Week in Review: A flurry of new Education Department rules and proposals

Most clicked story of the week:

The U.S. Department of Education released final regulations detailing how short-term programs can become eligible for the new Workforce Pell program created through federal legislation last year. The rule outlines a process for initial approval at the state level, and it includes regulatory standards around student outcomes for the programs, which can be as short as eight weeks. 

Number of the week: $60 million

That’s how much the University of Michigan plans to pay for the 140-acre campus of Concordia University Ann Arbor after U-M’s board approved the purchase last week. CUAA — which has in recent years shed the large majority of its offerings — said it would offer its remaining academic programs at a separate campus roughly three miles away. U-M hasn’t said yet how it will use the CUAA site yet, but a spokesperson said officials will look at how the campus can support the university’s education, research or healthcare goals. 

The Education Department’s latest moves, legal challenges:

The Education Department has reached consensus language in negotiated rulemaking sessions on new accreditation regulations. The department said last week the new language would lower the barriers for recognizing new accreditors, cut accreditation costs,, promote intellectual diversity and bar accreditors from sharing resources with trade associations involved in licensure. Critics worry some of the measures will encroach on academic freedom.
The department is being sued by at least two groups over its new regulations around student lending caps. A coalition of 20-plus states and a group of professional and education associations have both filed legal challenges against the Education Department’s definition of professional degrees, which excludes all but 11 graduate-level subjects. Those 11 are the only ones that qualify for a new aggregate federal loan limit of $200,000 — twice as large as the cap for other graduate degrees. 
The department said Thursday it is financing a new competition to support workforce readiness, artificial intelligence initiatives and short-term programs using discretionary money originally intended for minority-serving institutions. Since last year, the Education Department has said it would redirect funding from MSI grants, which the Trump administration’s Department of Justice has argued are illegal for their focus on race. 

Budget tightening at University of Oregon, Baldwin Wallace and Peninsula College:

Baldwin Wallace University is sunsetting nine undergraduate majors, seven graduate programs and 19 minors, a move that will eliminate 10 faculty jobs. The private Ohio institution’s president said officials aim to invest in programs “where student interest is growing, workforce demand is strong, and Baldwin Wallace can build distinctive excellence.”
The University of Oregon is freezing hiring and pay as part of a broader effort to cut $65 million in costs. The measures are largely a response to an over 20% projected decline in new out-of-state students in the next academic year. “I believe we need to treat this as our new reality,” UO President Karl Scholz told the university’s faculty senate, adding that “difficult conversations and tradeoffs” over the budget lie in the months ahead. 
Peninsula College plans to cut a dozen full-time staff positions after declaring a financial emergency in response to a $1.8 million budget gap. The community college in Washington will also furlough employees and cut some of its programs while investing in others, according to local media reports.