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Axios
3 hours ago
- Business
- Axios
Tennessee launches automatic college admission in 230 high schools
Tennessee is launching a first-of-its-kind college program this year that will send thousands of high school seniors automatic college admission letters along with personalized financial aid estimates. Why it matters: The "direct admissions" effort is meant to slash through the "forest of red tape" students face when navigating college searches, officials said. Participating students won't even have to apply to understand their options at dozens of participating in-state colleges. "No applications, no essays, no fees," said researcher Taylor Odle, who is evaluating the experimental program to see how it improves college enrollment. How it works: The program is in a pilot phase, and will only apply to students in about 230 randomly selected Tennessee high schools for now. Students at those schools only need to sign up for the Tennessee Promise program by Nov. 1 to participate. They'll get a letter later that month laying out their college options. During the pilot phase, about half of the direct admission letters will include personalized financial aid estimates, including merit-based scholarships students are likely to receive, as well as eligibility for Tennessee Promise, which offers students tuition-free community and technical college. Yes, but: They'll still have to file the FAFSA to secure need-based federal aid. Between the lines: During the pilot, researchers will track outcomes to see if including financial aid packages boosts enrollment numbers. They'll use their findings to shape recommendations for long-term services in Tennessee and nationwide. By the numbers: State leaders expect to send direct admission letters to 41,000 high school seniors this fall, telling them which colleges are saving a spot for them. Fifty-three in-state colleges and universities are participating. That total includes private and public universities as well as technical and community colleges. Colleges will use ACT and GPA thresholds to determine which students qualify. The big picture: Tennessee has led the effort to improve college access for years. Programs like the Tennessee Promise have inspired policies nationwide. The latest pilot program makes Tennessee the first in the nation to combine direct admissions with up-front financial aid estimates. The bottom line: Complicated applications and financial aid boondoggles can drive students away from considering college. Leaders hope that making the process more user-friendly will open up new opportunities, especially for low-income or rural students who are less likely to attend college. "This effort is really about removing barriers and shifting the conversation to make it easier for young people," said Tennessee Higher Education Commission director Steven Gentile. Participating Davidson County schools Antioch High School Cane Ridge High School Glencliff High School Hillsboro High School Hillwood High School Hume-Fogg High School Independence Academy High School John Overton High School KIPP Nashville Collegiate High School Knowledge Academies High School LEAD Academy LEAD Southeast Maplewood High School Martin Luther King Jr. School McGavock High School MNPS Virtual School Nashville Big Picture High School Nashville School of the Arts Pearl-Cohn High School Republic High School The Academy at Hickory Hollow The Academy at Old Cockrill Valor College Prep Whites Creek High School Participating Rutherford County schools Blackman High School Central Magnet School Eagleville School Holloway High School Lavergne High School Oakland High School Siegal High School Stewarts Creek High School Participating Sumner County schools Beech Senior High School Gallatin Senior High School Hendersonville High School Merrol Hyde Magnet School Portland High School Station Camp High School Sumner County Middle College High School Westmoreland High School White House High School Participating Williamson County schools Brentwood High School Centennial High School Franklin High School Fred J Page High School Independence High School Nolensville High School Ravenwood High School Summit High School Participating Wilson County schools
The Herald Scotland
3 days ago
- Business
- The Herald Scotland
Close the Education Department? Not so fast.
