudible 00:19:51].
Sarah Spreitzer: Yeah. Yeah.
Mushtaq Gunja: Jon, Sarah noted another investigation into Harvard. Any reactions to any of Section 117?
Jon Fansmith: Yeah. Look, I feel like I'm just reading another chapter in the same book, but this is more of this whole of government effort to come after Harvard. I think the thing that was interesting, and Sarah's sort of summary touched on this idea of what the government is alleging. They're taking kind of a different tack than they have in some of these other Section 117 investigations, that schools shouldn't be taking the money or who they're taking it from is an entity with hostility towards the United States.
In this one, they're actually asserting that this is a civil rights issue and that money was provided to Harvard by ... And they list a number of entities, which when you look at the list and the notice they file are charities, they are educational institutions. These are not the Chinese Department of Defense or whatever it would be. And then they're saying, "Well, look. They gave Harvard money. Maybe Harvard used this money to provide scholarships to Chinese students. And if they gave money to Harvard for that purpose, and if Harvard took that money and awarded it to Chinese students on the basis of being Chinese and no other criteria." Well, that would be discriminatory because you cannot preference or have a benefit for someone solely on the basis of race or national origin or other things.
There's no there, there though. This is just a list of assertions of what maybe happened. I think it kind of speaks to one of the big challenges of dealing with this administration. They've certainly identified Harvard as a target. They see, from whatever reason, the value in going after Harvard, and so they will continue to pile on these things. There's a lot of news that comes out. A lot of people who will see a press release and say, "Harvard's discriminating in favor of Chinese students." There's no evidence presented to support that. There's no actual clarity that that's in any way the case.
Normally, responsible governments investigate first, then make accusations based on evidence. Usually the accusation follows the evidence, not the other way around. This is a fishing expedition, and it's kind of part and parcel of other efforts we've seen. It's problematic. It continues to be problematic. It is not how the government should operate. I feel very bad for my friends and colleagues over at Harvard. That said, they've done a really good job of responding to a lot of these things pretty aggressively and pretty thoroughly. And I assume in this case it will be more of the same.
Mushtaq Gunja: Yeah. President Garber at Harvard last week said that he has no regrets about refusing to settle with the administration and characterize federal actions. It's unprecedented. All of government, as you noted ... Jon, all of government campaigned to punish Harvard for its perceived viewpoints. We're going to get to other ways in which the administration has been going after sort of ... Maybe has been doing some viewpoint discrimination, which I think is really important. I'm really happy though because it allows me ... All these instances are fodder for me for class, for evidence in this one. It's great.
Sarah Spreitzer: That's good, Mushtaq. Glad we can be helpful.
Jon Fansmith: That is the silver lining. Absolutely.
Mushtaq Gunja: Yeah. I have invited some administration officials to come to class, but they don't respond. I must have the wrong email address.
Jon Fansmith: Yeah, it's probably bouncing back to you.
Mushtaq Gunja: Hey, maybe I have the wrong email address because of all these inter-agency agreements that the administration's been signing. And so maybe I just have been sending it to ed.gov when I should be sending it to labor or something or state. There's been some movement maybe on the inter-agency agreement front. Sarah, you just mentioned ... Maybe the thing that I saw was that FSA staff started moving out of the Department of Ed and they're moving to some treasury building on K. I can't remember if that's an old ed building too.
Sarah Spreitzer: Oh, that could be the old OPE building.
Mushtaq Gunja: That's what I was wondering.
Sarah Spreitzer: Oh, my gosh. Memories.
Jon Fansmith: Although they tore that building down, I thought and built a new building. So it might be the same location. I could be wrong. No, FSA is moving into treasury offices that are shared with the IRS on K Street. Also, by the way, Mushtaq, that segue was brilliant. So this is why you are the host. That was a really great transition.
Mushtaq Gunja: It only took 159 episodes for me to try to figure out how to segue us from one topic to another. FSA moving. The House just approved a package, I think, trying to permanently codify some of these inter-agency agreements.
Sarah Spreitzer: All the inter-agency agreements, I believe.
Mushtaq Gunja: All of them. Sarah, Jon, what impact? How important is this?
