Appropriations, Visas, Accreditation ... and It’s Only September

Mushtaq Gunja: And welcome to a new season of dotEDU. This is dotEDU, the public policy podcast from the American Council on Education. John, am I out of practice? I feel like I'm out of practice. 

Jon Fansmith: We've only been away for a month, and you're super rusty Mushtaq. 

Sarah Spreitzer: It's… It's been 6 months. 

Mushtaq Gunja: is, People. Season 8 of dotEDU. I'm here with my co-host, John Fansmith, Sara Spreitzer. Hello, John, sir, how are you? 

Sarah Spreitzer: I'll let John take that one. 

Jon Fansmith: I've been better, Mushtaq. I think we've all been better. 

Sarah Spreitzer: I'm doing great! 

Mushtaq Gunja: Jon is referring to his illness. He is a little bit sick, John, you hanging in there? 

Jon Fansmith: I'm… I am… I am hanging in despite Sarah's, dismissiveness towards my well-being. 

Sarah Spreitzer: Do you know how many meetings I've had to take for John in the past 2 days? So many. 

Mushtaq Gunja: 2. 

Sarah Spreitzer: What, 2? Actually, it was, like, 2. But I'm gonna complain about them nonetheless. Cause I have my own meetings. 

Mushtaq Gunja: And Sarah, my friend, I heard you have shoutouts to many dotEDU listeners. 

Sarah Spreitzer: So while John has been sick, and for those listening at home, I just did quotation marks around sick. I've been traveling all over and meeting, dotEDU fans, so I wanted to give a shout out to, Cassie at the University of Iowa that I just met at a meeting in New York City, who told me that she makes her, intro class to higher ed policy listen to us.  The Norwegian Embassy, which seems to be big fans of John, I don't understand that one, and my alma mater, Beloyd College, which I was just back to for a reunion, and, they are big fans of the podcast, too, so… 

Sarah Spreitzer: Yeah. 

Mushtaq Gunja: Well, welcome to… thank you, all of you, for listening, and welcome to the new listeners, to this podcast. If you're new, we break down higher ed policy as it happens. We try to help you understand what it means for your campus. I try to keep JON and Sarah from killing each other as we go through this. 

Sarah Spreitzer: Almost never. 

Mushtaq Gunja: Okay, today we have three big topics. The appropriation cycles, funding, and how federal agencies are sort of engaging on all things research. We're going to have a section on international updates, and especially duration of status and visa changes. And then we're gonna spend some time on accreditation and the proposed changes there. Thank you, as always, to all of you for sending in questions in advance. We got a lot of questions about accreditation. And quite a few on, tax-exempt status as well, so we'll close with a lightning round of other items, including that, maybe protect college sports, maybe we'll talk a little bit about Section 117, depending on… on time. Before we get started, Sarah John. It has been a month and a half since the Secretary released her call to action, and we haven't had a podcast since, actually. No looming deadline regarding that request for now. We plan to dive into that call to action a little bit later in depth this season, but anything that you want to say, sort of a top line on that proposal from the Secretary? 

Sarah Spreitzer: Obviously, no. 

Jon Fansmith: No, I… I think there's a lot to say, right? I'm not sure at this point, there's a lot to say that this audience hasn't heard, but… You know, the top line really is if you look at what the compact was, this, you know, multi-page detailed list of requirements versus the call to act, you know, has a different name, it has a different approach, it's this very clear statement, well, there's no carrots, there's no sticks, you know, we just want you to identify what you're doing in these areas. You know, it's certainly a positive change from what we saw on the Compact. I'll also say it's… Kind of asking institutions to just tell their government what they've already been doing, and that's kind of the conversation we've had a lot with college and university presidents, you know, if you're a campus that hasn't looked at affordability or quality or, you know, a whole range of other issues and aren't really working in those areas as, you know, you have been for decades to constantly improve in those areas, well, great, you know, I don't think there's any harm to this, but… I don't know that it necessarily, is moving the needle for a lot of campuses, either. 

Sarah Spreitzer: But there's also not a lot of details about how to respond, right? It's a letter. It got a lot of press, so I don't know if it was actually sent specifically to every single institution. The Secretary asks for schools to respond by the end of the year. But there's no deadline. It also doesn't tell schools how to respond. I think it encourages them to put the information up on their website. But it's unclear if the Department of Education is going to follow up, or compile it, or point out if institutions have done it, and as John said, these are things that our institutions are already talking about, so I think if an institution puts it up on the website, they put it up on the website, but I'm not sure if a student or a prospective student is going to go and look for it specifically. 

Mushtaq Gunja: Let's spend a little bit of time diving into that in a later episode. Would love to sort of explain fully what it is and, you know, how we've seen our campuses maybe potentially responding. Let me turn this over to appropriations, the CR, federal budget, outlook. Maybe we can start where the money begins Capitol Hill, right? We're staring down the start of FY27, once again. Back where it's, Groundhog Day. Congress is relying on short-term continuing resolutions to keep the doors open through December. There's a fierce debate over spending priorities, must-pass riders, overall funding trajectory for higher ed. John, will you… let's start with you. Will you break down the mechanics for us, right? The House moved its bills. Senate seems to me to be waiting for a top-line agreement. Where do negotiations stand right now? Where are we? 

