dotEDU: Higher Education Policy Explained

The Department of Education is shifting civil rights investigations to the Department of Justice, a move that undermines the resolution-focused approach to resolving complaints that has supported students and campuses...

The hosts talk live to an audience of ACE Fellows about the White House's new proposal to rewrite the rulebook that governs how campuses manage federal grant funds, along with other higher education policy developments...

Yale University's Committee on Trust in Higher Education spent a year examining the forces behind declining public confidence in colleges and universities and came back with 20 recommendations for how institutions can...

The landscape for federal TRIO programs has shifted dramatically since we talked about it in January. The Department of Education (ED) has issued new grant proposals that would cut the number of programs by more than...

Colleges have spent years building systems to help students vote. Now a mix of federal guidance, investigations, and state-level changes is putting new pressure on that work. ACE General Counsel Peter McDonough joins us...

The hosts are joined by ACE's Emmanual Guillory to break down key federal rulemaking shaping student aid. The conversation focuses on the latest developments in graduate loan limits, new rules for Workforce Pell and...

At ACEx2026 in Washington, DC, the dotEDU team recorded a special live episode during a session at the ACE Annual Meeting. Instead of the usual format, hosts Mushtaq Gunja, Sarah Spreitzer, and Jon Fansmith took turns...

The hosts run a rapid-fire policy lightning round on the biggest higher ed issues right now, from federal funding and a looming Pell shortfall to new graduate loan limits. They also dig into two fast-moving flashpoints...

The national conversation about higher education shifted dramatically in 2025. In this episode recorded in Boston in December, Jon Fansmith and Mushtaq Gunja talk with GBH News correspondent Kirk Carapezza about the...

Questions about the future of federal TRIO programs—academic and support services for low-income, first-generation, and disabled students—come up more than almost any other topic on the podcast. We're joined this week...

Valerie Fuller, president of the American Association of Nurse Practitioners, visited the podcast to talk about how new federal loan limits will change what graduate students can borrow and why nursing may no longer be...

In this final episode of 2025, hosts Mushtaq Gunja, Sarah Spreitzer, and Jon Fansmith spend the hour taking questions on the policy shifts and challenges campuses are watching most closely and the developments expected...

The dotEDU hosts look back at a year that reshaped higher education in ways few expected back in January. Mushtaq, Sarah, and Jon talk through their top five stories of 2025, including the push to dismantle the...

For International Education Week, Sarah and Jon talk with Dr. Jud y th Sachs, c hief a cademic o fficer at Studiosity , about the pressures students face across borders—well-being, finances, language, and the challenge...

The One Big Beautiful Bill may have made headlines but now comes the hard part: writing the rules. In this episode of dotEDU , we unpack the Education Department's massive regulatory to-do list, from loan caps and...