Sarah Spreitzer: I mean, it was partisan. It was extremely partisan in the House. None of the Dems voted for the bills. None of them thought it was a good idea. And I think Jon's going to jump in and talk about ... The Senate is taking a very different look at the inter-agency agreements. And so definitely just messaging at this point, saying that the House Republicans support these efforts by the Department of Education.
Jon Fansmith: And Sarah's right, this is messaging. The House passed those bills knowing they have no future in the Senate. And in fact, as if to further reinforce that point, the Health and Education, Labor and Pensions Committee in the Senate is going to mark up a number of bills, including a few that would block some of these inter-agency agreements, including for offices like the Office of Special Education Rehabilitative Services, the Office for Post-Secondary Education, the Office for Elementary and Secondary Education. Big important offices that are really central to this effort to hollow out the Department of Eds.
So it's not just that the House did something to codify this knowing that they were unlikely to be supported in the Senate. It's that the Senate has now made abundantly clear that not only would they not support that, they want to move in the opposite direction. There was never going to be substantive legislation making these changes. And we've known that from the beginning. The administration has known that from the beginning. This is very much sort of part and parcel of this effort to promote the idea, but it's not going to make a fundamental difference.
The IAAs and the impact they are having, the shifts, not just the physical shifts of offices, but the confusion about the transition, who's responsible, how programs are administered. That is going to continue. And that's something that will probably continue throughout the rest of this administration.
Mushtaq Gunja: And as a couple of people have noted in the chat, I think that the House didn't pass into law the movement-
Sarah Spreitzer: Yeah, they stayed away from-
Mushtaq Gunja: Yeah, special education and civil rights. So certainly their intention is to do that. That's what the department has done and it has moved. The backlash in the Senate, especially around special education. I saw Patty Murray really railing against this and calling them as illegal. I think are really striking, for sure. Now, Amy in the chat asks, "Let's say that both houses flip. Any chance that any of these recent sort of lose to move some of the functions out of the department to other agencies might be paused? Or do we think this is going to happen in this administration, we just have to see what happens in '29 with a new administration?"
Jon Fansmith: You're not going to get the kind of legislation the Senate's proposing, even if you flip the House and you get majority votes in both chambers, you get past the 60 vote threshold in the Senate, whatever that is. The president's not going to sign those. So there's not going to be legislation that will further codify the statutory requirements or block the inter-agency agreements.
Support for students with disabilities is probably the area where there's been the biggest outcry and the likeliest area for action. You might see things in the appropriations process and the kind of blocking language we've seen Congress increasingly use with this administration to say, "Well, we don't want to directly buck the administration on an independent legislative thing, but we may block the ability of funding to implement these agreements or do other things."
So there is still the possibility ... And I don't think it depends actually on flipping any chambers to Democrats. There's been a lot of Republican support in these areas for putting those limitations in place. Special education rehabilitative services. Sarah's point is right. When that was announced, there was a huge pushback from the Hill in a very bipartisan way. I think OCR, given the reports that have come out about administrative priorities in OCR, some of the problems with the caseload and other things. That's another one that I think they're going to have a very hard time explaining why they should be given sort of a freedom and trust to implement the changes they want. So we'll see.
Sarah Spreitzer: And I know we're doing predictions at the end of this episode, I think. Even if we see one or both of the chambers flip, I mean, President Trump is not going to sign any of those priorities into law, anything that pushes out against his agenda. I think you see a lot of oversight hearings if they can happen and that they're likely to get pretty ugly as the White House pushes back on Congress's authority. Maybe slowing down some of the things, but I still think that these things are going to happen for the next two and a half years.
Mushtaq Gunja: Yeah, I mean the functions will get moved in this administration, but I think ... What I'm hearing from both of you is even with this current makeup of the Congress, very unlikely that the IAAs, the inter-agency agreements are actually going to be codified into law. And certainly if either both chambers flip. I mean that's [inaudible 00:30:37].
Sarah Spreitzer: Yeah, not codified into law, but I mean they're going to move the Department of Energy into the building. So who's going to want to take on the cost of putting everybody back? There's definitely some changes that are going to be harder to unwind and it's likely just going to be a different Department of Education.