Jon Fansmith: Yeah, so backing up one second, you mentioned it, we're in the short-term CR through December 11th. Couple meaningful policy pieces added to that, which I know we're going to talk about in a second, but… Congress basically buying time so that they can go campaign. Senate, we're expecting, is going to announce by the end of this week that they're going out until after the election. House has already left. Goal is really, you know, negotiate at the top lines, and this is a pattern we've seen for multiple years now, the house. You only need one chamber rule, or one party, control in the House to advance your bills, so you tend to see bills that reflect whichever the majority party is in the House, their priorities. We've been pretty happy, frankly, with House appropriations for, again, second time around essentially, you know, not taking a lot of the administration's requests for substantive cuts to programs of importance to students and institutions. So, they've moved their bills. Senate, generally, of late, has been waiting, to introduce their bills. Often, they don't at all. Until there's some agreement with the House on top-line levels. Always worth noting for folks, the staff, the appropriations staff in the House and the Senate, they are talking constantly, they are gauging where their members are, they are prioritizing and understanding, sort of where the lines will be. Senate has to be bipartisan, so it tends to be, in this case, higher levels than you'd see in the House controlled by Republicans on funding. We don't know exactly where, but a lot of this will wait. Other dynamic, of course, it's an election year. We get into the lame duck, we get into this… If one party is going to take control of a chamber that they're previously in a minority, do they have leverage now? Does it be of them to wait until they're seated in making the decisions? What does that look like? There's a lot of dynamics that's going to play out after the elections before December 11th that's going to help whether we look at another short-term CR into the spring, as we've done a few times in the past, or something that will be more comprehensive. I think probably, and Sarah, you can tell me if I'm totally off-base on this, I think probably the numbers are pretty close to being set. There's gonna be bigger divides on the policy side, and that's gonna really await a lot of input from the elections and how things shift there. 

Sarah Spreitzer: Yeah, I think, I mean, I think that there's probably numbers out there, and that they know what they are, but, you know, everybody's waiting to see what happens in the midterms. And I do think that, like, it's interesting that they did it until December 11th, because usually there is this panic, right? And they push it right up to October 1st, and that's when we've been in the shutdowns, and so Congress actually thinking ahead to, let's kick this to post-election. I don't know, I thought it was interesting that they actually could come to agreement on that. 

Jon Fansmith: I actually liked, I mean, usually we get these delays into December until later in December, because it's like, you want to leave for the holidays? Well, you gotta, you gotta come to a resolution. December 11th is a little bit, like, after an election, everybody's gonna wanna get out of town early, so, like. 

Sarah Spreitzer: Right. 

Jon Fansmith: A couple weeks earlier, and go home, you know? 

Sarah Spreitzer: Yeah, maybe it's too hopeful to think that they could actually come to some sort of agreement before December 11th. That's what I'm hoping for. 

Mushtaq Gunja: No, that's crazy. Sarah, John, the Democrats win, let's say they take back one or both houses of Congress, what does that mean for that top-line number? I mean, why are we waiting to see what happens in the midterms? I mean, is this just so that people don't have to campaign on the bills, or there's too much work to do ahead of time? I mean, the Republicans will still control both houses. Between October and December. Between November 6th, I guess, and December 11th, so… what… what are you hoping… what do you think is gonna happen there? 

Sarah Spreitzer: I mean, I think that it strengthens the Dems' hand, right? If they take back the House, they're going to be able to kind of push for some more things if the Republicans win, then perhaps they push to make more cuts, or it's kind of more simple, right? They just kind of go with where they were before. But, yeah, I don't see a lot of big changes happening. I think what'll be interesting is I think it'll be more on the policy rider side, where a lot of the big discussions will happen, because you see the Dems already wanting to kind of push more against the White House on some of the decisions that they're making about how, say, the U.S. Department of Education is spending money. I could see them negotiating and wanting to have stronger language that would, like, limit the agencies from doing some of the actions that we've seen them taking. ​

Jon Fansmith: I would agree with that. I think probably change in control of either chamber in the elections won't do a lot for the numbers. And we've seen… the last few years, the numbers have been pretty consistent bipartisanly, right? Generally modest changes around top-line funding, programmatic funding, and it seems, you know, there's a pretty good bipartisan working relationship among the appropriators of both chambers, and they've been able to, I think, really in a tough environment, do pretty effective work under all the constraints that are imposed. I think Sarah's point is right. If Democrats take one, you know, House or the Senate, or both. Or frankly, if Republicans retain control, right, there's a political dynamic that influences how much on the policy side they'll expect to see in the final bills, and whether waiting to pass or even going into a shutdown adds a different dynamic to what's on the table. I think probably it's just more a matter of degree. You'll see a little bit heavier hand for whichever party looks ascendant coming out of the elections in terms of the policy things they layer on the bills, but I wouldn't expect to see, like, suddenly there's $40 billion more for education funding if Dems win, or something like that. 

Mushtaq Gunja: Okay. And what are the policy riders, what are the policy points that you are… you are looking for? You're looking toward? 

Sarah Spreitzer: Well, we got language in there from the Senate, that blocks the Office of Management and Budget from implementing the uniform guidance and all the changes that were proposed in that, which we talked about, I think, before we left for the break. And so that's at least on hold until December 11th. Now we do have a problem where we've seen the agencies attempting to, implement pieces of what's in the uniform guidance. So the National Science Foundation put out some changes to their grant processes, which talked about implementing the proposed changes. The Department of Ed has a proposed rule out for changes to the EDGAR system, which doesn't reference the proposed uniform guidance. But definitely incorporate some of the things from there. And then, Mushtaq, I don't… I think this was for the lightning round, but we were going to talk about the rumors about an executive order around the National Institutes of Health, or NIH, and creating a new political board that would make final funding decisions, which is something borrowed from the proposed uniform guidance. And just this morning, or maybe yesterday, Susan Collins, the senior appropriator in the Senate, put out a statement saying, we put blocking language in there for a reason. And if the agencies are going to try and implement this, you know, they're not following the intent of Congress. And so, again, the White House, you know, they're very interested in pushing their authority, and so I think some of the policy writers would probably be around that, and I think, depending on if it flips, they're probably going to be more pointed. We've seen Senator Murray, who is the Senior Dem on appropriations, very worried about the actions being taken by the Department of Education, and so I could see her putting in additional blocking language, like even blocking, you know, the interagency agreements or something like that. 

