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Friday, April 25, 2025
Trump Admin announces it will throw borrowers into mandatory collections. (Student Borrower Protection Center)
Trump Backs Down on Threats to International Students, But Students Should Still Be Wary
In a stunning and unexplained reversal, the Trump administration has reinstated the legal statuses of hundreds of international students whose records were recently terminated—an aggressive move many immigration attorneys, advocates, and higher education leaders saw as a politically motivated purge.
Elizabeth D. Kurlan, a Justice Department attorney, announced during a federal hearing on Friday that the administration is restoring the SEVIS (Student and Exchange Visitor Information System) records of affected students while Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) crafts a new framework for future terminations.
But for many in the higher education community, this about-face raises more concerns than it resolves.
“Like Somebody Flipped a Light Switch”
International students across the country were stunned Thursday afternoon when their status records were quietly reactivated, often without explanation or notice. “It’s like somebody flipped a light switch on,” said Cleveland-based immigration attorney Jath Shao, whose clients were among those reinstated.
Universities from UC Berkeley to the Rochester Institute of Technology reported sudden, uneven restorations—some students were reinstated, others left in limbo. The randomness of it all has underscored what critics call the administration’s disregard for due process and the human cost of erratic immigration enforcement.
At UC Berkeley, only about half of the impacted students saw their records restored. In Minnesota, immigration attorney David Wilson said that while some of his clients had their statuses reinstated, others remain legally adrift. And even for those reinstated, the problems don’t end there.
Not Fully “Made Whole”
Despite the government’s public pivot, immigration experts warn that the long-term consequences of the status terminations may still follow these students. The terminated statuses, even if reversed, remain part of the official record—and could jeopardize future visa renewals, green card applications, or even employment opportunities.
“The time that they had their SEVIS status terminated could still have harmful effects,” said Elora Mukherjee, director of Columbia Law’s Immigrants’ Rights Clinic. “It’s not enough for the federal government to simply restore service records. The government would need to somehow make the students whole.”
What’s more, many students remain trapped inside the United States. Their reinstated statuses do not automatically mean reinstated visas—many of which were revoked in the same sweep. Without valid visas, these students risk being barred from reentry if they leave the country.
A Campaign of Retaliation
Attorneys and student advocates point to what appears to be a pattern of targeted enforcement by ICE. Many of the students who lost their status were flagged for political activism, minor infractions like DUIs, or simply for being out of status during bureaucratic transitions.
“There’s little doubt that this was about sending a message,” said Shao. “By now it’s obvious that the Trump administration spent the four years of Biden plotting their revenge on the immigration system. But once some brave students and lawyers went to the courts — the administration’s defenders were unable or unwilling to explain the rationale.”
The legal pushback may have forced the administration’s hand—for now. But ICE’s authority to terminate SEVIS records remains intact, and a new policy is reportedly in development. Without transparency or oversight, advocates fear a more durable system of punitive enforcement is on the horizon.
Higher Education at the Crossroads
The Trump administration’s crackdown on international students is not happening in a vacuum. It reflects a broader shift toward nationalist, authoritarian governance—one that sees immigrants, universities, and dissent itself as threats to be neutralized.
For U.S. colleges and universities, international students are more than just tuition revenue—they are integral members of the academic and social fabric. Their vulnerability, however, is increasingly evident. And unless institutions begin to use their political and legal capital to protect these students, they risk becoming complicit in a system of silent expulsions and bureaucratic cruelty.
Thursday, April 24, 2025
Department of Education No Longer Posting Freedom of Information Requests
The US Department of Education (ED) has stopped posting up-to-date Freedom of Information (FOIA) logs. These logs had been posted and updated from 2011 to September 2024 to improve transparency and accountability to the agency. We have reached out ED for a statement. We are also awaiting for a number of information requests, some of which have taken more than 18 months for substantive replies.
Student Loan Debt: The Panic Starts May 5th
In a move poised to send millions of Americans into financial distress, the U.S. Department of Education announced this week that its Office of Federal Student Aid (FSA) will resume collections on defaulted federal student loans starting Monday, May 5, 2025. This marks the official end of a pandemic-era pause in collections that has been in place since March 2020.
The timing of the announcement is already sparking anxiety—but it's just the beginning. While collections begin next month, experts warn that by September, we could see a full-scale panic as a surge of borrowers hit the 270-day threshold for loan delinquency, legally tipping them into default status. The clock is ticking for millions who have missed or deferred payments during the chaotic restart of loan servicing.