Mushtaq Gunja: Yeah, yeah.
Jon Fansmith: I mean, one of the things that's so frustrating about all this is none of this is news. None of this was unpredictable or unknowable. It's one of the many little things that just sort of slip by. It's going to cost $215 million to move the staff who are currently at the Department of Education into other accommodations, other offices, and move other federal employees into that building. It accomplishes nothing, literally nothing. And it's a huge chunk of money that if anything is just adding further confusion and upheaval at a time when there's plenty of that to begin with.
This is not efficient, this is not productive, this is not increasing the effectiveness of these programs. Just spending a lot of money to try and make a point, while at the same time undermining the programs that a lot of people in this country rely on.
Mushtaq Gunja: I want to move us to appropriations, but before we do, just to round out the international section of this conversation, a couple of questions in the Q&A that I missed earlier. Amy asked ... Hi, Amy. "What is the impact on international students who come to the US for high school and then want to stay for college? How does duration of status affect those students?"
Sarah Spreitzer: I mean, it's the same thing. There's the four-year limit, so then they will not be able to move from a high school diploma into post-secondary education. They would have to return to their home country and apply for a completely new visa.
Mushtaq Gunja: And Layla asks, "Any idea how the four-year duration of status requirement applies to a school that's like a two plus two, two years for associate, two years for bachelor's, some sort of application in between? Is it four years for total, four years for each segment of the program?"
Sarah Spreitzer: So that's one of the questions, Mushtaq, that we're going to be asking. USCIS has put out some FAQs and some short information about the impact on existing students. One of the questions we keep hearing is, what happens to the two plus two, especially given the limitations on changing majors? But then also there's the question of, what if you master out of a PhD program? You decide not to finish the PhD and just leave with your master's. How would that be impacted? I think a lot of this DHS is going to have to work out because I don't think that they're immediately thinking of the academic structure.
Mushtaq Gunja: That seems right, given that they don't seem to have a full grasp on how our students actually navigate their way through intuitive groups. Let's-
Sarah Spreitzer: And the last thing I'll say, Mushtaq. Sorry, there's one comment in the chat about applying for an extension of stay. I don't think those extension of stay as they've defined it will really only be a couple weeks. We're not talking about an extension of stay to complete a brand new degree on the same visa. They've made that pretty clear.
Mushtaq Gunja: Is that right?
Sarah Spreitzer: Yeah, we'll see.
Mushtaq Gunja: Okay. Well, we'll definitely keep an eye on this. We'll revisit if we know more from ... Especially if there's more clarity from DHS on the duration of status questions. Let's do appropriations. So Jon, funding expires, I think under this budget on ... I think the fiscal year starts on October 1st.
Jon Fansmith: Yeah.
Mushtaq Gunja: Is that right? House broke last week. They passed ... Well, I think all 12 appropriations bills were reported out of the House Appropriations Committee. I think they passed three of those bills on the floor, I think. And then they passed a top gap that would extend current funding levels until December 4th, and then they got out of Dodge. Where are we? Where's the Senate and what should we be looking out for appropriations as well?
Jon Fansmith: Yeah, so the Senate usually is behind the House, in terms of passing appropriations bills, and it's also worth noting, and I'm sure a lot of our viewers/listeners know this. The bills the respective chambers pass are really markers for what the negotiations will be. And they're worth paying attention to, in terms of specific programs as indicators of where support may be, in terms of where we're going to land. Generally, because the Senate cannot pass bills that are partisan, it requires some accommodation. So you tend to see the House being lower or higher if Democrats are in control. And the Senate sort of being the moderating, it brings it back in.
So the passage of bills are at progress. The bigger thing is where you started, which is the end of the year funding. The government has to be funded in some measure by the start of October 1st or we enter a shutdown. This was a political bill. It doesn't sound like it. They said we're going to pass what's called a continuing resolution, an extension of the deadline, where you just fund the government at ongoing levels. And we're going to do a clean ... What's called a clean CR till December 4th. So basically say, "We're just going to keep funding everything at its existing levels till December 4th."
