It started out promising. Nine business days after President Donald Trump signed a massive bill to help America respond to the ongoing coronavirus pandemic, the U.S. Department of Education unveiled plans for the first tranche of more than $6 billion for colleges and universities to award emergency grant aid to students. That involved working with limited data in creating an entirely new formula that determined funding amounts for more than 5,000 colleges.
Since then, the agency has issued a series of conflicting guidelines and bungled choices in ways careless or cruel, creating uncertainty and delaying the delivery of much-needed funds to students. Weeks after telling colleges they had broad discretion to determine eligibility, the Education Department issued guidance making students who desperately need help ineligible for support. A month later, it announced it would not enforce those restrictions, only to issue an emergency rule a few weeks later making its nonstatutory requirements binding.
Now, three months after colleges could start applying for this assistance, and weeks after many have already received and spent all their funds, the Education Department is still struggling to formalize restrictions and remains mired in lawsuits that have resulted in two temporary injunctions against the agency’s actions. Continue reading.