I'll write a blog post on this at some point over the next few days, but a much larger share of programs at for-profit colleges are estimated to fail the new federal earnings test using newly released data. The level of program also matters, with undergraduate certificates being the main culprit.

This !@#$% year in review: the wrecking ball that was February 2025 brought the abrupt end to many Institute of Education Sciences contracts for data collection, evaluation and research. www.brookings.edu/articles/cut... 🧵

Please tell the 18-year-olds in your life to do the opposite of what Gladwell recommends here fortune.com/2025/12/27/m...

"Even after accounting for the upfront costs and delayed benefits, enrolling marginal applicants to public universities generates substantial net returns for society, the marginal students themselves, and the government budget." Public Universities FTW!

I anticipate this becoming a campaign issue for Democrats in 2026, fitting into the larger "affordability" issue

It just happened. I heard my first "see you next year" of the season.

The Year That Changed Research

PSA: Never set a 12/31 deadline. All 12/31 deadlines ultimately become 1/15 deadlines. If it has to be done by the end of the year, set a 12/15 deadline.

Borrowers in the SAVE forbearance whose loans have reached eligibility for (non-PSLF/TLF) forgiveness have two weeks to switch to another repayment plan to avoid paying taxes on the discharged amount www.forbes.com/sites/adammi...

Workforce #Pell can lead to good jobs for students if they get the support needed for long-term success, writes MDRC's Alex Mayer in @hechingerreport.org. hechingerreport.org/opinion-work...

I don't know the extent to which this ultimately matters, but almost every limitation in how we measure earnings (failure to capture benefits, failure to capture self-employment, failure to account for part-time work, etc.) biases those measurements in favor of STEM fields

About 1 in 9 students who started grad school in the last decade would have been over the new federal student loan caps and unlikely to get a loan in the private market without a cosigner 1 in 9!

First minor drama at #NACIQI: The election for a new chair. Nominees are Zakiya Smith-Ellis, appointed by Congressional Dems and a former Secretary of Higher Ed in NJ; and Jay Greene, a new member and former Heritage Foundation fellow appointed by ED. First round of voting ends in an 8-8 tie...

@dubravkaritter.bsky.social Tomas Monarrez and I explore the credit profile of graduate students likely to need private loans after OBBBA’s new loan limits take effect next July. A bit over 1/3 have thin or poor credit and may struggle to get a private loan under typical underwriting practices.

Jordan Matsudaira, a trusted expert on the topic, says in this article he expects the private student loan industry to increase from $3 billion per year to $10 billion as a result of new federal student loan caps @jdmatsudaira.bsky.social www.insidehighered.com/news/busines...

The broad outcry over which graduate degrees are defined as "professional" and thus subjected to a much higher loan cap has turned into a specific request from lawmakers: add nursing to the list thehill.com/homenews/edu...

Some pretty shocking numbers in this survey of student loan borrowers from TICAS Two-thirds have only heard a little or nothing at all about income-based repayment A quarter say they received bad information from their servicer and a tenth say their balance is incorrect ticas.org/affordabilit...

MDRC just released early findings from an RCT of Montana 10, a multifaceted student support program tailored to the MT context Findings are only through one year and not for the full sample, but program students so far do not have better outcomes than control students www.mdrc.org/sites/defaul...

I'm always glad to see the importance of basic needs in higher ed being elevated MDRC on how transportation barriers can derail college dreams www.mdrc.org/work/publica...

People often excuse this by saying the money comes from donors and doesn't take away from the university But do we really believe the counterfactual is that NONE of this $228 million would have gone to the university?

MDRC's THE-RCT data file, an individual-level data file including 33 higher ed RCTs and 80k students, is now available on OpenICPSR with a couple updates: -Two new studies (MMA and ASAP Westchester) -More years of data for three studies (EASE, DPP, and ModMath) www.openicpsr.org/openicpsr/pr...

New report from HCM Strategists on what states can do promote the adoption of evidence-based student success practices in higher ed static1.squarespace.com/static/62bdd...

Interesting survey findings from CCRC on the experiences of former community college students ccrc.tc.columbia.edu/wp-content/u...

