The groundswell of opposition to the Office of Management and Budget’s changes to the Guidance for Federal Financial Assistance is the united voice higher ed has been missing. Released at the end of May, the proposed regulations would put political appointees, not expert peer reviewers, in charge of awarding federal grants. They would allow the government to suspend active grants at any time, for any reason, and prohibit funding for projects that promote “anti-American values” (without defining what those are); international collaborations would be restricted.
In a little under two months, scientists have written op-eds against the proposal, researchers have voiced outrage to journalists, scholarly associations have condemned the rules in statements and 300 organizations have called on Russell Vought, director of the OMB, to extend the 45-day comment period so they could parse the 400-page proposal. (He refused to grant their request.)
A flood-the-zone approach to public comments on the regulations resulted in more than 300,000 submissions logged in the public docket by Monday’s 11:59 p.m. deadline. That’s the second-most-commented-on rule in Trump’s second term, just behind the 572,000 submitted for the reconsideration of the 2009 Endangerment Finding and Greenhouse Gas Vehicle Standards. Compared to other higher ed–related proposals, the total is even more startling: The Department of Education received about 8,500 public comments for its new earnings test regulation and about 400 for new Workforce Pell rules.