According to the Department, 42.7 million Americans now owe more than $1.6 trillion in student loan debt. Shockingly, only 38 percent are current on their payments, and nearly 10 million borrowers are already in default or serious delinquency. These numbers are expected to climb sharply as repayment systems falter and financial strain deepens.
Education Secretary Linda McMahon, in announcing the decision, framed the return to collections as a victory for taxpayers. “American taxpayers will no longer be forced to serve as collateral for irresponsible student loan policies,” she said, taking aim at the previous administration’s debt relief efforts, which she labeled “illegal loan forgiveness schemes.”
But for millions of borrowers—especially those from working-class backgrounds and communities of color—this policy marks the end of hope. Many had placed their faith in long-promised reforms and debt relief that never fully materialized.
Hope, however, is not entirely dead. The forthcoming book The Student Debt Crisis: America’s Moral Urgency by Dr. Jamal Watson—journalist, professor, and associate dean at Trinity Washington University—lays bare the human cost of the crisis. Scheduled for release in September 2025, the book is expected to coincide with the fallout from a wave of new defaults. Watson calls the debt system “a modern form of indentured servitude,” and his work amplifies the voices of those crushed under its weight.
Beginning next week, the Department will restart the Treasury Offset Program, which allows the federal government to seize tax refunds and federal benefits to collect on unpaid loans. Administrative wage garnishment is also scheduled to resume later this summer. Borrowers in default will receive email instructions in the coming weeks, urging them to contact the Default Resolution Group to avoid harsher penalties.
In an attempt to soften the blow, the Department has announced an enhanced Income-Driven Repayment (IDR) process, promising to streamline enrollment and eliminate annual income verification. Additionally, roughly 1.9 million stalled borrower applications, held up since August 2024, are slated for processing beginning in May.
Still, these administrative changes are unlikely to ease the broader economic pain. The reactivation of collections amid economic uncertainty and servicing confusion is expected to deepen the divide between those who can navigate the system—and those who cannot.
The Higher Education Inquirer has long tracked the rise of the “educated underclass”—graduates and dropouts alike, burdened with debt but lacking economic mobility. For them, May 5 is only the beginning. The real crisis looms in September, when an avalanche of defaults could further destabilize lives, families, and entire communities.
We will be here to report it.
If you’re facing default, garnishment, or administrative hurdles, the Higher Education Inquirer wants to hear your story. Email us confidentially to be part of our ongoing investigation.
Wednesday, April 23, 2025
Trump’s Higher Education Crackdown: Culture War in a Cap and Gown
In a recent flurry of executive orders, former President Donald Trump has escalated his administration’s long-running war on American higher education, targeting college accreditation processes, foreign donations to universities, and elite institutions like Harvard and Columbia. Framed as a campaign for accountability and meritocracy, these actions are in reality part of a broader effort to weaponize public distrust, reinforce ideological purity tests, and strong-arm colleges into political obedience.
But even if Trump's crusade were rooted in good faith—which it clearly is not—his chosen mechanism for “fixing” higher education, the accreditation system, is already deeply flawed. It’s not just that Trump is using a broken tool for political ends—it's that the tool itself has long been part of the problem.
Accreditation: Already a Low Bar
Accreditation in U.S. higher education is often mistaken by the public as a sign of quality. In reality, it’s often a rubber stamp—granted by private agencies funded by the very schools they evaluate. “Yet in practice,” write economists David Deming and David Figlio, “accreditors—who are paid by the institutions themselves—appear to be ineffectual at best, much like the role of credit rating agencies during the recent financial crisis.”
As a watchdog of America’s subprime colleges and a monitor of the ongoing College Meltdown, the Higher Education Inquirer has long reported that institutional accreditation is no sign of academic quality. Worse, it is frequently used by subprime colleges as a veneer of legitimacy to mask predatory practices, inflated tuition, and low academic standards.
The Higher Learning Commission (HLC), the nation’s largest accreditor, monitors nearly a thousand institutions—ranging from prestigious schools like the University of Chicago and University of Michigan to for-profit, scandal-plagued operations such as Colorado Technical University, DeVry University, University of Phoenix, and Walden University. These subprime colleges receive billions annually in federal student aid—money that flows through an accreditation pipeline that’s barely regulated and heavily compromised.
On the three pillars of accreditation—compliance, quality assurance, and quality improvement—the Higher Learning Commission often fails spectacularly when it comes to subprime institutions. That’s not just a bug in the system; it’s the system working as designed.
Who Watches the Watchers?