Mushtaq Gunja: One thing to say before, John, I turn it over to you. I mean, I do want to make sure we sort of note that, the blocking, at least pause on the uniform guidance, and the uniform guidance, of course, is the OMB sort of rules really dictating how federal grants and contracts come out, and you'll recall, when we talked about this 3, 4, 5 months ago, I mean, I think it's fair to say we were a little freaked out by the… by the reach and the possible politicization. So this on hold, big win, I think, and a good thing for, for our colleges. It gives us a little bit of breathing space. John, are you reading that the same way, and what's next? 

Jon Fansmith: Yeah, it's worth… there's sort of the… both sides of that coin, right? It is only a delay in that rule going forward right now until December 11th, so you can say, look, this is… I mean, you hit it. We were freaked out then, and we remain freaked out. This is really, really bad policy the administration's trying to push through. Really disruptive, really harmful, not just to colleges and universities, but to our, you know, technology research, every aspect of what the federal government does to support basic needs across this country. You know, a million things, right? The flip side of that coin, though, is the reason it's even there in the first place is because Susan Collins was just as upset as Patty Burrett was about what the administration was doing, and a lot of Republicans picked up that, too. So, this is not an ambiguous statement by the Congress. They are saying, we know what you're trying to do. We don't want it. We don't like it at these efforts across the agencies, as Sarah was talking about. Congress is very clearly reasserting some of their authority here in no uncertain terms, and they're broadcasting it to the White House, saying, you need to abandon this effort, because we're not going to let it happen, and I think that's the other piece here, right? It's, Congress has been playing chess with this administration. The administration suspends funding in some ways, so then they add language in the next appropriations bills, limiting their ability to shift funding, so the administration says, well, we're simply going to slow down funding or change the terms or the conditions, and so I think we're going to see a lot of language and these final appropriations bills really look like that are going to further curtail. They're going to look at what the administration's done and add even more explicit barriers to the administration doing that. That, again, hasn't prevented the administration from doing those things, but it arms, you know, the people going into a court and saying, look, Congress and Supreme Court keep saying, you defer to the will of the, you know, legislative branch. Well, they made it clear, the executives acting contrary to stated statutory requirements. So it's… it helps a lot, but it's this constant back and forth, we say, year after year now with this administration. 

Sarah Spreitzer: But I also think, to Mushtaq's question about what changes after the midterms is how closely does Congress want to align itself with the White House, right? Even if, you know, they retain control, but there's some key seats that are lost that the White House was supporting there may be this kind of more willingness to be like Senator Collins and speak out and say, we're going to tap the brakes on this and Congress is going to reassert its authority. And so I think those are some of the things that we're watching for post-election. 

Jon Fansmith: Yeah, can we just… I mean, I know we don't want to get into politics too much, but I actually think that's a really fascinating thing, right? You know, the House has its own dynamics, we don't have to go into that, but the Senate's really 6 seats that are going to determine control, and you've seen all 6 of those senators in some very or candidates, I should say, not senators, in some very public ways, not aligning with the administration through this campaign cycle, we don't know, is that if they're re-elected, Republicans hold the Senate, is there a drift back towards the administration or priorities post-election? Or is this asserting an independence that they think is politically necessary? There's a lot of calibration that elections provide clarity to, and I think right now, everyone's kind of weighing the tea leaves and doing the analysis, and for our issues, it's going to have a really big impact. It's just, you know, not to profess my own ignorance, but I think there's a lot of uncertainty here that anyone who tells you we know exactly what's going to happen is it's probably misleading you. 

Sarah Spreitzer: I feel like this was a plan by you, Mushtaq, to shift it towards, kind of crystal balling the elections. Just so that you could… you could talk about the election. 

Mushtaq Gunja: Well, you know I'd love to talk about the election. I know! I'd love to talk about elections, but I'm not… I'm not going to, I don't think, but, no. We'll leave that for a few. 

Sarah Spreitzer: Okay. 

Mushtaq Gunja: I… no doubt will… we'll… we'll do some predictions. I will… just one last question, or one last, maybe, observation. Would love your reactions here. I, can't remember a time or a month in which, sort of, federal funding on grants was so much top of news. I mean, I just feel like I'm… every day, I see another story about the Trump administration admitting that it's used keyword searches, you know, to cut off grants, especially in California, or this recent sort of, a story that you alluded to, Sarah, about NIH and some of the funding priorities there, and a little bit of potential conflict between OMB and the NIH director. John, to your point, you know, it's an interesting question about, like, whether some of these candidates, these Senate candidates, are distancing themselves from the White House on these issues. Are they doing it for politics? Are they doing it because they really care? Are they gonna stick through with it afterwards? I will say, this doesn't seem like the most… like, the type of issue that's gonna resonate the most with voters, like, you could split on tariffs, you could split on the Iran war, you could split on, like, all things gas prices, you can split on affordability, like… I actually sort of think that these Senate candidates and the Senators themselves really do want to assert a little bit more… more authority over… over this funding, and I… I'm hopeful that, that past December 11th, you know, once we get a full budget, that… that the uniform guidance will be blocked in some way, shape, or form. 

Sarah Spreitzer: But Mushtaq, I think there's a through-line from everything this administration has been doing since coming into office on January 20th, 2025, where you've seen this over-politicalization of things that we all took for granted that you know, whatever was going to happen, the peer review process or the merit review process was not political, right? And I think that this is them continuing to try to assert White House or executive authority control over these agencies, and so it's not just research funding, right? We're also talking about funding for community grants. Or, money that's coming into communities, through HUD, right, through transportation. And I, I keep thinking about Senator Tillis from North Carolina, you know, he was primaried out by the White House, and so he has… he's lame… he's a lame duck, and he said to, someone in OMB during a hearing that he heard a lot about the dosh cuts, and the impact on the U.S. taxpayer expecting a certain level of service from their government, and you know, how is that related to them trying to control through all the changes in uniform guidance? These grants that are meant to be funded, you know, through the peer review process, through the merit review process, or through a non-political process that isn't pitting red states against blue states. 