And they offered that with the understanding that Democrats would oppose that. They wanted to get them on record as opposing an extension of funding. Why would Democrats oppose it? Well, Democrats wanted all of this policy language we've been talking about, that's been in the previous appropriations bills that ties the administration's hands on things that they can do. That asserts Congress' authority, which frankly, a lot of Republicans want too, and the final bills will include, but they wanted to say before the elections. Like, "Look, we tried to do something about this. If it happens, it's the Democrat's fault."
The problem of course is that the House is a very different chamber than the Senate. The Senate needs bipartisan compromise. Majority Leader Thune knows that he can't get a clean CR through the Senate. They would need to address democratic concerns. So he's actually been put in a very difficult place by his Republican counterparts in the House. There's also a reconciliation bill that the House passed. Kind of confusing. It would cost 130 billion or so to spend $95 billion or so. There's farm relief, there's disaster relief, there's new money for the military, as part of the cost of the Iran War. That is also a bill that is not likely to be well received in the Senate. And particularly with Lindsey Graham's passing, he was replaced on the committee that's responsible for this by a fiscal hardliner who wants to see any reconciliation bill fully offset, doesn't want to increase the deficit.
There's a lot of cross-chamber currents that they're just running head into. And the common denominator there is just the politics of it. Senators have a very different set of political concerns than House members. What's it all going to mean? We're going to have another messy appropriation cycle, where they probably will do CRs probably into December. We'll see what the midterms look like. That tends to change the dynamics a little bit. If you see a strong Republican showing, that will strengthen their hand, not compromising on the changes they'd want to make. You see a strong democratic showing. They'll have an upper hand in negotiations because the longer they wait, the dynamics, the votes shift in their favor.
A lot still to be determined. Honestly though, right now, the bigger difference is not between Republicans and Democrats, it's between House Republicans and Senate Republicans.
Sarah Spreitzer: But will they do their August recess, Jon?
Jon Fansmith: Well, I mean the House is already out.
Sarah Spreitzer: I mean, they're already out, but the Senate for some reason thinks ... There's people saying that they should stay in session to pass the SAVE Act.
Jon Fansmith: And are you seriously asking me if that's going to happen?
Sarah Spreitzer: No. I mean, you never want to get between a senator and August recess. I don't think that's going to happen.
Jon Fansmith: There's like 28 of them are running for reelection too, this cycle. Yeah.
Sarah Spreitzer: Yeah.
Mushtaq Gunja: No, the SAFE Act is definitely just an added complication to all of this because it's not going to pass. And yet President Trump just will not let it go. Every House member has to go run, it just feels like it's a very complicated time. Messy appropriations seems right, for sure. If I'm reading this all correctly, Jon. There's no agreement ... Forget the sub-parts. There's no agreement on a top line number. And that top line number is the most important. It's the starting point. If you don't have that, then you can't really have anything after that.
Jon Fansmith: Right. And it's worth saying the appropriation staff ... And they're not necessarily unique, but appropriation staff are in some ways a little bit different than our counterparts in other committees. They work very closely across party lines. They are very smart and technically sophisticated and experienced with these programs and this process, which is an enormous and complicated process of constantly moving thousands of parts.
And so there is a background machine that is operating that allows them ... When the leadership level decisions and courses fall into place, to pretty quickly shift and accommodate that. It's a annual kind of amazing feat of achievement, given the enormity of tasks they face. So there is something there to say there's a stability and structure that underlies all this. But we have a top level negotiation that at this point is very unclear. We do it every year. It can be done, it will get done. It's just there will be shifts in dynamics that are a little bit hard to predict at this moment.
Mushtaq Gunja: One last question on appropriations before we move us to research. Thomas in the chat asked, "Are there any rumors or insight on how the Senate will address the Pell shortfall?" And in that vein, what did we see in the discussions around the House as it relates to anything education? Anything we should be watching out for?
