What’s New
Dozens of contracts with the Education Department’s research and statistics arm, the Institute of Education Sciences, were suddenly terminated Monday, jeopardizing efforts to provide the public and policymakers with reliable information about educational access, completion, and spending.
The institute, an independent agency within the Education Department, is among the latest targets of the Department of Government Efficiency, known as DOGE, created by the billionaire Elon Musk. His team has been combing through Education Department data for more than a week, interviewing employees about their work and posting on X about its efforts to root out what it considers wasteful spending.
The Details
Dozens of contractors and researchers received emails on Monday telling them to immediately stop working on the vast majority of contracts the institute oversees. Those include contracts held by the National Center for Education Statistics, which provides nonpartisan information on a variety of education indicators, including graduation and transfer rates, student demographics, and tuition rates.
In a statement released late Monday, the American Educational Research Association and the Council of Professional Associations on Federal Statistics said that 169 contracts had been canceled. They called on the Trump administration to reinstate the contracts “to ensure that those who rely on and trust NCES data are able to access them without interruption and can continue to monitor educational progress and performance and inform sound educational policy and practice.”
The statement pointed out that NCES is congressionally mandated to collect data on many points along the education pipeline, including pre-kindergarten, college, and work-force training. With limited resources and staff, the statement said, the center has relied on contractors to do much of the work. Canceling their contracts “will prevent NCES, for example, from participating in international assessments; reporting data on school, college, and university finances; and collecting survey data to understand the extent of teacher shortages and chronic absenteeism in our nation’s schools.” Without reliable data, “student learning and development will be harmed.”
The stop-work order is likely to restrict one of the NCES’s most important data-collection efforts, the Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System, or IPEDS. It consists of a dozen interrelated survey components that gather data three times a year from every college and technical institution that participate in Title IV student financial-aid programs. IPEDS provides NCES with the basic data needed to report on the number of students enrolled, staff employed, dollars spent, and degrees earned.
The information is used by policymakers and education and labor-market analysts, by students and parents in choosing colleges, and by colleges in comparing their institutions with their peers.
AERA’s executive director, Felice J. Levine, said that the independent research group that holds the contract to collect IPEDS data wasn’t affected, but she said it’s possible that other contracts that analyze and report the data were canceled.
“This vital information shapes the lives and decisions of families, students, administrators, and admissions counselors,” Levine said in an interview. Given all the challenges the higher-education sector is facing, with enrollment declines, Covid-related learning loss, financial cuts, and eroding public confidence, “this is when we really need to be monitoring the health and well-being of our education institutions.”
The Chronicle reached out to about two dozen IES employees for comment. The few who responded directed the reporter to a spokeswoman for the Education Department, who did not immediately respond on Monday.
The American Institutes for Research released a statement Tuesday saying it has received notice that several contracts have been canceled, including some that were nearing completion. “This is an incredible waste of taxpayer dollars, which have been invested — per congressional appropriations and many according to specific legislation — in longstanding data-collection and analysis efforts, and policy and program evaluations,” a spokesperson for the group, Dana Tofig, said in an email.
“If the purpose of such cuts is to make sure taxpayer dollars are not wasted and used well, the evaluation and data work that has been terminated is exactly the work that determines which programs are effective uses of federal dollars, and which are not.”
The Backdrop
The stop-work order to IES employees was issued just as a federal judge was ordering the Trump administration to lift a blanket spending freeze on federal grant programs, including those at the National Institutes of Health. He called the administration’s sweeping freeze “likely unconstitutional” and said it continues to cause “irreparable harm to a vast portion of this country.”
The number of lawsuits filed by state attorneys general and employee groups has been mounting in an effort to stop DOGE from dismantling federal agencies and halting grants. States have alleged that the administration is continuing to withhold federal funds.
The deluge of executive orders on diversity, equity, and inclusion, undocumented and transgender students, and research spending is creating chaos on campuses. Administrators are having to guess which of their programs could lead to federal funding cuts, with some pre-emptively cutting them to avoid the risk. Faculty members and graduate students are learning that grants for research programs have been frozen.
What to Watch For
In recent weeks, similar stop-work orders, grant freezes, and cuts have mobilized affected workers to pursue lawsuits. It’s unclear whether the IES cuts will add to the mounting number of legal challenges facing the Trump administration. But without a doubt, it’s adding to the confusion and concern colleges are facing as they try to assess the impact the administration’s cuts are likely to have on their bottom lines and their ability to assess how their students are faring going forward.
