Widening DEI Purge

Workforce education grants are among $2B in National Science Foundation awards that are being scoured. Meanwhile, the Trump administration cuts funding to research and expand apprenticeships. Also, a look at the stakes for state data systems, and an essay on how to break the cycle of low-wage work.

Taking a Sledgehammer to Workforce Grants

Educators are scrambling to determine what counts as prohibited affirmative action amid an expanding crackdown by the Trump administration. For the National Science Foundation, however, Senator Ted Cruz got specific by releasing a database of more than $2B in Biden-era grants.

“This funding was diverted toward questionable projects that promoted Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) or advanced neo-Marxist class warfare propaganda,” according to the U.S. Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation, which the Texas Republican now leads.

Many of the 3,483 grants Cruz labeled “woke” are managed by research universities. Some of the targeted education-related projects include goals for diversifying STEM fields or to bolster the research capacity of minority-serving colleges. Since 1997, Congress has required NSF to explicitly weigh how grants will boost the participation of women and underrepresented groups in science as part of one of two key award criteria.

The commerce committee did not respond to a request for comment.

Cruz said the funding identified by the investigation is evidence of how the Biden administration politicized NSF grants to “push a far-left ideology.” His claims were echoed by conservative news outlets. Many scientists have pushed back, however. Some said certain grant proposals described potential societal benefits, but that their research isn’t woke.

The targeted awards go well beyond studies led by four-year universities. Many workforce education and training programs are on the commerce committee’s list. The NSF has been ordered to scour all of the awards identified by Cruz to ensure they comply with the Trump administration’s executive orders that seek to root out DEI.

The following are examples of NSF awards for community college–led projects that are being scrutinized:

• $3M to develop new EV technician training programs at 15 community colleges across the country. The consortium, which is led by Central Oregon Community College, is seeking to address a “critical workforce need for the EV industry” while also providing “low-barrier access to high-quality jobs for underserved populations,” including female, low-income, and rural students.

• $7.5M to create the National Information Technology Innovation Center. Columbus State Community College is leading a group of five community colleges across Arizona, Ohio, and Texas to launch the center. It seeks to work with employers to develop training for jobs in cybersecurity, data analytics, cloud computing, and artificial intelligence.

High-Tech Hubs: Also on Cruz’s list are awards for NSF’s Regional Innovation Engines, which were funded by Congress through the CHIPS and Science Act.

The 10 projects seek to create regional partnerships between industries and universities and community colleges, with a goal of developing tech-focused business clusters and workforces outside of big cities on the coasts:

• The Louisiana Energy Transition Engine is building regional expertise in carbon sequestration and hydrogen as an alternative fuel. With a $15M grant from NSF, the collaboration seeks to tap the infrastructure, expertise, and investment of the state’s existing oil and gas industry. It’s led by LSU but includes the Louisiana Community and Technical College System.

• The North Dakota Advanced Agriculture Technology Engine aims to develop next-generation agriculture by combining advanced genomics, climate modeling, and nanoscale sensors. The $15M grant seeks to help develop the workforce in farming communities. North Dakota State University is leading the project in partnership with Grand Farm, an industry network, as well as tribal and two-year colleges.

“This award of up to $160M over 10 years is a major investment in NDSU and Grand Farm’s efforts to transform the future of ag production,” Senator John Hoeven, a North Dakota Republican, said in announcing the grant. “It will spur growth for a variety of industries, including our state’s dynamic tech sector and manufacturers.”

Next Steps: NSF is facing potentially catastrophic budget cuts. The agency is preparing to lay off up to half of its 1,600 staff members this spring, reports Jeffrey Mervis for Science, as the White House mulls slashing NSF’s $9B in annual funding by as much as two-thirds. The agency fired 168 probationary workers this week, according to The New York Times.

Several sources across workforce education say they remain hopeful that Republicans in Washington won’t gut the agency's grants. The award money isn’t about DEI, they say, but instead is aimed at broadening the pipeline of talent for industries that badly need more workers. Some hope the discussed budget slashing is an opening bid in negotiations.

The threatened cuts would reverse the nation’s legacy of tech leadership and its ability to harness innovation for economic benefits, says New America’s Shalin Jyotishi: “Supporting STEM workforce development through NSF funding is a bipartisan priority that aligns with some goals from the first Trump administration and appointees.”

Bipartisan support is no longer a sure thing, however. Some observers predict that even innocuous federal programs may get uprooted as the White House, in Cruz’s words, takes a “sledgehammer to the radical left’s woke nonsense.”

Apprenticeships on the Chopping Block

Several federal grants that seek to expand apprenticeships have been rescinded by the Trump administration, as has funding for research on apprenticeship programs.

For example, the U.S. Department of Education last week abruptly terminated three federal grants for Reach Teachers College. A total of $14.7M was rescinded, directly affecting apprenticeship degree programs the nonprofit Reach University offers with its community partners in Louisiana and Arkansas.

Those cuts come as the Trump administration has eliminated larger teacher-training grants, affecting many colleges.

The Louisiana Educator Apprenticeship Partnership was working to create pathways for aspiring educators who have earned an associate degree to work in a paid, apprenticeship-based position at Jefferson Parish Schools. Those jobs lead to a bachelor’s degree and teaching credential while helping with serious teacher shortages.

In the grant application, Reach noted that its local college partner—Delgado Community College—is a predominantly Black institution. The application also said the partnership would “increase the number of teachers of color in high-need Louisiana schools.” Reach says it does not discriminate and serves partner schools without consideration of race, color, religion, sex, national origin, or another protected characteristic.