Jon Fansmith: Well, I'll just stick with Pell. So just backing up even further, the president actually proposed fully funding the Pell Grant program, a permanent fix to the funding for the Pell Grant program, eliminating the shortfall both this year and out through the budget window of 10 years. The House came back and offered something far short of that. What they proposed was instead ... We'd eliminate subsidized staffer loans for undergraduate students, the loans that your interest on which is paid while you're in school, and use that money to functionally close the shortfall for the remainder of the current fiscal year, fiscal year '26, and all of fiscal year '27.
So it's about a year and a half patch, but then you immediately go back into shortfall on FY28. It is taking a benefit away from low-income students to very temporarily solve the problem. We certainly don't think that is a sufficient response, it falls short of what the administration's asked for, it falls short of what certainly a lot of members on both sides of the aisle would like to see.
Are there rumors about what the Senate would do? There's a million rumors about what the Senate would do. There are two sort of different challenges here. Appropriators, I was just praising. Hate it when authorizers, the education committee folks make changes to laws they don't have to fund. Appropriators are the ones who have to find the money to do it. They're put in a really tough place to make those changes to fill a hole that's over $130 billion over 10 years. It's not nothing.
That said, if you look at the membership of both the appropriations committee and the education committees, there's a lot of crossover. Susan Collins, a longtime chair or ranking on the education committee, chairs the appropriations committee. There's some really powerful advocates for Pell on both sides of the aisle on the appropriations committee. It's well understood the importance of that program. And then again, we're in a midterm election year. It is a hard thing to do to tell seven plus million families that they can look forward to less financial aid next year, as they're thinking about what they're doing and then ask for their vote.
I think the Senate has generally tended to be more supportive financially of these programs. I think we'll probably see a proposal that looks closer to what the administration has than what we've seen from the House.
Mushtaq Gunja: Well, nothing's going to happen probably in August. We'll come back in September. We'll give you the latest on-
Sarah Spreitzer: Don't jinx it, Mushtaq.
Mushtaq Gunja: Sarah, if something happens-
Sarah Spreitzer: If you say nothing is going to happen, that means something's going to happen.
Mushtaq Gunja: Well, Jon said the Outer Banks. I'm going to be in Rehoboth for a week. Sarah, if anything happens, you'll get on from the Outer Banks and we'll [inaudible 00:44:32].
Sarah Spreitzer: Of course.
Mushtaq Gunja: Hey, let's talk research. Where to start? Well, let's start with OSTP and Science: A New Golden Age. They published a report last week. Was it only last week-
Sarah Spreitzer: No, it was last week.
Mushtaq Gunja: That focuses on the administration's agenda when it comes to research. I mean, I think the White House plans to steer roughly $200 billion toward artificial intelligence and toward individual scientists and away from funding universities as institutions. Researchers would theoretically receive this funding directly. Sarah, tell me, tell us.
Sarah Spreitzer: Well, Mushtaq. I think we should ... Yeah.
Mushtaq Gunja: Sarah, also half the people feel hopeful about the Science: A New Golden Age, because we've been a little bit of a [inaudible 00:45:33].
Sarah Spreitzer: Look, they're paying attention to science, so that has to come for something. But Mushtaq, you didn't explain what OSTP is. So OSTP is the ... You know the White House like the back of your hand, but the OSTP is the Office of Science and Technology Policy in the White House. So they are the president's science advisors. And yes, the Director Michael Kratsios released this report, which we knew was coming called Science: A New Golden Age. It's based on a report from many years ago that was Science: The Endless Frontier.
And basically talks about a whole shift in how we are funding research with federal tax dollars. I would say there's nothing shocking in this report. Rather, it's a lot of the things that we've been talking about since last year and things that have already been tried at many of the research agencies. This idea that you're going to fund individuals, rather than institutions is something that has been discussed since the beginning. One of the criticisms or concerns is if you fund an individual, what facilities are they going to use if they're not at an institution of higher education? And also if that individual, 100% of their time is working on the grant, are they just not a faculty member or how are they supporting themselves beyond just doing the research? There's a lot of questions.
One of the things in there is they want to do these new X-Labs, which they've proposed at the National Science Foundation, which is the idea that these would be freestanding away from an institution of higher education, and you could go and do fundamental research there. The problem is the funding is being taken from the existing directorates at the National Science Foundation.