Accreditors like the HLC receive dues from member institutions, giving them a vested interest in keeping their customers viable, no matter how exploitative their practices may be. Despite objections from the American Association of University Professors, the HLC has accredited for-profit colleges since 1977 and ethically questionable operations for nearly two decades.
As Mary A. Burgan, then General Secretary of the AAUP, put it bluntly in 2000:
"I really worry about the intrusion of the profit motive in the accreditation system. Some of them, as I have said, will accredit a ham sandwich..."
[Image: From CHEA: Higher Learning Commission dues for member colleges. Over the last 30 years, HLC has received millions of dollars from subprime schools like the University of Phoenix.]
The Council for Higher Education Accreditation (CHEA), which oversees accreditors, acts more like a trade association than a watchdog. Meanwhile, the U.S. Department of Education—the only federal entity with oversight responsibility—has done little to ensure quality or accountability. Under the Trump-DeVos regime, the Department actively dismantled what little regulatory framework existed, rolling back Obama-era protections that aimed to curb predatory schools and improve transparency.
In 2023, an internal investigation revealed that the Department of Education was failing to properly monitor accreditors—yet Trump’s solution is to hand even more power to this broken apparatus while demanding it serve political ends.
Harvard: Not a Victim, But a Gatekeeper of the Elite
While Trump's attacks on Harvard are rooted in personal and political animus, it's important not to portray the university as a defenseless bastion of the common good. Harvard is already deeply entrenched in elite power structures—economically, socially, and politically.
The university’s admissions policies have long favored legacy applicants, children of donors, and the ultra-wealthy. It has one of the largest endowments in the world—over $50 billion—yet its efforts to serve working-class and marginalized students remain modest in proportion to its vast resources.
Harvard has produced more Wall Street bankers, U.S. presidents, and Supreme Court justices than any other institution. Its graduates populate the upper echelons of the corporate, political, and media elite. In many ways, Harvard is the establishment Trump claims to rail against—even if his own policies often reinforce that very establishment.
Harvard is not leading a revolution in equity or access. Rather, it polishes the credentials of those already destined to lead, reinforcing a hierarchy that leaves most Americans—including working-class and first-generation students—on the outside looking in.
The Silence on Legacy Admissions
While Trump rails against elite universities in the name of “meritocracy,” there is a glaring omission in the conversation: the entrenched unfairness of legacy admissions. These policies—where applicants with familial ties to alumni receive preferential treatment—are among the most blatant violations of meritocratic ideals. Yet neither Trump’s executive orders nor the broader political discourse dare to address them.
Legacy admissions are a quiet but powerful engine of privilege, disproportionately benefiting white, wealthy students and preserving generational inequality. At institutions like Harvard, Yale, and Princeton, legacy applicants are admitted at significantly higher rates than the general pool, even when controlling for academic credentials. This practice rewards lineage over talent and undermines the very idea of equal opportunity that higher education claims to uphold.
Despite bipartisan rhetoric about fairness and access, few politicians—Democratic or Republican—have challenged the legitimacy of legacy preferences. It’s a testament to how deeply intertwined elite institutions are with the political and economic establishment. And it’s a reminder that the war on higher education is not about fixing inequalities—it’s about reshaping the system to serve different masters.
A Hypocritical Power Grab
Trump’s newfound concern with educational “results” is laced with hypocrisy. The former president’s own venture into higher education—Trump University—was a grift that ended in legal disgrace and financial restitution to defrauded students. Now, Trump is posing as the savior of academic merit, while promoting an ideologically-driven overhaul of the very system that allowed scams like his to thrive.
By focusing on elite universities, Trump exploits populist resentment while ignoring the real scandal: that billions in public funds are siphoned off by institutions with poor student outcomes and high loan default rates—many of them protected by the very accrediting agencies he now claims to reform.
Conclusion: Political Theater, Not Policy
Trump's latest actions are not reforms—they're retribution. His executive orders target symbolic elites, not systemic rot. They turn accreditation into a partisan tool while leaving the worst actors untouched—or even empowered.
Meanwhile, elite institutions like Harvard remain complicit in maintaining a class hierarchy that benefits the powerful, even as they protest their innocence in today’s political battles.
Real accountability in higher education would mean cracking down on predatory schools, reforming or replacing failed accreditors, and restoring rigorous federal oversight. But this administration isn't interested in cleaning up the swamp—it’s repurposing the muck for its own ends.
The Higher Education Inquirer remains committed to pulling back the curtain on these abuses—no matter where they come from or how well they are disguised.
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