Most clicked story of the week:
The Trump administration recently secured a legal victory when the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals vacated a preliminary injunction against major provisions of two executive orders targeting diversity, equity and inclusion practices in the higher education sector and elsewhere and remanded the case to the lower court. The ruling comes after the same three-judge panel had paused the injunction in March while they reviewed the case.
Number of the week: 10.9%
That’s the annual average returns college endowments enjoyed in fiscal 2025, according to a survey of over 650 institutions by the National Association of College and University Business Officers and Commonfund. That represents a small decline from the prior year, when they saw 11.2% returns on average.
What’s the latest with Harvard?
- The U.S. Department of Justice sued Harvard University on Friday, alleging the Ivy League institution is withholding information from the agency over an investigation into its admissions practices. The department had asked for applicant-level data, including essays and test scores disaggregated by race, as part of its probe into whether Harvard is adhering to the 2023 U.S. Supreme Court decision banning race-conscious admissions practices.
- In another escalation of the Trump administration’s ongoing battle with Harvard, the U.S. Department of Defense announced earlier this month that it plans to cut academic ties with Harvard. That means it would no longer send active duty military members to the university for fellowships, certificate programs and graduate education.
- Meanwhile, four dozen colleges — including all of Harvard’s peers in the Ivy League — signed an amicus brief last month in support of the university’s lawsuit against the Trump administration for attempting to cut off its ability to enroll international students, the Columbia Daily Spectator reported last week.
What’s the latest from the U.S. Department of Education?
- The U.S. Department of Education said it “strongly discourages” accreditors from describing themselves as “regional,” according to a proposed interpretive rule set to be published in the Federal Register on Tuesday. It argued that the label has no regulatory significance and can mislead students. In 2020, the Education Department issued regulations that eliminated the traditional geographic boundaries of the seven major accreditors that operated regionally.
- Education Department officials touted progress with the Free Application for Federal Student Aid last week at the National Association of Student Financial Aid Administrators’ legislative conference in Washington, D.C. They pointed to low call center wait times, averaging under one minute, as well as students and their families reporting high satisfaction with the form.
- The Education Department also released new data on the foreign gifts and contracts U.S. colleges received valued over $250,000 — in line with the Trump administration’s priority to monitor foreign influence over the higher education sector. Colleges reported more than $5 billion in foreign gifts and contracts, with the biggest recipients of such funding including Harvard, Carnegie Mellon University, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Stanford University, NPR reported.