When I've been thinking about this report, I don't immediately say these are all horrible ideas. I think that there's definitely things that we can try, but to stop the system that we currently have for funding research at the expense of trying all of these new ideas is just not a good plan. I mean, definitely run these as a pilot program, get funding from Congress to try them, but don't do it at the expense of the existing structure or the existing projects that we have.
Mushtaq Gunja: Jon, when I saw you in the hall, I had a very sort of similar reaction to that last point that Sarah made, which was, "Look, maybe a little bit of money on an experimental site basis to be able to try out a couple of these things. Sure." If you were going to fund some very important cancer research, you might want to fund a place or a group of people that could work together to try to solve some problems. Maybe you'd have some equipment there. Maybe you'd have some folks that actually could report out on the grant, like grant administrators, because you can't just give the money out with no reporting.
And now all of a sudden that looks like maybe the best place to do that might be a university, where you get to be able to have existing equipment, experts both within field and then across fields. I just don't understand this, Jon. Make me feel better.
Jon Fansmith: I don't think I'm going to make you feel better, Mushtaq, other than to say that I think you're a very smart person and I think you've appropriately diagnosed the issue here. The current research infrastructure we have built over decades is an enormous bargain for the American people and for the taxpayers. And there's a reason why we don't concentrate all of our research in national laboratories, given the enormous cost of trying to replicate what you get across hundreds and thousands of campuses at much lower rates.
There's also a reason why we don't just throw the money out in small dribs and drabs to people who may or may not be able to deliver because we actually want to pay for results. We want to have a hand in ensuring that the best science is pursued and it's pursued by people who can accomplish the research. I feel almost ridiculous sort of restating things that I think two years ago we just took as basic assumptions.
There was a line in the New Golden Age report that talked about putting money to bring, "Hobbyists and tinkerers," into laboratories to work with academic researchers to, I guess, inspire them with creative non-traditional approaches. I mean, you have done this, Sarah certainly does. You talk to university researchers, they are people very open to ideas. They're constantly exploring the boundaries of their fields and thinking in really interesting and creative ways. I don't think they're hostile to new ideas. What they need is the kind of support to accomplish the work that those ideas generate.
To Sarah's point and your point, there are some of these approaches ... Some of them have even worked, given the nature of what they are. The idea of moonshot projects. We did it with getting to the Moon, the traditional moonshot project. If you have things in which you want to do that, find the funding for it, but don't gut an existing highly productive, highly efficient, cost-effective system that has made us the envy of the rest of the world to take experiments that most of which are not going to pay off.
Sarah Spreitzer: And Jon, there's also this concern that there's this misunderstanding about the difference between fundamental research and applied research. Having inventors and tinkerers and hobbyists come in, it's more on the applied side. A lot of times our researchers are doing the fundamental research to answer a question, it's not expected to create the new iPhone. It often helps result in those types of things, but we're talking about very basic science here. And so to put everything in the applied bucket, to say that we're going to take it away from the infrastructure that we've already built up, it's going to end up doing a lot of harm to the existing system.
Mushtaq Gunja: I take these points. Jared asked an excellent question in the chat. "How has this Golden Age report been received on the Hill? How much can the administration just snap their fingers and make this happen and redirect this $200 billion to [inaudible 00:52:24]?"
Sarah Spreitzer: Yeah. Director Kratsios was testifying, I believe, before the House Science Committee last week and got a lot of questions. And I think the Ranking Member Lofgren has expressed some real concerns. But the concerns are about the fact that they're taking from existing resources to do some of this stuff. So I would say the administration doesn't actually have a lot of support in Congress in reshaping these programs that they've already authorized. I mean, remember the CHIPS and Science Act was only five years ago, so that created a host of new programs that are supposed to be moving along.
But the administration, as they've done in other things, is just kind of moving forward, especially as Congress funds the programs that they don't want to see funded. They're shifting funding over to fund the priorities that this administration is pushing forward. So like the X-Labs at the National Science Foundation, they're all coming from the existing directorates.
