Free Republic

For many students and their families, federal student aid is key for college access. And yet, the Trump administration's budget proposal for fiscal year 2026 calls for significant cuts to higher education funding, including reducing the maximum federal Pell Grant award to $5,710 a year from $7,395, as well as scaling back the federal work-study program. The proposed cuts would help pay for the landmark tax and spending bill Republicans in the U.S. Congress hope to enact. Roughly 40% of undergraduate students rely on Pell Grants, a type of federal aid available to low-income families who demonstrate financial need on...

After enjoying many decades of high public support, higher education in the U.S. is in serious decline. Polls show that a sizeable percentage of the populace now doubts that college is worth the cost and that it contributes to the public good. Enrollments keep falling, and the luster that a college degree used to confer on graduates has become tarnished, especially since recent events indicate that, instead of helping them mature, college turns them into ideologically obsessed activists. What has gone wrong? In his latest book, Let Colleges Fail, economics professor Richard Vedder employs his insights to answer that question....

An English instructor at Glendale Community College recently sent an email encouraging the campus community to join in protests against U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. The call came as riotous demonstrations in downtown Los Angeles have included destruction of property, looting, arson incidents, and the injury of at least five police officers. On Sunday, Julie Gamberg, a faculty member at Glendale Community College, sent an email promoting anti-ICE demonstrations organized by the Democratic Socialists of America’s Los Angeles chapter, according to screenshots of the note circulated on X. “Citizens who know their rights can disrupt and slow ICE incursions,” states...

SAN ANTONIO, Texas — Just outside the federal immigration courtroom in downtown San Antonio, organizers with the Party for Socialism and Liberation led an anti-ICE protest attended by more than 100 people. One passionate speaker identified herself as a San Antonio public school teacher, leading the crowd in chants calling for the end of ICE and the Police. Breitbart Texas captured video of Corrie Rosen, who identified herself as a public-school teacher and protest organizer with the San Antonio chapter of the Party for Socialism and Liberation (PSL) at a protest on Sunday outside San Antonio’s city hall. Demonstrators carried...

Ten people have been killed in a school shooting in the Austrian city of Graz, police have said. The incident took place at Dreierschützengasse secondary school in the north-west of the city. Six females and three males were killed in the attack, according to Interior Minister Gerhard Karner. Police said the 21-year-old gunman took his own life in a school bathroom shortly after. A further 28 people are being treated for their injuries in hospital, according to local media reports. The gunman was an Austrian man and former Dreierschützengasse student who didn't graduate from the school, Karner told a news...

The San Francisco Unified School District will not be moving forward with a controversial equity grading strategy that was proposed this week after significant backlash. The strategy, known as "Grading for Equity," was presented during a SFUSD Board of Education meeting on Tuesday, according to Superintendent Maria Su, with the goal of offering "professional development opportunity in standards-based grading." Under the proposed standards, how a student scores on the final exam, which could be taken multiple times, would be what counts toward their grade for the semester, according to the Voice of San Francisco.

PLYMOUTH, MASS. (WHDH) - Plymouth Public Schools food services director Patrick Vancott has been arrested, officials say. The 62-year-old is accused of stealing food from the school district and sold it at his Cape Cod restaurant for profit. “There’s usually lots of lines here, so I’ve seen a lot of people enjoying food here on the beach,” said Ken Dautrich, who is familiar with the restaurant. At Vancott’s “Snack Shack” in Barnstable, there are items on the menu like hamburgers and lobster rolls. Investigators say Vancott used federal funds meant to feed children and ordered premium angus beef and lobster...

A Maine family’s then-five-year-old son was vaccinated in November 2021 with the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine at a public school without his parents’ consent. After the family filed suit, the Maine Supreme Judicial Court ruled that their state claims for damages were pre-empted by the federal Public Readiness and Emergency Preparedness (PREP) Act, holding that their parental rights to consent and their child’s right to bodily integrity were not violated. By Petition for Writ of Certiorari to the United States Supreme Court dated June 2, 2025, the Hogan family has requested that the U.S. Supreme Court review their case.Most Americans trust...

A student in North Carolina just got $20,000 richer. His school district was forced to apologize to him and make the cash payment because he was suspended for using the term ‘illegal alien.’ The left is so triggered by the topic of illegal immigration, that you can’t even use accurate language when talking about the issue without someone going crazy. FOX News reports: North Carolina school district to issue apology, pay $20K to student suspended over ‘illegal alien’ comment. .....Snip...... The teen received a three-day suspension last year after asking his teacher if a conversation in class was centered around...