But there's one obstacle that's less evident: the so-called "One Big, Beautiful Bill Act." Starting next year, the law will create two brand-new federal student loan repayment plans. It also expands Pell Grants, a staple of college financial aid, to include weekslong post-high school training programs. And it binds colleges to a fresh set of rules meant to protect students and save taxpayers money. Under the law, there's one person ultimately responsible for carrying out those directives: Education Secretary Linda McMahon. Her entire department will be required to mobilize its depleting resources to execute the wishes of Congress and the president. That dynamic puts Trump in an awkward position. In February, he said he wanted McMahon to "put herself out of a job." (In order to legally do that, he'd need the support of Senate Democrats, which he doesn't have.) But by signing his signature spending law, Trump gave McMahon a laundry list of important things to do. And those asks won't be simple or easy to turn into a reality, experts and former Education Department employees have said, without the right people to make them work. Trump has already cut the agency's workforce in half this year, and the Supreme Court on July 14 allowed more than 1,000 workers to stay fired while their layoffs are challenged in court. "I do have significant concerns that the speed of the cuts will have left us with a department that is unable to effectively implement this legislation," Beth Akers, a senior fellow at the right-leaning think tank the American Enterprise Institute, told USA TODAY during a recent webinar. Those worries were echoed by Jon Fansmith, senior vice president for government relations and national engagement at the American Council on Education, the country's main higher education association. "You can definitely anticipate a lot of problems," he said. College financial aid administrators are warning of "significant disruption" for students who rely on help to pay for school. Read more: How FAFSA 'fixes' have turned College Decision Day into chaos In spite of that unease, top officials at the Education Department have stressed that the agency is well-positioned to enact the law. On July 18, the agency published some guidance for implementation, and more information would be provided "in the weeks and months ahead," said Jeffrey Andrade, a top agency official. "Just within President Trump's first six months, the Department has responsibly managed and streamlined key federal student aid features," deputy press secretary Ellen Keast said in a statement to USA TODAY. "We will continue to deliver meaningful and on time results while implementing the President's OBBB ('One Big Beautiful Bill') to better serve students, families, and administrators." New student loan repayment plans, Pell Grant expansion For anyone who takes out new federal student loans after July 1, 2026, the law eliminates all current repayment programs and replaces them with only two: a standard plan and a plan based on borrowers' incomes. The more than 40 million Americans who already have federal student loan debt will still have access to some old repayment plans. But the 8 million borrowers enrolled in President Joe Biden's signature repayment plan will have to be switched to a different one by 2028. All of that work will be carried out by the Federal Student Aid office, a branch of the Education Department. The "One Big, Beautiful Bill Act" also creates a special type of Pell Grant. It will be made available to students enrolled in short-term programs between eight and 15 weeks long in fields like cosmetology and welding. The Education Department has to start vetting and allowing schools to receive that money by July 2026. Different college oversight rules Trump's new legislation additionally tasks the Education Department with enforcing a framework for holding colleges and universities accountable for getting students well-paying jobs after graduation. Republicans call the measure a "do no harm" test. Put simply, it takes away the ability of some college programs to let students take out federal loans if those schools aren't providing a good return on investment. To fully implement the program, staffers at the Education Department have a lot of number-crunching to do. They'll likely need data from colleges, the Internal Revenue Service, the Bureau of Labor Statistics and states, Fansmith said. All of that information will need to be aggregated and calculated across tens of thousands of programs, and thousands of schools, over a yearslong period. Robert Jason Cottrell, who was a data coordinator in the Office of Postsecondary Education before he was laid off in March, said he fears the Education Department may rely too heavily on contractors to get it all done. "I don't know if that's going to work," he said. Echoes of FAFSA challenges It's not the first time in recent years that the Education Department has been tasked with implementing big changes for students. The last time, it didn't go very well. In December 2020, Congress passed a law to simplify the Free Application for Federal Student Aid, or FAFSA, a form that most students must fill out each year to get financial aid. But the rollout went haywire, jeopardizing the college dreams of millions. There were many reasons the agency bungled the law's implementation. Some federal officials blamed outside contractors, who were doing the bulk of the work because the Education Department was short-staffed. Other critics said former President Joe Biden spent too much time prioritizing student loan forgiveness. Read more: How did the FAFSA rollout go so wrong? A look at the key events Regardless of the cause, the effects were devastating: Some students decided to delay college or forgo it altogether. Parents made important decisions without enough information. And universities lost trust in the federal financial aid system. Things turned around, though. After