Jon Fansmith: And we've talked about this before. Congress keeps responding to things the administration does by closing the loopholes and tightening the limits. That said, there are big gray areas in the law. Often a lot of these laws sort of rely on the understanding that an agency will interpret them in good faith and attempt to implement on the basis for which these were passed and signed into law.
So there are things Congress can do and will do to limit the administration's ability to disrupt what they understand is so valuable to our country. But there's still going to be a lot of flexibility the administration has to shift funding and to do other things that will rely on yet another iteration of Congress stepping in to block them. It's to Sarah's point, the administration is generally a step ahead because they are not following the norms of their precedents or paying much attention to even the outcomes that their actions are causing.
Mushtaq Gunja: Angela in the chat asked an excellent question, one that I was sort of wondering about too. Office of Management and Budget put out their uniform guidance. We've talked about this quite a bit. How do those changes interact with this Golden Age?
Sarah Spreitzer: Yeah. I mean, I would argue that they kind of go hand in hand. The ability to terminate grants and reprioritize funding would support many of the things that they want to do in this new OSTP report. One of the things the uniform guidance talks about is pushing out funding solicitations much faster, with a quicker turnaround to encourage individuals perhaps not just at institutions of higher education to go after.
So I think that they are very much together, but you don't ... You don't have to do both together. They're both pushing forward these new ideas of how to reshape the federal scientific enterprise. And again, some interesting ideas in there, but don't do it at the expense of what we already have in place, that's been doing a good job for the past, what, six, seven decades? Let's maybe try some of these things. If it's not broken, why are you trying to fix it?
Mushtaq Gunja: The uniform guidance period, comment period closed. I think last count, number ... Jon, you'll know. [inaudible 00:56:01].
Jon Fansmith: Four-hundred and ninety-six thousand comments.
Sarah Spreitzer: But That's not-
Mushtaq Gunja: And only-
Jon Fansmith: Don't buy the hype, Sarah.
Sarah Spreitzer: There's arguments about this, specifically among the statisticians about the numbers.
Mushtaq Gunja: Really?
Jon Fansmith: But it's worth noting, the same-
Sarah Spreitzer: It's probably closer to about 55,000.
Jon Fansmith: No, it is not. That is not true.
Sarah Spreitzer: Oh, my God, Jon.
Jon Fansmith: It's definitely not true.
Sarah Spreitzer: I can send you the studies. I can you send you the studies.
Mushtaq Gunja: Well, if you want to get the answer to this question, Sarah will be doing a special podcast [inaudible 00:56:34].
Sarah Spreitzer: Yes. About why it's only 55,000 comments.
Mushtaq Gunja: Either way, either tens or hundreds of thousands of comments, friends. Jon, anything interesting that we have heard as a result of all of this or are we just going to have to see how this goes?
Jon Fansmith: Look, the comments are overwhelmingly critical of the proposals. The other thing, and we often talk about these things in the higher ed context. They are from the broad spectrum of America. There are law enforcement organizations that are weighing in to say, "This will have a disproportionate negative impact on our ability to secure training grants and equipment and to do community policing." All of which get a lot of federal funding to support those efforts. There are employers talking about the challenges this will cause in getting programs that are federally supported to employ people in fields that are difficult to hire for or retraining workers in areas that have been economically hard hit.
You just run across the board of the 54,000 comments that OMB has made available from the initial batch so far. It really is a very wide and pretty powerful argument. And what we have seen now is more and more Republicans and Democrats on the Hill saying, "Ooh, this is really bad and we are hearing from people about it. And the coalitions in opposition are not narrow issue coalitions. It's not about woke. It's not about these other things, the administration of search." It's really pretty fundamental rewriting of how the federal government supports America contrary to what the laws pass to do these programs, are designed for.
Sarah Spreitzer: I think it's been interesting, Mushtaq, that Senate Republicans are starting to talk about this. They had the OMB deputy up for a hearing, and there were pointed questions specifically from Senator Tillis, who talked about the DOGE efforts and how he then had to explain to his constituents why that work was being done and why they took it so far. And I think it is a bit of the same thing. The impacts are going to be very deep, and this is not just some minor tweaks to uniform guidance.
