Compiled by SUSAN JONES

The Education Department published an updated and longer list of over 20 professional degrees on June 29 that will be eligible to get federal student loans of up to $50,000 annually or $200,000 lifetime, instead of the previous $100,000.

The move came after a federal judge issued a stay on the department’s previous rules that limited “professional” degrees to just 11, including medicine, law, dentistry and theology. The new graduate degrees added to the list include registered nursing and physician assistants (both of which had trade associations that sued the department over its definition) and speech-language pathology. They are eligible at least while the judge’s stay is in place.

The list now includes 29 programs but graduate degrees for careers in education, social work, accounting and architecture still did not make the cut.

JULY 8

Two faculty groups sued the Texas Tech University System’s board and chancellor  over a pair of memos limiting classroom instruction on race, sex, gender and sexual orientation. The directives, issued by Texas Tech Chancellor Brandon Creighton in December and April, violate faculty’s free speech and due process rights, alleges a lawsuit from the American Association of University Professors and the Texas American Association of University Professors-American Federation of Teachers.

JULY 7

• A federal appeals court struck down the higher education restrictions under Florida’s controversial Stop WOKE Act, four years after the law took effect, Higher Ed Dive reported. The legislation banned faculty from discussing certain topics related to race and gender. It immediately elicited overwhelming backlash from faculty, students, education organizations, unions and free speech advocates. In a 2-1 decision this week, the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals made permanent a lower court’s preliminary injunction against enforcing the law at colleges. ”The ideas Florida targets may well be noxious. Or maybe not,” U.S. Circuit Judge Britt Grant wrote for the majority. “Either way, in this context the First Amendment trusts students to figure it out for themselves.”

• The New York Times reported that the dean of Yale Law School and some members of its faculty are trying to stop a settlement between the university and the Trump administration, warning that an agreement could jeopardize Yale’s independence, according to two people familiar with the deliberations.

• Moody’s Ratings lowered the credit outlook for Brown University to negative, primarily citing “already thin operating performance” that could continue for several years. The credit ratings agency pointed to the Rhode Island university’s high debt levels and to large lump sum payments it owes in the future. Together, these could throttle Brown’s future borrowing ability if it doesn’t see “significantly improved operating performance,” Moody’s said. 

JULY 6

Graduate programs are shrinking at some of the nation’s top research universities.Citing data from the Association of American Universities Data Exchange, The New York Times reported Monday that the number of Ph.D. students admitted to 55 research universities (all among AAU’s 69 United States–based members) declined 15 percent over the past year.  

JULY 1

The Florida Board of Governors voted by a wide margin to approve Stuart Bell as the University of Florida’s permanent president despite right-wing attacks on his past supervision of diversity initiatives while leading the University of Alabama.

JUNE 30

• Pennsylvania Western University, which includes campuses in California, Clarion and Edinboro, is moving forward with a plan to cut 43 academic majors and minors while adding dozens of new workforce-focused certificates and credentials, the Post-Gazette reported. The university, part of the PA State System of Higher Education, will begin sunsetting six undergraduate majors, three graduate majors and 34 minors this fall, university officials announced, and 45 new certificates, credentials and concentrations will be added. The moves follow a monthslong comprehensive review of the university’s offerings. Only 1.8% of the student body, or 188 students, were enrolled in the nine impacted majors in spring 2026.

• The Florida State Board of Education approved a policy to bar undocumented students from attending the 28-institution Florida College System. Students will also have to provide documentation that they are citizens or lawfully present in the U.S. before enrolling. 

• A federal judge blocked the Trump administration from implementing a new rule ⁠stripping public service workers of eligibility for federal student loan forgiveness if it deems their employers to have a “substantial illegal purpose,” the Guardian reported. U.S. district judge ⁠Myong Joun in ⁠Boston sided ​with Democratic-led states, cities and non-profits that argued the US Department of Education’s rule would allow it to target groups supporting immigration rights, transgender ⁠healthcare and other causes the Trump administration disfavors, by disqualifying them from the Public Service Loan Forgiveness Program

• Nine months after the assassination of Charlie Kirk, colleges have paid nearly $3 million to settle three legal challenges brought by former employees disciplined for remarks they made about the conservative activist, the Chronicle of Higher Education reported. The biggest settlement came at the end of June, when an anthropology professor at the University of Tennessee at Knoxville who was fired after she made a private Facebook post about Kirk agreed to a $1.9-million settlement to end her wrongful-termination suit against the institution.