Would love to see these graphs for IES I believe the current year lines would be <1/10 of previous years

DOGE is dead, but I still have dozens of colleagues whose careers have been derailed by its actions, and our country is worse off for it www.reuters.com/world/us/dog...

A lot has happened this year. If you'd like a recap of what's happened to education research and statistics, here's my attempt. This might be a good one to listen to on your commute today. (Audio play button below headline. 16 minutes long.) hechingerreport.org/proof-points...

Pecan pie doesn't have to be this way, folks You can make it with less sugar / corn syrup and more pecans, and I promise you will enjoy it more

There are a few MAGA guys at my co-working space who used to talk about Trump on a daily basis during the 2024 election and early in his administration I haven't heard them mention his name in at least four months

Never thought I would see higher ed negotiated rulemaking in The Onion!

So, uh, the whole thing about nursing not making the professional degree cut seems to have broken through

Please share this opportunity with any grad students or early-career scholars interested in rural higher education The National Rural Higher Education Research Center at MDRC is now taking applications for the first cohort of the Rural Research Mentorship Network www.mdrc.org/work/project...

1/ Today the Department of Education said that it’s transferring a variety of programs to other agencies, making good on Trump’s promise to dismantle ED. The most important thing to understand is that this is a Potemkin reorganization. It’s fugazi, it’s fairy dust. It’s not real.

As promised, here's more coverage from @insidehighered.com. Stay tuned for more updates throughout the day. Trump officials are reportedly planning to enact a number of agreements Tuesday that could send key ED responsibilities to other agencies.

Focusing on my little corner of the world: I don't have strong feelings on whether IES would function better within ED or another agency But I do think there needs to at least be *some* purported benefit to moving it that would justify the several years of turmoil it will cause

The administration says ED is bad They also claim all the functions of ED will be preserved in other departments So are they lying about preserving ED's functions, or do they think their voters will be happy with simply ending ED in name only?

Did Congress forget there are 31 days in January?

Popular discourse attributes falling college enrollments to the rising cost of four-year college. That story is wrong in multiple ways, as @mattbarnum.bsky.social points out in his latest roundup of the evidence (citing a new working paper of ours): www.chalkbeat.org/2025/11/11/i...

ED will let students take out $200k of federal loans for a chiropractic or theology degree with average earnings of ~$60k but only $100k for a nursing or business degree with earnings over $120k

It might seem that the federal education stats agency could easily be transferred to another cabinet dept if ED is closed. But not so straightforward. Why a move could degrade the quality of higher ed data. hechingerreport.org/proof-points...

The parking lot of my auto shop has some egregious potholes, and I think this is what you would call a "conflict of interest"

"Ninety-five percent of the department’s employees who don’t work on federal student aid have been furloughed." www.insidehighered.com/news/governm...

The USDA sent an email to grocery stores telling them they are prohibited from offering special discounts to customers affected by the SNAP funding lapse. I'm aware of at least 2 stores that had offered struggling customers a discount, then withdrew it after receiving this email

BOSTON (AP) — Judges order the federal government to use contingency funds for SNAP food aid payments during the shutdown.

If the administration wants to prevent student loan borrowers from receiving PSLF if they work for organizations engaged in supposedly illegal activity, why not use the proper legal channels to get such organizations shut down?

We wrote up a Brookings Post related to my recent paper with Ari Anisfeld, @drelizabethbell.bsky.social, and Dennis Kramer: www.brookings.edu/articles/how...

There's a growing movement to get "some college, no degree" students to reenroll and complete their degrees www.insidehighered.com/news/quick-t...

This is a nice summary of a recent Brookings panel on student loan limits, including a link to a recording of the panel www.brookings.edu/articles/stu...

It's noteworthy this NCAN guidance for mixed-status families filling out the FAFSA does *not* confidently encourage such families to fill out the form, citing that ED can provide information from the form to immigration enforcement www.ncan.org/news/713255/...

The latest round of layoffs at ED has been blocked by a federal judge. The Supreme Court will likely give a green light to the layoffs, though, just as they did with the March round of layoffs. www.insidehighered.com/news/quick-t...

The grad school loan caps in OBBBA seem half-baked to me I'm not opposed to some version of caps, but: -100k versus 200k is a big/rough difference -the distinctions are untethered to earnings and value to taxpayers -there's no recognition of variation in quality across programs within a field