Nearly two weeks after the Department of Education filed a 50% worker reduction and reopened Title IX investigations into several universities, many colleges, including Temple, are navigating the new challenges higher education faces.
“The current higher education landscape remains complex and challenging, and I know that impacts all of us in significant ways, personally and professionally,” wrote President John Fry in a letter to the Temple community on March 21. “Recent executive actions threaten to substantially impact universities like Temple across the country. Enforcement actions have been initiated against individual institutions.”
The Department of Education handles student services like the civil rights and discrimination complaints office, special education funds, school improvement programs, Pell Grant distribution and research. More than 2,000 ED staff lost their jobs after the March 21 directive.
Eliminating or curtailing the ED will “erode the quality and experience of education for those who are enrolled,” at a time “of high prices, economic instability and deep insecurity across the workforce,” wrote Temple’s Hope Center in a statement March 20.
Temple, after finalizing an investigation with the ED’s Office of Civil Rights in December with no wrongdoing found, received a letter in March stating that the university was once again under investigation for alleged antisemitic discrimination and harassment, The Temple News reported.
The Office of Civil Rights is another office most affected by the cuts, with at least 240 of its 568-person staff facing layoffs, NPR reported. The OCR’s Philadelphia outpost, housed in the historic Wanamaker Building in Center City, also closed last month, the Philadelphia Inquirer reported.
The ED’s distribution of funds and grants includes a large number of students at Temple who currently receive Pell Grants. As of Fall 2023, 31% of Temple undergraduate students receive Pell Grants. Thirty-eight percent of the Class of 2027 are Pell Grant recipients. That number jumped to 46% in the Class of 2028.
At least 320 staff members of the Office of Federal Student Aid in the ED have been laid off, according to FSA. Some of the former staff helped to manage the federal student loan portfolio or maintain FSA’s online servers for applying for loans — an issue some Temple students already faced earlier this school year.
President Donald Trump and his administration threatened and began cuts in research and funding to other universities. Some students had previously voiced concerns about pursuing a future in education, either in joining the workforce or as their experience in the higher education system, The Temple News reported.
“For students right now, on the ground, [the ED is] saying that student loans are not going to be affected or that Pell Grants are going to keep being distributed – I frankly just don’t know what that means, there’s this illusion [in government],” said Anne Lundquist, director of Temple’s Hope Center for Student Basic Needs. “It takes people to do things – but if those people aren’t doing it, they won’t be as responsive [because of the cuts]. You won’t be able to call a number and get a person.”
The Hope Center, which is based at Temple but includes leaders from across the nation, works to conduct and create policy recommendations to help students meet their basic needs. Its 2023-24 survey report of students’ basic needs at 91 institutions found that Pell Grant recipients already experience food and housing insecurity at a higher rate than non-Pell Grant students.
Mark Huelsman, director of policy and advocacy at the Hope Center, urged the community to both look at each individual executive statement or action on their own terms, but also as part of a collective effort to cut public services and benefits.
The ED distributes specific programs that meet some of Hope Center’s basic needs’ criteria, like the Child Care Access Means Parents in School Program, a grant to institutions whose students are low-income parents and are eligible for Pell Grants. In 2023, 264 universities and colleges received financial support from the ED.
“Eliminating all of that is going to have a huge impact in a very short term way of literally getting people money, but in a long term way as well,” Huelsman said. “[The ED’s programs] make sure that [Temple is] living up to their potential, actually improving people’s existences, and making higher education what it’s meant to do – that’s before you get into all the civil rights stuff. That’s why we put that statement out.
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