Mushtaq Gunja: Sure. 

Jon Fansmith: Yeah, I mean, I think your point is correct, Mushtaq, but I think Sarah's really got it right here. I mean, what you hear from people is the chaos, the destruction, the uncertainty, and we've been talking about this since day one, but, you know, some of the other groups that have really weighed in, one of the reasons I think you see it in the news cycle so much is you know, it's red state municipalities saying, look, if there's block grant funding that's being upheld for these reasons, or there's uncertainties of funding sources that we rely on, you know, I saw the quote from the head of the, I forget, Council of Mayors National Organization, who said, that money for me is paving roads, that money for me is building schools, that money for me is maintaining a water supply. I don't want to know whether I can access that funding or not. I don't want to know if my budget explodes because of a political fight I have no stake in. And I think a lot of members of Congress hear that message really clearly, and what they want to go back and tell their constituents, doesn't matter, right, left, whatever, is that, look, we're gonna even this out, right? Like, the things that you count on your government to do, the basic nuts and bolts of it, the, you know, the compact that we've had, the political aspect of this is now carving into the everyday experiences of people that, isn't winning anyone any points, and nobody's on board for this ride, so I think, you know, we're the beneficiary of that, because we've been one of the biggest targets in that area, but it really has spread well beyond even our concerns. 

Mushtaq Gunja: No, I, I appreciate both those points. I think that's, that's well said. We'll continue to monitor all things, of course, funding and flows. I'm sure we'll be talking about this again in a couple weeks. I want to turn us to international higher education and our international students, the end of duration of status, perhaps. So, on September 15th, Department of Homeland Security's final rule ending open-ended duration of status took effect. Replacing it with fixed admission terms for our F1 and J1 visa holders, right, paired with ongoing scrutiny over Section 117, and dropping visa numbers like American colleges are, I don't know, we're navigating a complex situation at the moment. I mean, Sarah, walk us through what are the practical impacts of the September 15th rule? What does shifting from duration of status to something fixed 2- or 4-year admissions periods mean for our international students and our PhD students, our research scholars? 

Sarah Spreitzer: So, Mushtaq, I'll start with the good news first. We actually have a nationwide injunction on the final duration of status rule, in a suit that was brought forth by our friends at NAFSA, the Association of International Educators. So, this rule was proposed back in September. We submitted comments along with many other organizations and institutions back in September. It proposed to go from a process that we have now, where the school decides whether or not the student visa should be extended by saying. The student is making satisfactory academic progress, they need to do another year, or that perhaps they're transitioning into a master's degree program, or a PhD, or another program, and therefore the student visa remains valid. The Department of Homeland Security proposed to limit, the length of a student visa to 4 years, and that's for an undergraduate, a master's degree student, or a PhD student, or even an MD student, and I should say, up to 4 years. So basically, you get an I-20 from your institution of higher education saying, we've admitted this student to this program that should… is expected to take this long. So for a master's degree program that takes 2 years, your visa would only be for 2 years. And DHS has said that they want to do this so that they have more touchpoints with the people that are coming here to be students, but our international students are also tracked through the Student Exchange Visitor Program, in which you have to report, you know, that the student has showed up on campus, that they've enrolled at your institution, whether or not they're transferring, whether or not they're actually, changing their majors. All of that information is already in the hands of DHS. So, there's a lot of concerns about how this is going to impact international students. For our current students, they are kind of grandfathered in. The four-year period doesn't start until 2030, but, if they leave the United States and re-enter, then when their visa is stamped for their re-entry, the 4-year period starts. It also impacts prospective students who are thinking about doing a degree, and with that 4-year limit, you're gonna have to be really, really careful and kind of on top of it to make sure you're going to graduate in time. The rule also, shrinks the period of time that an international student can stay in the U.S. after their period of study. Currently, it's 60 days, which is really important, especially if a student is transitioning over to optional practical training or a work visa, like an H-1B. It's going to shrink it to 30 days. And so again, DHS is saying that they think that this is needed in order to keep an eye on these students, or to understand their purposes of being in the United States. What's going to happen is we're going to lose a lot of international students, because international students have to demonstrate for their purpose of their visa that they can pay all 4 years or 2 years of their education. They're not allowed to work, it's a non-immigrant visa, they're only allowed to be here to study. And I think if you're making that type of financial decision, or life decision, right, you're not going to want to take the risk that your visa policy is going to run out. How are your visa policy is going to change mid-studies? 

Mushtaq Gunja: Sarah, can you talk us through the nationwide injunction? What were the grounds for the suit? And, you know, how, 

Sarah Spreitzer: Is this because I'm not a lawyer, Mushtaq? I feel like I'm in class and you're quizzing me. Well, Sarah, you know I've been trying to get you to enroll at Georgetown Law. 

Sarah Spreitzer: I know. 

Mushtaq Gunja: Beautiful. 

Sarah Spreitzer: Isn't it enough to that I know it's a nationwide injunction? I will say, we were really happy it was a nationwide injunction, because you know this, Mushtaq, a lot of the cases, when they've been granted injunctions, it only applies to the people that have brought the suit so there were concerns that would only apply to a certain number of institutions, and then it would be very confusing, right, for international students entering the country, and so it is nationwide. My understanding is, obviously the government is appealing. They're asking that the nationwide injunction be lifted. The next hearing, I think, is next week, it's unclear whether or not something could change with the injunction. And the grounds, for the suit, was that, basically, it was APA grounds. They did receive a lot of comments. There is concern that the comments were not addressed fully, that stakeholder engagement wasn't, wasn't taken. Yes, the Administrative Procedure Act. So, you know, we're hopeful that the injunction will continue to stay. We'll, we'll see. 

