Irreversible Consequences

Elon Musk turns his sights to the Education Department while the White House scrutinizes funding for the Labor Department, National Science Foundation, CHIPS, and more. Also, a new bipartisan commission on workforce seeks common ground amid uncertainty at the federal level, and new data on surging certificates in Indiana.

DOGE Drama Grips Federal Agencies

The Trump administration is pressing forward with sweeping efforts to downsize the federal government, including the elimination of workers, funding, and entire agencies.

Led by Elon Musk and his Department of Government Efficiency team, White House officials say they are seeking deep budget cuts and assurance that continuing federal work aligns with presidential priorities. A widening range of programs related to workforce education and training could be in the crosshairs. They include:

The U.S. Department of Education, which the White House is seeking to dismantle. An anticipated executive order would call on the department to wind down its functions or move them to other agencies, including the Treasury Department. At least 60 department employees so far have been placed on administrative leave.

The confirmation hearing for education secretary nominee Linda McMahon has yet to be scheduled, as the Senate awaits her ethics paperwork. This week James Bergeron was named acting under secretary for higher education.

If confirmed, sources say McMahon is likely to voice support for nondegree education and training tracks, including apprenticeship. The department also is set to pursue Trump’s call for accreditation reform, perhaps including a push for new models of accrediting agencies and for more of a focus on accountability through ROI and other outcomes metrics.

Some Republican lawmakers and conservative education experts support shutting down the agency. “They better get used to this,” Senator John Kennedy, a Louisiana Republican, said Tuesday on Fox News, referring to the DOGE scrutiny. “It’s USAID today. It’s gonna be [the] Department of Education tomorrow.”

However, Rick Hess, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, predicted that Trump’s efforts to shut down the department would be reined in, but only after likely causing “irreversible consequences.” 

The U.S. Department of Labor has yet to be specifically pursued by the Trump administration, beyond the DOGE “fork in the road” resignation letter most federal employees received last week. Yet Labor Department workers fear they’re next on DOGE’s list.

Last week the White House said it would continue to pursue a freeze on certain federal grants. The Labor Department oversees several funding streams that are likely to be scrutinized, including the $3B federal workforce system and spending on apprenticeships. Court rulings have halted the Trump administration from pausing funds, with one requiring that money continue to flow to 22 blue states.

Lori Chavez-DeRemer, Trump’s labor secretary nominee, is slated to appear before the Senate next week. Chavez-DeRemer’s pro-union views are controversial among some Republicans. Her role as secretary could be somewhat limited, several sources say, with most major department decisions coming down from the White House.

CHIPS and Science Act funding will be reviewed by the Trump administration, commerce secretary nominee Howard Lutnick said last week during a Senate hearing. The act authorizes $2.6B in STEM education and workforce funds through the National Science Foundation alone.

NSF is planning to lay off up to half of its staff in the next two months, Corbin Hiar reports for Politico. The agency recently has significantly expanded its support of community colleges to help develop the U.S. tech workforce.

The CHIPS money is an “excellent down payment in our ability to bring semiconductor manufacturing back to America,” said Lutnick, who is CEO of Cantor Fitzgerald, an investment firm. But when asked about binding CHIPS awards, Lutnick said he couldn’t “honor something I haven’t read,” adding, “We need to review them and get it right.”

A Bipartisan View from Washington

Uncertainty was palpable this week during the launch of the Bipartisan Policy Center’s new Commission on the American Workforce. People were measured in their public comments. But there was a sense in the room among both Republicans and Democrats—including state policymakers and many education and labor leaders who served in previous administrations—that little firm ground exists at the national level.

Rep. Tim Walberg, chair of the House Committee on Education and the Workforce and a Michigan Republican, mused in a conversation with Margaret Spellings, president and CEO of the BPC and education secretary during George W. Bush’s administration, about Trump’s plans to dismantle the department she once led. “If there still is an Education Department,” he said. “I guess we’ll find out tomorrow.”

The more centrist group of politicos in the room universally pushed back on the idea.

Bill Haslam, Republican former governor of Tennessee and co-chair of the new commission, said that while he believes some of the Education Department’s purview could be devolved to the states, dismantling it would be a mistake. The department plays an important accountability role, he and others said, and many of its functions—such as administering federal financial aid—would have to go to other agencies. The costs of such a move would be substantial in both dollars and in the distraction from important work.

“I’m a fiscal conservative, and getting rid of the Department of Education for that reason doesn’t make sense,” Haslam said.

The department also plays a critical role in setting national goals and holding states accountable, said both Republicans and Democrats. If anything, they expressed concern that the federal government’s focus on outcomes and accountability had slipped in the past two administrations amid the pandemic and partisan rancor—with many people pointing to disastrous new NAEP scores as evidence. The fourth and eighth graders who are struggling to read and do math aren’t just our children, many attendees noted, but our future workers.

“There was zero discussion of education in this election,” Haslam said.