Biden's Education Department brought in a special team to focus on the FAFSA, the form got better. Now, it's easier than ever to fill out. In many college financial aid offices, the wounds from the FAFSA crisis are still fresh. And since the Education Department layoffs, schools have struggled to get in touch with the government for routine requests. Those issues are already affecting their ability to help students. Read more: Colleges report widespread problems with financial aid since Education Department layoffs In a statement on July 14, Melanie Storey, the president of the National Association of Student Financial Aid Administrators, emphasized that students and schools need more clarity about what comes next. "With significantly more work on the horizon to implement the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, we reiterate our concerns that the Trump administration has not shared the details of a plan to redistribute the Department's work in a way that does not cause significant disruption for America's college students," she said. Zachary Schermele is an education reporter for USA TODAY. You can reach him by email at zschermele@ Follow him on X at @ZachSchermele and Bluesky at @
USA Today
4 days ago
- Politics
- USA Today
Trump just made it harder to close the Education Department
Trump has said he wants to close the Education Department, but he just gave the agency a long to-do list WASHINGTON – When President Donald Trump signed a megabill with his spending and policy priorities into law on July 4, he distanced himself from another one of his goals: dismantling the U.S. Department of Education. Congressional Democrats have already tried to stand in the way of that effort – sometimes literally. So have the federal courts, which continue to debate the legality of the president's attempts to weaken the agency, whose work impacts students and schools across the country. But there's one obstacle that's less evident: the so-called "One Big, Beautiful Bill Act." Starting next year, the law will create two brand-new federal student loan repayment plans. It also expands Pell Grants, a staple of college financial aid, to include weekslong post-high school training programs. And it binds colleges to a fresh set of rules meant to protect students and save taxpayers money. Under the law, there's one person ultimately responsible for carrying out those directives: Education Secretary Linda McMahon. Her entire department will be required to mobilize its depleting resources to execute the wishes of Congress and the president. That dynamic puts Trump in an awkward position. In February, he said he wanted McMahon to "put herself out of a job." (In order to legally do that, he'd need the support of Senate Democrats, which he doesn't have.) But by signing his signature spending law, Trump gave McMahon a laundry list of important things to do. And those asks won't be simple or easy to turn into a reality, experts and former Education Department employees have said, without the right people to make them work. Trump has already cut the agency's workforce in half this year, and the Supreme Court on July 14 allowed more than 1,000 workers to stay fired while their layoffs are challenged in court. "I do have significant concerns that the speed of the cuts will have left us with a department that is unable to effectively implement this legislation," Beth Akers, a senior fellow at the right-leaning think tank the American Enterprise Institute, told USA TODAY during a recent webinar. Those worries were echoed by Jon Fansmith, senior vice president for government relations and national engagement at the American Council on Education, the country's main higher education association. "You can definitely anticipate a lot of problems," he said. College financial aid administrators are warning of "significant disruption" for students who rely on help to pay for school. Read more: How FAFSA 'fixes' have turned College Decision Day into chaos In spite of that unease, top officials at the Education Department have stressed that the agency is well-positioned to enact the law. On July 18, the agency published some guidance for implementation, and more information would be provided "in the weeks and months ahead," said Jeffrey Andrade, a top agency official. "Just within President Trump's first six months, the Department has responsibly managed and streamlined key federal student aid features," deputy press secretary Ellen Keast said in a statement to USA TODAY. "We will continue to deliver meaningful and on time results while implementing the President's OBBB ('One Big Beautiful Bill') to better serve students, families, and administrators.' New student loan repayment plans, Pell Grant expansion For anyone who takes out new federal student loans after July 1, 2026, the law eliminates all current repayment programs and replaces them with only two: a standard plan and a plan based on borrowers' incomes. The more than 40 million Americans who already have federal student loan debt will still have access to some old repayment plans. But the 8 million borrowers enrolled in President Joe Biden's signature repayment plan will have to be switched to a different one by 2028. All of that work will be carried out by the Federal Student Aid office, a branch of the Education Department. The "One Big, Beautiful Bill Act" also creates a special type of Pell Grant. It will be made available to students enrolled in short-term programs between eight and 15 weeks long in fields like cosmetology and welding. The Education Department has to start vetting and allowing schools to receive that money by July 2026. Different college oversight rules Trump's new legislation additionally tasks the Education Department with enforcing a framework for holding colleges and universities accountable for getting students well-paying jobs after graduation. Republicans call the measure a "do no harm" test. Put simply, it