Mushtaq Gunja: Yeah, the APA, dictates that there's a certain process that must be followed before a rule can go into effect. And, you know, the idea here is that that process wasn't followed that's an easy and table-stakes sort of, set of legal arguments. Then we can get to the substance and whether they're substantive problems as well, so… Right. 

Sarah Spreitzer: Yeah, I'll also say, though, Mushtaq, there's a whole bunch of other things happening in the world of international students. We have a proposed fee on H-1Bs, which will impact our graduating international students, because, you know, the $100,000 fee that was announced through an executive order that was thrown out by the courts, and so then DHS is proposing to raise the administrative fee on an H-1B to, like, $103,000, with all of that money then going into some sort of slush fund that can be used by Department of Labor, State, and DHS. For various things. That's usually problematic. We had some changes to, CPT, which is Curricular Practical Training, which is John's favorite program, which actually didn't go through a proposed rule, it was just through a broadcast message, and I think people are considering litigation on that.  I mean, immigration is one of those issues where, for the past handful of administrations, a lot has been done on the executive side, because Congress just hasn't done any comprehensive immigration reform. And so all of this is going to be tested in the courts. 

Mushtaq Gunja: you know, Sara sort of, framed this, and I think probably rightfully so, as the government sort of saying, oh, well, there may be some incidental effects of, like, international students not coming and or staying, but John, it feels like that's actually precisely what the what the administration wants. I think they want fewer international students, I think they want fewer international students staying. John, is that your read? And where's Congress on that question? 

Jon Fansmith: You know, so I… it's… it's not my read. The administration's been pretty overt in saying that publicly, right? That they… they do not value, either the cultural or educational or financial contributions international students make, and they see international students participating in our institutions as, at best, taking away a seat for an American student, and at worst, you know, bringing in viewpoints and perspectives that are hostile to American viewpoints, right? And so, take them at their word, right? This is something they would very much like to see fewer international students. And, you know, Sarah's rundown, as always, is really good and really comprehensive. You know, she went across 4 or 5 different areas where the administration has sought to make it. Not only harder for international students to come here and stay here, but very clearly as message to students who are considering it there's no guarantee you'll be able to get here, there's no guarantee you'll be able to complete your education if you stay here. There's certainly very little assurance that if you love what America as a country has to offer you, and you want to bring your talents here and study, and learn, and then become an American, and work and produce for this country, that that path will be open to you, and so… When you have that situation, international students, I mean, this is… they're relocating their lives, they're making huge scambles on their future it makes America a significantly concerning place to consider, versus if you want to stay in your home country. If you want to go to a place like Canada, or the UK, or Germany, or frankly, China or India who are rolling out the carpet for these students, because they see the talent drain, that we are inflicting on ourselves as an opportunity to catch up with us. So, you know, the numbers have borne that out. I think, Sarah, we've already seen the visa applications again for this year are way down. We'll see the final numbers in another couple months about enrollment, but… I would be shocked if we didn't have another pretty significant decline in new international student enrollments as a result. 

Sarah Spreitzer: But, you know, John, I think it's part of the overall… administration's plan to just reduce overall immigration, right? Like, because they… that's what they've really been clear on, right? We no longer accept refugees, we no longer accept asylum seekers, we've gotten rid of temporary protected status, we're making it harder to get H1Bs. So, you know, on one hand, I don't want higher education to feel totally, targeted on this. I think that we are also caught up in just overall immigration numbers. I think that is a real goal of this administration, and they are going to make it as hard as possible for people to come here. And somebody just said, Jill Alan Murray, from NAFSA just pointed out, you know, faculty are leaving too, because they're being  hit with not just the visa issues, but also, problems with federal funding. And Mushtaq, you mentioned Section 117, which is… you know, the foreign funding reporting requirement to the U.S. Department of Education, there's a lot that this administration is also doing to discourage international partnerships for faculty, and so they're making it harder not just to partner with places like China, but even to partner with, you know, John's fan base in Norway. You know, it's harder and harder to do that, and that all goes back to kind of this America First policy, which was put in place on January 20th, you know, we don't need to be looking outside the United States. Everything needs to be kind of internal-looking, and so… our institutions are being hit, I think, on a lot of different sides, which is really making it harder for them to kind of do anything on a global stage. 

Mushtaq Gunja: Congress on this question, both where are they now and, where might they be, sort of, post, post-January, with potentially a flipped Congress, and I guess I'll… I ask because, I mean, even within this administration, I feel like there are sometimes sort of competing factions for how much, how much international student, enrollment we want here. And frankly, even within the president's even within the president himself, I feel like there's sometimes conflicting ideas. I mean, I recall the interview with… it was either with Sean Hannity or with Laura Ingraham, in which he was pressed on why he's gonna have… why he hasn't, like, cut off all Chinese… students from coming to the U.S, and he said, well, that would have a very significant impact on our… on our college's budgets, which I guess I appreciate. I wouldn't have minded if he'd said all the other things that we know that… that students bring, but, so I… and that's why he wasn't going to completely cut off, you know, international enrollment. So I don't know, given that there's, like, a conflict maybe even within, within parts of the administration. I mean, do we have an opportunity here for Congress to step in? Sarah, you're shaking your head no. 

