The Education Department is planning to move TRIO and numerous other higher education programs to the Labor Department as part of a broader effort to dismantle the agency and “streamline its bureaucracy.”
Instead of moving whole offices, the department detailed a plan Tuesday to transfer certain programs and responsibilities to other agencies. All in all, the department signed six agreements with four agencies, relocating a wide swath of programs.
For instance, the Labor Department is set to take over most of ED’s higher education programs, which include grants that support student success, historically Black colleges and universities, and other minority-serving institutions. Meanwhile, the State Department will handle Fulbright-Hays grants as well as those administered by the International and Foreign Language Education office. Indian Education and programs for tribal colleges are moving to the Interior Department.
Under the agreements, the other agencies will provide services to support the administration of the various programs they’ll now oversee and ensure compliance with federal rules. ED will transfer the funding, but continues to set the budget, criteria and priorities for the grant programs and manage hiring and other HR processes, among other activities.
Several of the offices that have overseen these grant programs were gutted in recent rounds of layoffs, but any staff members who are still managing them will transfer to their respective receiving agencies. ED also has moved to defund some of the grant programs that are being transferred, deeming them either redundant, irrelevant or unconstitutional. So it remains unclear whether they will actually remain operational in their new locations.
The agreements were signed Sept. 30—the day before the government shut down. ED officials expect the transition to take some time.i
“These partnerships really mark a major step forward in improving management of select programs and leveraging these partner agencies’ administrative expertise, their experience working with relevant stakeholders and streamlines the bureaucracy that has accumulated here at ED over the decades,” a senior department official said in a press call Tuesday. “We are confident that this will lead to better services for grantees, for schools, for families across the country.”
Republicans in Congress and conservative policy analysts generally praised Education Secretary Linda McMahon’s actions while lobbyists representing institutions and left-leaning student advocacy groups argued the changes would cause confusion and make it more difficult to get federal dollars out the door.
Despite rumors that they could also be moved, the Office for Civil Rights, the Office of Federal Student Aid or the Office of Special Education and Rehabilitation Services were unaffected by the agreements—at least for now. According to a senior department official, Secretary McMahon is still “exploring the best plan” for those offices.
Tracey Vitchers, executive director of It’s On Us, an organization that works to combat campus sexual assault, said she expects the Education Department’s Office for Civil Rights to eventually move to the Department of Justice.
“It’s a question of not if but when,” she said. “[Tuesday’s announcement] feels like a test balloon and they are going to [learn] from how this roll out goes and apply them when they make more controversial decisions around the department’s responsibilities.”
McMahon first hinted at the sweeping announcement in a social media post Tuesday morning that included a video of a ticking clock. These moves are the most significant steps McMahon has taken beyond the layoffs to comply with President Trump’s March executive order directing her to shut down ED “to the maximum extent appropriate and permitted by law”.
Liz Huston, a White House spokesperson, applauded the announcement, describing it as a “bold, decisive action to return education where it belongs—at the state and local level.”
“The Trump Administration is fully committed to doing what’s best for American students, which is why it’s critical to shrink this bloated federal education bureaucracy while still ensuring efficient delivery of funds and essential programs,” she said in a statement.
ED officials said in the news release that shifting more than a dozen higher education grant programs to the Labor Department could help to address the nation’s shortage in skilled workers.
“These grants will help students from all walks of life obtain the credentials and career training they need to prosper and contribute to the American economy, as well as provide institutions of higher education with resources to support innovative strategies for learning and workforce advancement,” the release noted.
The department has already moved Career, Technical and Adult Education to the Department of Labor as a test run for the agreements announced Tuesday. But Democrats in Congress and advocates decried that plan as illegal and reiterated those concerns Tuesday.
“This is yet another example of the Trump administration attempting to circumvent the law to advance an agenda that will hurt students and the quality of their education,” said Jared Bass, senior vice president of Education at the Center for American Progress, a progressive think tank. “Only Congress holds the power to eliminate the Department of Education. But office by office, program by program, layoff by layoff, this administration keeps trying to undermine that authority.”
McMahon has also repeatedly affirmed that only Congress can fully shut down the department, but she’s noted that closing the department is different from dismantling bureaucracy and co-managing operations with other cabinet level departments.
The department official noted Tuesday that policy and statutory oversight of the programs will still rest with ED employees.
“Education has broad authority under several statutes to contract with other federal agencies to procure services, and the department has had that authority since its inception,” the official said, noting that ED has signed more than 200 interagency agreements over the years.
President Trump and Education Secretary Linda McMahon are working together to dismantle ED.
Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images
Tuesday’s announcement follows a disruptive year at the department, as McMahon cut more than half of the staff via two rounds of layoffs. Federal courts blocked the latest mass layoff, which took place during the recent shutdown, and President Trump agreed to return affected employees to “employment status” administration as part of a deal to reopen the government.
But it remains unclear whether those staff members will actually return to work. Multiple sources told Inside Higher Ed that the language of the bill could allow Trump to leave employees on paid administrative leave until the bill is no longer effective on Jan. 30 and then re-administer the pink slips.
Between those cuts and other changes at the agency, several higher education experts say the agency has diminished under McMahon, who has argued that the recent 43-day shutdown shows why ED is not needed. Moving grant programs and other responsibilities to other agencies will likely ramp up concerns about the future of the Education Department.
“This deeply unpopular administration lacks the votes in Congress to shut down ED,” said Kevin Carey, vice president of Education and Work programs at New America, a left-leaning think tank. “That’s why Secretary McMahon is creating a bureaucratic Rube Goldberg machine that will waste millions of taxpayer dollars by outsourcing vital programs to other agencies. It’s like paying a contractor double to mow your lawn and then claiming you’ve cut the home maintenance budget. It makes no sense.”