Department of Education Revokes Access to College Support Services Based on False Claims

The Trump administration has spent its first few months engaging in ideological warfare against colleges and universities. It has canceled, restricted, or threatened to withhold billions in federal funding in an attempt to subjugate colleges to the administration’s political goals. Now, it’s retroactively changing the terms of approved grant funding based on political musings and false claims rather than any grounding in federal law. This has jeopardized colleges receiving funding, sowing chaos for institutions and students alike.

Last month, the U.S. Department of Education announced it was revoking waivers approved for California and Oregon colleges, which allowed them to help undocumented students in college support programs.

"American taxpayers will no longer be used to subsidize illegal immigrants," Acting Under Secretary James Bergeron said in the announcement.

Typically, undocumented students can't legally participate in certain programs. But the Performance Partnership Pilot (P3) initiative, which Congress established in 2014, allows federal agencies to waive regulations in order to better serve vulnerable students.

The Education Department had approved California and Oregon to waive student eligibility regulations under TRIO Programs, which provide academic and career services to students from disadvantaged backgrounds. The waiver allowed participating colleges in those states to provide undocumented students the same support services given to their peers, like academic tutoring and advice on course selection and paying for college.

However, neither the Education Department’s announcement nor an agency letter revoking the waivers offered any legal or regulatory justification for the decision—other than the fact that the administration doesn’t think undocumented students should receive taxpayer-funded services.

The Education Department’s letters, which New America obtained, state the “waiver provisions of the Performance Partnership Pilot are not consistent with applicable law, are not properly using Federal Funds, and are not complying with applicable Federal requirements.”

But neither the Higher Education Act, which authorizes the TRIO programs, nor the Consolidated Appropriations Act, which authorizes the P3 pilot, expressly excludes undocumented students. In fact, the initial call for applications as part of the P3 pilot specifically invited them to waive TRIO regulations that limited eligibility to citizens.

The letters only cite an executive order President Donald Trump signed in February as the reason for revoking the waiver. The executive order directs the head of each federal agency to “identify all federally funded programs administered by the agency that currently permit illegal aliens to obtain any cash or non-cash public benefit, and, consistent with applicable law, take all appropriate actions to align such programs with the purposes of this order and the requirements of applicable federal law, including the PRWORA.”

PRWORA, which stands for The Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996, prohibits “federal public benefits” from being awarded to persons who are not able to prove they have certain types of legal immigration status. PRWORA defines a “Federal public benefit” to include “any retirement, welfare, health, disability, public or assisted housing, postsecondary education, food assistance, unemployment benefit, or any other similar benefit for which payments or assistance are provided to an individual, household, or family eligibility unit by an agency of the United States or by appropriated funds of the United States.”

However, the Education Department letters do not state either California or Oregon violated PRWORA. Although payments or assistance for postsecondary education is defined as a “federal public benefit” under PRWORA, the prohibition is related to direct payment to an “individual, household, or family entity unit.” The law’s conference report and the corresponding federal guidance explains this by stating that programs like Title I, which gives money to K-12 schools serving low-income students, send funding to schools, not to individuals, so those funds are not considered a “federal public benefit” under the law.

The fact that the letters do not explicitly say that either state violated PRWORA is telling, because there is no evidence they did. After all, the P3 waiver does not allow for the provision of “public federal benefits” to ineligible immigrants. The grant agreements that put the waiver into effect, which New America also obtained, support that same legal interpretation. Each agreement clearly states that participants can’t receive benefits like financial aid, cash payments, or any other direct money benefits. Like Title I funding, TRIO funds go to a school or organization who then provides services to students. Some TRIO programs allow for stipends to be paid to students, but those stipends were specifically not allowed under the waiver.

Not only did the Education Department not identify legal violations, but the grant agreements provide narrow circumstances in which the agency could even revoke the waiver. A program must be misusing federal funds, not complying with the grant terms, or not achieving established outcomes for the Education Department to rescind the agreements, and no evidence suggests that California or Oregon failed in their obligations.

The goal of the P3 pilot is to improve opportunity and success for disconnected youth in exchange for the flexibility, which is measured by improved educational, employment, or similar outcomes. Under the California and Oregon pilots, colleges were committing to improving educational outcomes, such as grade point average, persistence in college, and course completion. Cancelling the waivers in the middle of the pilot means students abruptly lose services in the middle of the academic year—but also that the colleges will not be able to obtain the needed evidence on whether outcomes improved. The whole point of the pilot is to see what would happen if certain regulations were waived so that policymakers can consider regulatory changes to improve outcomes.

Like other instances of cancelling funds, the move to end the P3 pilot is in violation of the terms of the agreement, and is an attempt to control colleges, rather than better serve students. The Trump administration has claimed it wants to return education to the states, not bureaucrats in Washington, in order to improve outcomes. But if that was the goal, it would have allowed California and Oregon to serve their students as they see fit, and allow the schools to obtain the evidence on improving student success.