Sarah Spreitzer: I'm shaking my head no, because I think that the, you know, two major players within the White House, Russ Vogt and Stephen Miller, are very united on this goal to reduce overall immigration. I also think, you know, tomorrow, President Xi Jinping will be in Washington, D.C, to the President of China, to meet with President Trump. And the last few times, there has been bilateral discussions. China has brought up the issue of Chinese students in the United States. And that was when President Trump made his last comment about how he wants to see more Chinese students coming to the U.S, but the policies don't really reflect that. So, my guess is it will come up in the conversation again, but we're not gonna see any real policy changes, and I think with Congress. I think they are the ones that are kind of focused on the affordability issue for U.S. students, accountability, all of those other things, and I think that there's just less of… you know, there's just less of a focus on international students. Now, I will say Senator Durbin, who unfortunately is retiring after this year, he headed up a congressional resolution act to, try to force the administration to withdraw duration of status. I think that there's one in the House, too. We're not expecting it to go forward. Because, obviously, the president wouldn't sign it into law. But yeah, I just don't see a path forward with Congress. 

Mushtaq Gunja: John? See it differently at all, or is Sarah basically right? 

Jon Fansmith: I mean, the easiest thing to bet against in Congress is immigration reform, right? It's been overdue for 40 years, and the politics are so incredibly difficult that you need, essentially, one party overwhelming control, a filibuster-proof Senate to get something substantive through, and… And, you know, I think maybe we might see in the next Congress some of these things that Sarah was pointing out, where the executive branch, these, you know, kind of manipulating that gray area, things that aren't in statute, so they can raise visa fees, they can put new limits on how long the student can stay here, and I think those are the kind of things where there might be some…  bipartisan interest in saying, no, no, you know, we don't… we don't want to push that that far, right? Like, we can accept reasonable limits on an international student, but they need to be reasonable, and maybe quantifying or qualifying some of those things in statute, that seems like the sort of thing where we might be able to see action. That's pragmatic, and that's reasonable. But the idea of a broader, sort of more thoughtful approach to how do we best advantage in America, and they really interconnect the global, you know, workplace where every talented student who goes somewhere else is a loss for us. Yeah, I don't… I don't see that happening anytime soon. 

Mushtaq Gunja: Jarrett Cummings in the chat jokes, which will… is it a joke? Which will happen first, immigration reform, HEA reauthorization, or the bills winning the Super Bowl. I think I put my money on the bills. I added that last one. 

Jon Fansmith: Sarah, what would you think, Bill, sort of… 

Sarah Spreitzer: I was gonna say, will we be alive for any of those things? Probably not. 

Mushtaq Gunja: Hmm… Let me turn us to accreditation. So, I mean, accreditation serves as the peer-reviewed quality assurance mechanism, right? It unlocks, among other things, it unlocks Title IV eligibility. Department of Education has proposed rules tying Accreditation recognition to institutional policies around free speech and workforce outcomes. We are, what, the NPRM for accreditation dropped in August. The comment period ended, John, is it yesterday? 

Jon Fansmith: Did it end yesterday? I'm not sure entirely. I think we tried to get our… we filed our comments yesterday. We tried to get them in ahead of the deadline, so others could look at them. 

Mushtaq Gunja: I did end yesterday. Okay. 

Sarah Spreitzer: No one else knows that it was yesterday, John. This is your topic. 

Mushtaq Gunja: Like, hey, Sorry, give him a break. 

Jon Fansmith: Poor man. They're compiling on in the comments. Yes, it ended yesterday. Sorry, everyone. 

Mushtaq Gunja: Okay, John, let me ask you, let me… let's get… let's set you up with an easy one. What's the department attempting to accomplish here with these proposed accreditation rules? 

Jon Fansmith: Sorry, I just got dragged in the comments. Your question is, what should people know about our, the accreditation rulemaking? 

Mushtaq Gunja: What's the department trying to accomplish here? 

Jon Fansmith: What work? 

Mushtaq Gunja: And what were our comments? How about that? We can do that. 

Jon Fansmith: Yeah, no, what were they trying to accomplish? That's a setup for getting me in trouble, Mushtaq. The department's viewpoint, and this is coming out of the campaign, right, where accreditation was a surprisingly consistent issue of the campaign through the Trump election campaign. That they believe the accreditation process has gone astray from its purpose, that far from being sort of neutral arbiters of institutional quality and partners and institutional improvement, that they are driving, particularly around the issues of diversity and other things, a progressive agenda on institutions. That they have failed to perform their quality assurance roles sufficiently, that they're insufficiently focused on student performance and outcomes. And so, to take the department at their word, their goal was to try to strengthen a creditor's responsibilities by being much more explicit as to what the federal government expects the creditors to do you know, I've said this in many cases, not a surprise. I think their criticisms are unwarranted, and I think probably, not probably. I think they do not reflect the reality of the situation, both in terms of what a creditor's roles are, and the, really meaningful impact that creditors have had on institutional performance. Frankly, accreditors have been far ahead of the federal government, which has a lot more authority and power to make changes in working with institutions to get improvement.  And then I think we see the other problem with this. So the administration proposed a number of different things. I'm not going to go into all of it, it's a pretty expansive role. There's a lot of areas. There's some areas that we see very positively, right? They did a number of things for institutions that make it easier to… switch accreditors, or be, accredited by multiple accrediting agencies to have that process be more seamless, to allow for a little bit more fluidity in identifying an accreditor who aligns with your mission and your organization, that's all to the good things we've been asking for for a long time. Frankly, things that I think the accreditors, for the most part, have been very receptive to, and have in some ways been constrained by earlier federal rules in doing.  The flip side, of course, is that all of these new requirements that are being put into place by the department  go way beyond what is not only appropriate to ask accreditors to do, but way beyond what the law allows. The law is actually incredibly explicit. I saw our producers just dropped our letter into the comments. I would suggest you read that letter for lots of reasons, but if you only read one part, read the section where we block, quote, the statute that says that the Department of Education cannot put requirements on accreditors that are not already enumerated in the law, that's what this regulation would do, and it's in the areas of attesting to your policies around intellectual diversity, attesting to policies, barring consideration policies around diversity and other things. All things where you may have a viewpoint as to what's appropriate, but where very, very clearly, Congress never intended the Department of Education to make that an element of reviewing the merits of an accreditor. So, there's lots in there. Like I said, there is some good… most of it is very bad. Most of it is an attempt to just very simply federalize accreditors who have always been  you know, essentially independent, as an effort to drive politically driven motivations into the accreditation process and systematize those. Do we think our comments and what I expect will be an overwhelming course of critical comments is going to change the final rule to look very different. I don't. They've been really… Open throughout this process about what they believe their views are, and frankly, their… great reluctance to incorporate other viewpoints into that process, so I think we'll see a final rule that reflects what they've said all throughout, unfortunately, but then I also think… as we've seen time and time again, it will go to the courts, and the courts will have a say, and I think in this case, black letter law is pretty, pretty clear and binded. 