The apprenticeship degree model Reach and the related National Center for the Apprenticeship Degree are pioneering in this country have drawn strong bipartisan praise and appear to be catching on, particularly in red states. 

Shuttered Studies: Apprenticeship-related research also has been eliminated in recent weeks.

One researcher told me about four research projects that were halted by the Labor and Education Departments. Three of those studies focused on apprenticeship, said the researcher, who, like many sources for this article, asked to remain anonymous due to fear of being singled out by the Trump administration.

One of the Labor Department–funded research projects provided technical assistance to states as they seek to expand apprenticeship systems. Another was a study of the effectiveness of the implementation of pre-apprenticeship programs. The third related to a large set of federal grants to expand registered apprenticeships, with a focus on evaluating the implementation of pre-apprenticeship and youth apprenticeship programs by state agencies and intermediary organizations.

The researcher said he has seen no explanation from the federal agencies about why those projects were halted.

Help From Philanthropy: A representative at a philanthropic foundation that is active in education and workforce tells me that the organization is considering whether to ask its board for emergency funds to help keep mission-critical research rolling.

The foundation could authorize the money this week. “Even that feels late and slow,” she says.

Likewise, any emergency support would be triage, given the volume of federal money that has been poofed. And even providing bridge funding for research on popular workforce projects could be risky for a philanthropy. Those worries go beyond reputational hits, as Elon Musk has threatened foundations for their charitable giving.

Foundation support probably couldn’t resuscitate the apprenticeship-related studies cited by the researcher. Philanthropic money might work for the technical assistance project, the researcher says, but wouldn’t be practical for the other ones.

It’s too late to save the fourth study. That research project was eliminated as part of the Trump administration’s termination last week of $881M in contracts from the Education Department’s Institute of Education Sciences. That RCT study was about how K-12 students with disabilities transition to jobs or higher education. It looked at how children across 14 school districts, in both red and blue states, land and retain jobs after high school.

The study worked with sensitive student data, the researcher says, with an opt-in process for students and their families that takes years to complete.

The Kicker: “It would have to start over from the beginning,” he says. “So that’s wiped out.”

Impacts on State Accountability Systems

Since the mid-2000s, states have gotten a major assist from the federal government for work to connect and more effectively use K-12, postsecondary, and workforce data—first as part of a nationwide accountability push and increasingly as a tool for meeting local labor market demand and supporting skills-based hiring.

Thus far the primary programs supporting state data efforts, such as the Statewide Longitudinal Data Systems grant program and the Workforce Data Quality Initiative, remain in place. At least one state, however, did have a small contract for technical assistance under WDQI canceled, according to a source working with the state.

But the loss of federal resources, like the National Postsecondary Student Aid Study and EDFacts, which had their contracts terminated last week, will make it much harder for states to fill in the blanks in their own data and especially to understand how their education and labor market outcomes stack up nationally, says Kate Tromble, vice president of federal policy for the Data Quality Campaign.

“Yes, states will still have access to their own outcomes and UI data, but you need something to tie it to,” she says. “Not having that base is problematic.”

The Clearinghouse for Labor Evaluation and Research (CLEAR), which houses research states use to understand best practices in workforce development, has stopped functioning. And the contract for maintaining the What Works Clearinghouse at IES was eliminated.

Data in WIOA: Federal policymakers, through legislation like the reauthorization of the Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act, also had been moving to give states more access to data in the National Directory of New Hires, which is especially useful in tracking outcomes for students and workers who move across state lines. That bipartisan legislation was scuttled in the waning days of the last Congress, and its data provisions—along with a host of other changes—are now a question mark.

“We’re just waiting to see what’s going to happen,” Tromble says. —By Elyse Ashburn

Open Tabs

AI and Job Disruption
Highly educated, higher-tech metro areas—like San José, Calif.; Durham, N.C.; and New York City—are much more likely to see their jobs disrupted by generative AI than are less educated and less office-oriented metro areas, according to new research from the Brookings Institution. This flips on its head the geography of previous waves of automation, which disproportionately impacted less educated cities in the Midwest and South. The authors note, however, that while those regions may be more insulated from the risks of AI, they also are more likely to be left out of the gains.

Labor Shortages
Many K-12 students who possess the aptitudes to excel in high-demand industries lack exposure and engagement opportunities to pursue careers in those fields, finds a survey of 450K U.S. students by YouScience. Among the industries with the largest gaps between the aptitude and interest of students were health science (gap of 24%), IT (24%), finance (18%), advanced manufacturing (18%), and transportation, distribution, and logistics (18%).

ROI at Cal State
California State University campuses dominate a new economic mobility ranking of the state’s four-year colleges and universities, holding 13 of the top 15 spots. The mobility index from the College Futures Foundation and the HEA Group evaluates 82 institutions on both the proportion of lower- and moderate-income students they enroll and the ROI they provide. Topping the list is Cal State L.A., where two-thirds of students are eligible to receive Pell Grants.

Job Moves
Henry Mack III has been nominated to be assistant secretary of labor and would lead the Labor Department’s Employment and Training Administration. Mack previously was Florida’s chancellor of higher education and workforce and later was provost at Northwest Florida State College.

Walter Bumphus announced that he will retire as president and CEO of the American Association of Community Colleges at the end of the year. Bumphus has led AACC for 15 years. The group is conducting a national search for his successor.

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