takes away the ability of some college programs to let students take out federal loans if those schools aren't providing a good return on investment. To fully implement the program, staffers at the Education Department have a lot of number-crunching to do. They'll likely need data from colleges, the Internal Revenue Service, the Bureau of Labor Statistics and states, Fansmith said. All of that information will need to be aggregated and calculated across tens of thousands of programs, and thousands of schools, over a yearslong period. Robert Jason Cottrell, who was a data coordinator in the Office of Postsecondary Education before he was laid off in March, said he fears the Education Department may rely too heavily on contractors to get it all done. "I don't know if that's going to work," he said. Echoes of FAFSA challenges It's not the first time in recent years that the Education Department has been tasked with implementing big changes for students. The last time, it didn't go very well. In December 2020, Congress passed a law to simplify the Free Application for Federal Student Aid, or FAFSA, a form that most students must fill out each year to get financial aid. But the rollout went haywire, jeopardizing the college dreams of millions. There were many reasons the agency bungled the law's implementation. Some federal officials blamed outside contractors, who were doing the bulk of the work because the Education Department was short-staffed. Other critics said former President Joe Biden spent too much time prioritizing student loan forgiveness. Read more: How did the FAFSA rollout go so wrong? A look at the key events Regardless of the cause, the effects were devastating: Some students decided to delay college or forgo it altogether. Parents made important decisions without enough information. And universities lost trust in the federal financial aid system. Things turned around, though. After Biden's Education Department brought in a special team to focus on the FAFSA, the form got better. Now, it's easier than ever to fill out. In many college financial aid offices, the wounds from the FAFSA crisis are still fresh. And since the Education Department layoffs, schools have struggled to get in touch with the government for routine requests. Those issues are already affecting their ability to help students. Read more: Colleges report widespread problems with financial aid since Education Department layoffs In a statement on July 14, Melanie Storey, the president of the National Association of Student Financial Aid Administrators, emphasized that students and schools need more clarity about what comes next. "With significantly more work on the horizon to implement the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, we reiterate our concerns that the Trump administration has not shared the details of a plan to redistribute the Department's work in a way that does not cause significant disruption for America's college students," she said. Zachary Schermele is an education reporter for USA TODAY. You can reach him by email at zschermele@ Follow him on X at @ZachSchermele and Bluesky at @
Politico
6 days ago
- Business
- Politico
The Education Department is shrinking just as Congress upped its workload
'The Department is also following the law and complying with numerous court orders to realign and strengthen the student loan portfolio,' Ellen Keast, deputy press secretary for the Education Department, said in a statement. 'We will continue to deliver meaningful and on time results while implementing the President's OBBB to better serve students, families, and administrators.' Former Education Department workers and Democratic lawmakers are concerned more essential duties will slip through the cracks, most notably the department's new congressional mandate to launch two new student loan repayment plans. 'The Department is requiring many students with loans to change their student loan plan, but those students are unable to do so due to inadequate staff at the Department of Education, while, at the same time, more people are being fired,' Rep. Bobby Scott (D-Va.), the ranking member of the House Education and Workforce Committee, said at a hearing Tuesday. If the department doesn't get the plans off the ground in time, it will just create more confusion and chaos for borrowers, said Melanie Storey, president and CEO of the National Association of Student Financial Aid Administrators and a former FSA leader. 'Its really confusing for borrowers,' Storey said. 'It's another barrier of entry for them and disincentive to enroll [in a loan repayment plan] when you have no certainty or predictability about what financing options are going to be available to you.' Now that the mass cuts are solidified, it also renews concerns about the fast approaching launch of the 2026-27 Free Application for Federal Student Aid, which had significant delays and technical glitches in previous years. The form already had issues when the department was fully staffed, Gittleman said. Former department staff have said the FAFSA team will have less support now that other employees, such as those in tech support roles that indirectly work on FAFSA, are gone. 'Even though the FAFSA team was untouched by the RIFs, no team operates in silos in FSA,' she said, referencing the Trump administration's reduction-in-force directive. 'Everything is intertwined.' One day after the department fired nearly half its employees in March, students and parents across the country couldn't access FAFSA. Seventy-two employees spent hours on a Microsoft Teams call as part of an effort to fix the issue. The incident was quickly resolved, but many employees questioned whether the agency could handle future technical problems after so many of the other teams that indirectly support FAFSA experienced cuts.
Yahoo
15-07-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Will Trump Actually Close the Education Department?