Sarah Spreitzer: Hey John, I actually read the comments, because I was preparing for you not to be on this podcast, and I thought it was really interesting that we spent time talking about the entire negotiation process. And the fact that, as you said, it was kind of already skewed, that they were going to get what they wanted, and not really a true negotiation. 

Jon Fansmith: Yeah, and we've gone into this before when talking about this, but every administration plays a few games with negotiated rulemaking process to stack the decks a little bit in their favor. This is a few degrees beyond what we've seen from any other administration in terms of who was on the committee. You know, some really very prominent representatives of accreditors and institutions whose voices weren't at the table, either at the table at all, or as primary negotiators. And then some statements outright from the administration at the beginning that they would use their kind of overwhelming authority on the consensus process to essentially say it's our way or the highway, and we've predetermined the outcome. It's… it's remarkable, really. And you're right, Sarah, it's… it's… This is a process in which, you know, the train is running directly on time. It's not gonna be… 

Redirected, despite the fact that the law and the public say otherwise. 

Mushtaq Gunja: John Hilary in the chat asks, is the,  Is negotiator rulemaking also subject to the APA and those sorts of legal challenges? 

Jon Fansmith: Yeah, and so one of the things here, it's worth noting, the administration has followed the Administrative Procedures Act. They've followed their own rules for rulemaking. What they've done is, you know, really, I think it's fair to say, manipulated those rules in such a way. Nobody except me ever wants to talk about the rulemaking process, but I will just highlight the one thing, which is the department has a seat at the table as a negotiator. For regulations that are agreed to at the table to be essentially required to be in the final version, there has to be consensus. Consensus is unanimity, it's not majority rule, it's not supermajority, everyone has to say yes, and the point the department made in opening these negotiations was, we have one vote, we can deny consensus. If there is no consensus, we are free to write the rules the way they want, so we either agree to what we say, or we're going to do it our way anyway. And that's within the regulatory process at the Department of Education. It's a messed up process. But they're following the process. So, on APA grounds, there certainly might be some challenges as to whether they're following the spirit, and spirit of the law, but in terms of the letter of the law, they've been compliant. Now, violating the law in terms of their statutory authority is a whole other matter, but… 

Mushtaq Gunja: The department does need to, now that the comments are in, they do need to grapple with the comments and, address them as they make their final rule. And so, because we haven't seen what the final rule is, we can't… I mean, we don't know what the challenges might be, but we'll have to see, you know, to what extent did they actually look at and deal with the comments, which leads me, I guess, maybe to the last point here, which is. If I'm looking at the master calendar correctly, and this is the calendar, of course, that sort of dictates when… when rules can go into place, I think, the department needs to get this final rule, promulgated by November 1st, so that it'll be in effect by, what is it, like, is it June… June 1st? 

Jon Fansmith: July 1st. 

Mushtaq Gunja: July 1st, so… that's really soon. Especially since comments were finalized, yesterday, or the day before, tomorrow, or something. 

Sarah Spreitzer: And they have AI. 

Jon Fansmith: No, you're not wrong, but it's also important to remember the department had consensus, in part because of the process I talked about coming out of it, so… They are, and they will tell you, they are bound by the consensus reached at the table. That is what the rules require. The comments like ours will talk about the merits of some of the conclusions they've drawn to, you know, legality of some of the proposals they have, you know better than I do, Mushtaq, from being on the department side of this. There have been all sorts of explanations as a level of attentiveness paid to comments, and sometimes we've looked at ones where, you know, it looked like they would have spent about 20 seconds per comment reviewing each comment. There's not really a strict litmus test as to what, you know, giving due considerations to comments looks like in practice. So, yeah, you know, I think… I think this one is pretty baked. You might be some tweaks they've been thinking about themselves that would fall within the sort of allowable discretion they have, but no, consensus gives them a pretty big club to say, we're gonna go with what we have. 

Mushtaq Gunja: No, for sure. I just am heavyside, because I think of the hours that our old friends… that my old friends at the Department of Education and the Office of Post-Secondary Education, you know, the amount of time they spent reviewing every comment, and then, like, categorizing, and then trying to figure out the right ways to be able to respond to them, and… I mean, it was… it was painstaking. I guess this was before AI. I don't know. I'm keeping an eye on the clock. I want to do one in maybe a quick-hit sort of fashion. I want to turn us to this topic that I referenced earlier that has gotten sort of a lot of play, which is tax-exempt status. So earlier this month, the Trump administration released a proposed rule that would give them power to strip a school of their tax-exempt status. Department of Treasury, IRS, I think it was September 3rd, issued this, this rule. I mean, and this proposal reaches not just, to sort of our, our elite undergraduate institutions, but, I mean, to private K-12 schools, all colleges, universities, professional schools, trade schools, you know, and they're seeking potentially to disqualify based on, not just admissions practices, but other sort of things that might be happening on campus, for this idea that our campuses, our institutions are, are using race in an impermissible way. Sarah, what do you… what did you see there? 