I often talk about the fact that ... The first thing I start with is this is going from guidance to a regulation. Previously it was guidance. You were encouraged to follow it, but now it's going to regulate how every single federal grant making agency is going to act. We only had 45 days to comment. We asked for an extension and it wasn't granted by OMB. The plan is still to implement it by October 1st. That means the final rule, whether it's 55,000 or half a million comments, OMB is going to have to respond to and finalize the rule by September 1st. How fast are they going to do that? And then what's going to be lost in that process?
Mushtaq Gunja: We're a little short on time and I'll just note, Sarah, I think this was a very eventful week. It came to all things research, not just the Golden Age. But Senator Tillis, other senators starting to I really question some of the substantive cuts that were made to research. There was a note in the chat about the screwworm, certainly measles cases are up. There's a whole bunch of things that are happening in public health that are all ultimately connected to research that I think are really ... Make this a really fraught time, I think, for the administration. And then last week it came out that the administration was indeed using keywords to cancel grants, using words like diversity, which caught up a whole bunch of other types of-
Sarah Spreitzer: Biodiversity.
Jon Fansmith: Right.
Mushtaq Gunja: Exactly.
Jon Fansmith: Biodiversity, yeah.
Mushtaq Gunja: And this was no small thing. The University of California system has been in a lawsuit with the administration over some of these canceled grants. Huge amount of money at stake, two billion dollars worth of grants in California were canceled based on these keyword searches. The administration admitted finally that this was indeed what they did last week. And this is not the last we've heard of this. I mean, this is blatant sort of viewpoint discrimination from a First Amendment point of view.
Plus on top of that, it looks like the grants that were canceled were centered in blue state, in states in which there were two democratic senators. I mean, this was a really tough week actually from an evidentiary record from the administration. A lot of things came out that are not great.
Jon Fansmith: Just to be clear, Mushtaq. The administration officials admitted as part of the court cases that ... It wasn't just that it appeared to occur in states with two democratic senators. It's that they targeted states for denial of funding because they were blue states that didn't vote for President Trump, which gets into a whole series of other issues of the problems, in terms of these cancellations.
Mushtaq Gunja: Well, and just to go back to the beginning on the uniform guidance, all the things that make me the most worried about it is the real ability to have grants be terminated at the convenience of some political. That is not the way that we've done science. It's peer review and then actually making sure that research meets the grant objectives is fundamental to everything that we've done. I'm hopeful, just to turn it a little bit, I'm hopeful actually that the conversation is shifting a little bit that way. Sarah, you had one quick question and I wanted to say one last thing to wrap up this-
Sarah Spreitzer: My trivia question?
Mushtaq Gunja: Yeah, go for it.
Sarah Spreitzer: For you? Okay. Well, I am sitting on the beautiful campus of University of Kentucky. Mushtaq, what Sandra Bullock movie featured a University of Kentucky sweatshirt as a major plot point?
Mushtaq Gunja: Oh, boy.
Sarah Spreitzer: And you're going to have to go way back to the early '90s.
Mushtaq Gunja: Speed? The Net?
Sarah Spreitzer: Oh, my God. You're right. You're right.
Mushtaq Gunja: Sarah, I know so little about movies. I think that's the only Sandra Bullock movie I've ever seen.
Sarah Spreitzer: That's so funny. And that was what I took when I saw the University of Kentucky bookstore. I was like, "Oh, yeah. In the movie Speed, Sandra Bullock has a University of Kentucky sweatshirt." Thanks for letting me ask that question.
Mushtaq Gunja: Hey, friends. Thank you all for joining. Thank you for the hundreds of you who joined this live recording, for the many more that are going to be listening afterwards. We really appreciate coming. Please rate and review the podcast. And if you have any suggestions as we enter season eight, if they bring us back, please just email us at podcast@acenet.edu. You guys are the best. I hope you have a very restful summer. I hope we don't have to do an emergency podcast in August, and we will see you all in the fall. Thanks, everybody.
Sarah Spreitzer: Thanks, Mushtaq.
Jon Fansmith: Thanks, everyone.