The gutting gets the green light: When President Donald Trump took office, the federal Department of Education had about 4,000 employees, some of whom seemingly did things that the taxpayers found useful (but whose roles were always kind of unclear to me). Trump quickly took a pickaxe to the agencies and found that at least 1,300 of those employees were not actually needed. The legality of those firings had been percolating through the courts. But yesterday, the Supreme Court ruled that the administration may continue with its plans to fire vast numbers of Education Department employees. "We will carry out the reduction in force to promote efficiency and accountability and to ensure resources are directed where they matter most—to students, parents, and teachers," said Education Secretary Linda McMahon in a statement. The administration would "return education to the states," but would "continue to perform all statutory duties" while "reducing education bureaucracy." The Department of Education, according to The New York Times, "manages federal loans for college, tracks student achievement and enforces civil rights laws in schools." We don't actually need any of those functions as currently done. Let me explain. Stats compiled by the Education Data Initiative indicate that "1.402 million (86.7%) of first-time, full-time undergraduate students attending public institutions receive financial aid in some form." (Some of this is merit-based, but most is need-based.) Some 70 percent of students fill out the FAFSA, the Free Application for Federal Student Aid. For the last school year, the "average aid per full-time equivalent (FTE) student in 2023-24 was: $16,360 per undergraduate student, $28,420 per graduate student," according to the College Board. (This can take the form of both grants and loans.) But vast swaths of the degree-seeking American public aren't poor; so why are federal dollars subsidizing them at all? The entry of the federal government into the student loan business has massively, criminally driven up the cost of college over the last few decades. But not every student needs to go to a four-year college, and not every college needs to charge $70,000 a year; we have to begin to reel it all back in and ask tough questions related to what the value of a college degree truly is and why the federal government is backing this. Nor does the Education Department track student achievement very well—if it had, it would have realized the reading crisis the nation's grade schools have been enduring at the hands of Lucy Calkins and the many school districts that have shifted away from phonics instruction. (And did the department handle the tracking of COVID spread in schools, to see whether/how schools could safely reopen? No, that was Brown economist Emily Oster.) And enforcing civil rights laws? Do you mean campus kangaroo courts that routinely violated due process for students accused of sexual misdeeds? "The Education Department's budget has ballooned from $14 billion to around $100 billion.…Similar increases have occurred at the state and local levels, which provide over 90 percent of K-12 funding," writes Veronique de Rugy. "In 1980, total per-pupil spending (from local, state, and federal sources) was around $9,000 in today's dollars. Today that figure is $17,277, with $2,400 coming from federal funding. The biggest question, of course, is what the investment is delivering. The department was originally created to raise educational standards, promote equity, and improve national competitiveness. After all that time and money, have we seen much progress? Not really." "Functional illiteracy rates, for example, have not changed much since 1979 and remain as high as 20 percent by some measures," continues de Rugy. "Since the late 1970s, eighth grade reading and math scores have remained virtually unchanged, showing no meaningful progress. High school seniors' math scores have barely improved." What exactly are we getting for all this investment? "Calls to abolish the department aren't nearly as radical or threatening as much of the media coverage suggests," wrote Frederick Hess of the American Enterprise Institute back in January. "The Department of Education doesn't educate anyone or run any schools or colleges. It's a collection of 4,000 bureaucrats who mostly manage student loans, write rules, oversee various grant programs, and generate paperwork." It's not like such functions were ever constitutionally authorized or added any practical value. If Trump can scrap it, more power to him! Our handsy Italian (but I repeat myself!) has announced that, following his defeat in the Democratic primary for mayor, he will simply not accept no for an answer (when has he ever?) and will instead enter the race as an independent. I love Emma Camp's pro-party manifesto, useful reading for all Zoomers who are afraid of drinking and other people. Read here. Pirate Wires on the future of logistics: What if "thing pipes" completely transform delivery? Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent says that Jerome Powell should step down and that there's already "a formal process to identify the nominee to become the next Fed chair," at the president's behest, per Bloomberg. Oh no, the influencers are coming for Congress. Anthropic, the artificial intelligence company founded by ex-OpenAI employees, unveils "Claude for Financial Services," which is "designed to help analysts conduct market research, handle due diligence and make investment decisions," according to Bloomberg. Somewhat unexpectedly, President Donald Trump yesterday "announced new weapons for Ukraine on Monday, and threatened sanctions on buyers of Russian exports unless Russia agrees a peace deal, a major policy shift brought on by frustration with Moscow's ongoing attacks on its neighbor," per Reuters. What exactly is Trump's foreign policy approach? Did the neocons get to him after all? Can he be considered an antiwar president? New Just Asking Questions just dropped. Maybe retvrning wouldn't be so great after all: The post Will Trump Actually Close the Education Department? appeared first on