Jon Fansmith: start… one quick qualification, this applies only to private non-profit institutions, right? So, a lot of trade schools are for-profit, they don't have non-profit status, and public institutions are entities of the state, generally, so there's a little bit of, you know, there's some, on the margins, some areas around that where public institutions might… Depending on… anyway, not worth going into. Overwhelmingly, this is about private institutions. Sure. The issue… this is one of those ones that's tricky, and it's, you know, maybe we'll come back to this when we have more time. The language of the proposed rule That treasury, in and of itself, is relatively benign. If you read, it essentially says if a nonprofit organization, in this case only… again, it's not all non-profits, it's just non-profit higher education institutions, K-12 institutions, educational private entities, right? 

Mushtaq Gunja: Right. 

Jon Fansmith: If they are guilty of discriminating on the basis of race contrary to law then they should lose their tax-exempt status. And there is some precedent here, right? One institution, the only institution I'm aware of that lost its nonprofit status on the basis of discrimination, Bob Jones University, decades ago, as kind of the exemplar here, that this has been applied in a way that you know, created a standard that I think most people have historically said makes a lot of sense and is an appropriate use of the tax code, right? So you say, then fine, right? You know, our institutions are not illegally discriminating on the basis of race. That's illegal under multiple other federal jurisdictions. It would subject you to sanction by the Department of Ed, right? It's illegal, illegal is illegal is illegal, right? The problem, of course, is the people who are interpreting what illegal discrimination looks like, especially in an educational setting​ this administration has used, opinions in, you know, the Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard and UNC case, to essentially greatly expound on the idea of what discrimination actually means, and they've tended to push that, even where the courts have not backed them up, and so they act in advance of a legal decision, they act in advance of an investigation. So I'm suspending money to Harvard, right, on the basis of, you know, how they're handling of anti-Semitism on campus and other things so, the idea of, you know, barring or eliminating or revoking nonprofit SAS because of discrimination is inarguably a valid one. The problem is the people making the interpretation have been very public and very clear that they see an ability to weaponize this new tool to compel institutions to meet their definition of what discrimination is, one not supported by the law, one not supported by the courts. Because it is, again, a politicized version of what they'd like to see, rather than what the law actually requires, or what the law seeks. And so you worry a lot about giving this administration that authority. There's a reason, post-Nixon, really stringent barriers were put in place on what the administration, president and vice president are barred by law from calling location of tax-exempt status. Because we do not want to weaponize that, the impact for an organization, particularly a college university, is enormous. The financial impact it would cause, the, you know, repercussions for that school. And it's a unilateral decision within that agency. So, it is a real risk. It is not something to be downplayed. It is also very, very unlikely to pass any sort of legal review and scrutiny. It goes so far beyond the idea of what has previously been put in the statute around this that I think it'd be an easy one for courts to push back, but you know, we've talked again and again about the Trump administration's utilizing a whole-of-government approach in the higher education space, and this is another one, right? It's not just state, it's not just ed, it's not just HHS, it's not just NIH, now it's Treasury, right? Now it's the IRS, it's, you know, justice, it's all of these entities, and… We can go on about the administrative challenges if this were it to be implemented, and all the other things, but first and foremost, let's be clear about what the intent is and why it is a problem, and I think we have the… 

Sarah Spreitzer: And, John, somebody put in the chat that, like, you know, public institutions may have private research foundations, and I think any… any nonprofit, even if this would only apply to private institutions, should be concerned about this. 

Jon Fansmith: Right, that's a great point, Sarah, because I did start by qualifying who it applies to, you know, it's worth noting, this administration tried to say that public service loan forgiveness, this is about a year ago, would only be available to nonprof… people who worked at nonprofits that didn't have, I think their term was a significant criminal intent or something, and by that, they meant groups that, were active in the reproductive rights space, or environmental spaces, or immigration spaces, gender spaces, things like that. Organizations clearly not criminal activities or anything else, but disfavored political views of the administration. It would be really naive to say, they're going to do this for private, nonprofit institutions and K-12 schools, and they'll be content to stop there, right? This is really more the trial of the balloon, I think we should expect, than any sort of end stage of the process. 

Mushtaq Gunja: Well, this is, it's the beginning of a process. I mean, this would and should kick off sort of formal notice and comment and all of the rest. I mean, lots of… 

Sarah Spreitzer: Comments are due November 3rd, because I think it's a 60-day comment period. 

Mushtaq Gunja: I mean, the legal challenges… The legal challenges are gonna be fun, I mean, for a whole range. 

Sarah Spreitzer: for you. 

Mushtaq Gunja: For me, and maybe not for our campuses. 

Jon Fansmith: I think he'll be fine. 

Mushtaq Gunja: But there, this is… I think the chances… chances that this gets fully implemented in the way that they want to fully implement it, and at a time in which the Trump administration is in charge, I think, is very low. But if it were to be implemented, I mean, it's an existentil problem for our… for our institutions, so we'll keep an eye on it for sure. John, Sarah, we're at time. Thank you for… thank you for, walking us through all this, John. Thank you for coming, despite being sick, and for all of our live listeners and future listeners, thanks for hanging in there. It's gonna be another great season of dotEDU. Gonna have lots of fun. 

Sarah Spreitzer: Yay! Why don't we Cake this time. We had a cake last time. 

Mushtaq Gunja: Did we? Okay, I had a big one. 

Sarah Spreitzer: at some point, I just… I want cake. 

Mushtaq Gunja: Okay. 

Jon Fansmith: Oh, yeah. Alright, let's get a cake. 

Mushtaq Gunja: I have sour cream in the fridge I need to do, so I'll make a coffee cake. Thank you all, I will talk to you all soon, but… 

Sarah Spreitzer: Bye, guys. 

Jon Fansmith: Hi, everyone. Thanks.