WIOA and Workforce Pell: In their separate visits to the BPC event, both Walberg and Rep. Bobby Scott, ranking member of the House Committee on Education and the Workforce and a Virginia Democrat, said they expected to find common ground on a bid to open up Pell Grants to shorter-term programs and on reauthorizing the Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act. The BPC would like to see movement on both.

WIOA reauthorization got to the one-yard line in the past Congress before being scuttled when a continuing resolution that included the legislation fell apart after then-incoming President Trump opposed it. Walberg was confident about being able to revive the legislation and move it over the line. “That’s a bipartisan issue,” he said. “And Bobby Scott and I will work together on WIOA.”

Walberg and Scott were also optimistic about moving on short-term Pell. Scott stressed the importance of significant guardrails on eligible programs—a position that Republicans under the previous committee leadership of Virginia Foxx were generally aligned with. That said, short-term Pell bills have stalled in several congressional sessions and may have a more difficult time, as the Congressional Budget Office is projecting a $2.7B shortfall in Pell funding.

Eye on the States: Despite volatility at the federal level, politicos at the BPC event expressed optimism about the ability to make progress on workforce issues in many states, particularly around middle-skills jobs. Momentum in places like Indiana, Arkansas, and Colorado is both real and sustainable, they stressed. Learning from and supporting that work will be a big focus of the new commission.

“Policy matters where it touches people,” said Deval Patrick, the commission’s co-chair and Democratic former governor of Massachusetts. —By Elyse Ashburn

Certificate Data from Indiana

Many more students in Indiana are earning credit-bearing certificates, according to new research from RAND. More than 25K of these certificates were awarded in the state in 2021, up from fewer than 4K in 2010. 

The growth spanned short-term credentials of different lengths and fields, the study found, with dual-enrolled high school students contributing substantially to the increase. A 30-credit certificate introduced in 2014 to help students receive credit for general education coursework when they transfer to a degree program accounts for nearly a quarter of all certificates earned in Indiana.

More than 70% of Hoosier certificate earners stacked an additional credential on top of their certificate within three years. Most of those students later earned a degree and stacked credentials within their field. However, Black certificate earners were less likely to stack.

Students who earned a certificate saw an average earnings gain of 20%—roughly $4,700—although their annual pay remained just $28,700. Longer-term certificates and those in health fields were linked to the largest wage bumps.

Open Tabs

Labor Force Participation
The U.S. workforce ranks in the bottom half of high-income countries in employment and labor force participation rates, and is declining globally on both metrics, according to the State of the Nation Project. The diverse committee of experts found that the U.S. is a wealthy and unhappy nation, with low long-term unemployment and improving hourly earnings, but declining workforce participation among men as well as slower growth among women relative to peer nations.

Wraparound Supports
The North Carolina Community Colleges announced a $35.6M gift from Arnold Ventures to back a new program that will provide supports, advising, and incentives to students. The Boost initiative is modeled on the widely acclaimed CUNY ASAP program, which has been adopted in other states and has doubled graduation rates. Its goals are aligned with the workforce development objectives of the PropelNC initiative, said Kirby Smith of Arnold Ventures.

Degree Requirements
Indiana will drop degree requirements for jobs across state government in cases where a degree is determined not necessary to perform the job duties, according to a recent executive order issued by Mike Braun, the state’s Republican governor. Opportunity@Work says Indiana has become the 26th state to open up at least some state jobs to workers without degrees, estimating that more than 579K jobs are affected by those moves.

AI Tools
The California State University system announced the adoption of a wide range of AI tools and training, which it will make available to all 460K students and 63K faculty and staff members. The public-private collaborative includes Adobe, AWS, Google, IBM, Instructure, Intel, LinkedIn, Microsoft, NVIDIA, OpenAI, and the office of California governor Gavin Newsom. It will seek to identify and advocate for AI skills needed in the state’s workforce and economy.

AI as Expert Assistants
Artificial intelligence systems are emerging that can conduct research with the depth and nuance of human experts, but at machine speed, writes Ethan Mollick, a professor and co-director of the Generative AI Lab at Wharton. Rather than viewing AI tools as search engines, writes John Bailey, a nonresident senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, it’s more helpful to see them as providing access to a group of expert assistants.

Noncredit Credentials
The National Accreditation Commission seeks to develop an AI-enabled accreditation information hub that would streamline quality assurance for noncredit programs. The startup programmatic accrediting agency seeks to provide education providers with monitoring tools that support the rapid deployment of workforce-aligned educational opportunities. It received a grant from the GitLab Foundation’s AI for Economic Opportunity Fund.

Job Moves
Lisa Larson has been appointed interim CEO of the Education Design Lab. Larson, who most recently was EDL’s senior vice president for college transformation, succeeds Bill Hughes, who has stepped down citing family needs.

Jennifer Engle has been hired as a research professor at the Georgetown University Center on Education and the Workforce. She previously was a senior advisor at the Education Department and founding director of US program data at the Gates Foundation.

Daniel Hae-Dong Lee has been named president and CEO of the National Student Clearinghouse. He previously served in vice president roles at Smithbucklin, a management and professional services company, and at Ellucian, an ed-tech firm.

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