• The U.S. Supreme Court ruled that transgender student athletes do not have the constitutional right to play on sports teams aligning with their gender identity. Instead, colleges and K-12 schools can determine eligibility for women’s and girls’ sports teams based on “biological sex,” the court said.

• A coalition of disability and education organizations sued the federal government over what it says are withheld funds from the U.S. Department of Education for education research, data collection, program evaluation and assistance to states and school districts. The complaint claims the federal government is failing to provide nearly $2 billion in funding for education research that was appropriated by Congress.

JUNE 29

The Education Department finalized a suite of new regulations governing how college programs must prove value. The rule interprets a 2025 federal law requiring all academic programs to produce graduates who earn more than a high-school graduate four years after completion. If programs don’t pass the test, students enrolled in them could lose access to federal student loans and, in rare cases, to Pell Grants.

JUNE 26

Johns Hopkins University has laid off about 110 employees in response to federal research spending cuts, a spokesperson confirmed to Higher Ed Dive. The cuts came largely in administrative roles at the private university in Baltimore. Johns Hopkins’ federal research grants dropped by about half a billion dollars last year, and “these downward trends have continued unabated” into 2026, President Ron Daniels said in a public message earlier this month. 

JUNE 25

Virginia is teaming up with Ohio to design a blueprint for three-year bachelor’s degrees that would require 90 credits for graduation, according to Higher Ed Dive. The partnership comes as more states and institutions mull shorter pathways to college. On June 29, the American Association of University Professors and American Federation of Teachers slammed Massachusetts’s decision to allow Merrrimack College and Suffolk University to offer three-year degrees and the idea of three-year bachelor’s degrees in general in a scathing statement, according to Inside Higher Ed. The approval of these degrees “threatens academic integrity by substituting for a comprehensive education a stripped-down curriculum that prioritizes speed over essential intellectual development,” AAUP President Todd Wolfson and AFT President Randi Weingarten wrote. 

JUNE 24

North Carolina’s Legislature enacted a ban on diversity, equity and inclusion efforts at the state’s public colleges, overriding a veto from Democratic Gov. Josh Stein. Under the law, which went into effect immediately on June 24, public colleges in the state cannot maintain DEI offices or employees, nor can they “endorse divisive concepts.” The law’s examples of divisive topics include that a person of any race or sex is inherently privileged or that the U.S. was created to oppress members of a certain race or sex.

JUNE 23

The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development warned colleges that offering affinity student housing or accommodations described using words like “diversity,” “multiculturalism,” or “safe spaces” could violate the federal ban on racially segregated housing. HUD Assistant Secretary Craig Trainor, who previously held a similar role at the Education Department, shared the June 23 letter on social media.

JUNE 22

The Education Department’s Office of Inspector General found that the mass agency staff reductions enacted at the start of the second Trump administration appear to have impacted the department’s ability to fulfill its legal obligations. In one example, the reductions led to the termination of $504 million in grants, most of which had been earmarked for teacher training and mental health services, the OIG found.

JUNE 18

The Wisconsin Supreme Court unanimously ruled that a state grant for minority students is unconstitutional, Wisconsin Public Radio reported. The ruling affirmed an appeals court decision in concluding that the Minority Undergraduate Retention Grant Program, established by the state legislature more than 30 years ago, violates the equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment. The program offered financial assistance to low-income Black, Native American, Hispanic or Southeast Asian students from Laos, Cambodia or Vietnam who came to the U.S. after Dec. 31, 1975.

JUNE

Arizona’s $18.29 billion fiscal year 2027 budget, which Gov. Katie Hobbs signed into law in June, eliminates millions in education funding for public universities and slashes several one-time investments that have helped students access higher education. The budget, which went into effect July 1, removes $16.3 million from state universities, including $8 million from Arizona State University, $2.6 million from Northern Arizona University and $5.7 million from the University of Arizona. It also eliminates funding for several scholarships and programs for which the state’s FY2026 budget allotted money.

Susan Jones is editor of the University Times. Reach her at suejones@pitt.edu or 724-244-4042.

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