APLU In The News

The first year of the second Trump administration inspired a bonanza of federal lobbying across sectors. Higher education was no exception. Parts of the sector — including major research universities and some of the wealthiest liberal-arts colleges — increased their spending on outside lobbying firms by millions of dollars, in aggregate, between 2024 and 2025.…

Hundreds of lawmakers have joined dozens of university leaders and academic trade associations in urging the Department of Education to amend its new regulations on federal student loans, arguing the current rule will deter students from pursuing high-demand degree programs and thus exacerbate dire health-care workforce shortages, Inside Higher Ed reports.

The Trump administration is at the center of many of the higher education world’s biggest lawsuits this year. There’s a simple reason for that: The administration’s actions and policies, if fully realized, would have a massive impact on the sector, Higher Ed Dive reports.

For the most part, college costs continue to rise, along with the amount students borrow to cover the tab. However, there is an exception. When broken down by institution type, the differences are striking: For the 2025-26 school year, tuition and fees for four-year private colleges averaged $45,000, according to newly released data from the College Board. At four-year, in-state…

Scientists and research advocates in the United States are mobilizing to fight a bill that would essentially prohibit researchers with any ties to China and other countries deemed hostile from receiving federal funding, Science Magazine reports.

The Department of Education and its rule-making committee tasked with determining how to implement Congress’s latest loan caps reached consensus Thursday, but that doesn’t mean everyone involved was happy with the results—or that the policy proposal is guaranteed to be legally sound, some higher education experts say

The U.S. government has been without a spending plan for two weeks now. Senate Democrats aren’t backing down on their demands that Republicans extend health insurance subsidies and reverse Medicaid funding cuts, and Senate Republicans continue to push a short-term funding bill that would reopen the government but not restore that funding, Inside Higher Ed…

First, President Trump proposed a multibillion-dollar slash to the federal budget for higher ed. Then, Senate appropriators rejected his plan, keeping funding for many programs intact. And now House Republicans have landed somewhere in the middle, choosing to advance some of the president’s political priorities while blocking others, Inside Higher Ed reports.

After multiple government agencies moved to unilaterally cap indirect research costs—claiming that the current structure allows universities to waste government funds—a coalition of 10 research advocacy organizations unveiled an alternative plan Friday, Inside Higher Ed reports.

Researchers and the academic community may have reason to be hopeful about the future of federal funding. Early indications from the appropriations process suggest that both the House and Senate will diverge significantly from the president’s federal budget proposal for science and technology for the next fiscal year, Inside Higher Ed reports.