SummaryTrump campaigned on eliminating Education Department Judge blocked mass firings and bid to close department The Justice Department said the lower court lacked jurisdiction to "second-guess the Executive’s internal management decisions," referring to the federal government's executive branch."The government has been crystal clear in acknowledging that only Congress can eliminate the Department of Education. And the government has acknowledged the need to retain sufficient staff to continue fulfilling statutorily mandated functions and has kept the personnel that, in its judgment, are necessary for those tasks. The challenged (reduction in force) is fully consistent with that approach," the filing said.The department,...

An Oregon middle school encouraged students to dress up as "drag queens" and their favorite "queer hero" this week in celebration of Pride Month, but one parent said families weren't notified ahead of time. At the Arts & Technology Academy in the Eugene School District 4J, students celebrated "Pride Spirit Week" with a different theme each day intended to celebrate the LGBTQ+ community, according to a memo obtained by Fox News Digital. On Monday, students were encouraged to "wear as many colors as they could" for "Rainbow-Out" day. On Tuesday, they were told to wear all black "in remembrance of...

A federal judge in Manhattan issued an order on June 3 preserving a previous preliminary injunction that had blocked the Department of Education from canceling extensions to states for accessing COVID-19-related funds for school districts. School officials can be grifters too. The $1.1 billion in unused COVID-19 relief funds earmarked for elementary and high schools across 16 states and Washington, D.C. must be given to them. The aid was originally granted under the American Rescue Plan Act to support pandemic recovery efforts such as tutoring, building upgrades, and assistance for homeless students. Far-left U.S. District Judge Edgardo Ramos’ ruling blocks...

BOSTON – A federal judge in Boston on Thursday temporarily blocked US President Donald Trump from barring US entry of foreign nationals seeking to study or participate in exchange programs at Harvard University. Under a two-page temporary restraining order granted to Harvard, US District Judge Allison Burroughs enjoined Trump’s proclamation from taking effect pending further litigation of the matter amid an escalating dispute between the Ivy League school and Republican president. The judge ruled that Trump’s directive prohibiting foreign nationals from entering the United States to study at Harvard for the next six months would cause “immediate and irreparable injury”...

Returning noncitizen children and noncitizen parents to their countries could save taxpayers hundreds of billions, especially in state budgets. Afew simple calculations indicate that as much as one-quarter of U.S. public school enrollment could be anchor babies, meaning children with at least one parent illegally present in the United States. This alone amounts to at least $145.6 billion in public resources diverted from U.S. citizens every year. Here’s the math. In April, the Kaiser Family Foundation estimated that 17 percent of school-age children, or nine million kids, in the United States are children of at least one illegal alien. The...

The U.S. Education Department said Wednesday that Columbia University has failed to meet the standards for accreditation because it “is in violation of federal antidiscrimination laws” for allegedly tolerating harassment of Jewish students on campus. The Education Department’s Office of Civil Rights notified the Middle States Commission on Higher Education, an accrediting institution that Columbia belongs to, of the alleged violation. The department noted that federal regulations, “accreditors are required to notify any member institution about a federal noncompliance finding and establish a plan to come into compliance.” “If a university fails to come into compliance within a specified period,...

A bill that would compel Illinois public universities to provide, prescribe, and even promote abortion drugs is now one signature away from becoming law. House Bill 3709 passed the state senate May 31 and is now awaiting action from Democratic Gov. J.B. Pritzker. If signed, the bill would require schools to refer students to abortion providers and, where pharmacies are available on campus, directly distribute abortion drugs like mifepristone, according to a May 20 press release from Illinois Right to Life. The bill would also mandate that universities include information about chemical abortion on their websites, elevating the practice to...

Thomas Jefferson High School has been subjected to left-wing education policies and is uniquely situated to display how destructive those policies are.Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology (TJ) in Fairfax County, Virginia, became something of a household name in recent years, with a challenge to an allegedly racially discriminatory admissions scheme nearly reaching the U.S. Supreme Court and the school essentially selling proprietary education information to the Chinese. Despite the high court refusing to take the slam-dunk affirmative action case, the school is now being investigated from multiple angles by the Trump administration.In the past two weeks, the...

United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents arrested several illegal aliens who were allegedly employed by a construction subcontractor performing work on the University of Texas San Antonio (UTSA) main campus. The arrests took place during a warrant-based worksite raid carried out by ICE on Friday afternoon. ICE issued a brief statement regarding the worksite enforcement action, saying, “On May 30, ICE San Antonio conducted an enforcement action on the northwest side of San Antonio. This operation resulted in the arrest of several individuals who were in the United States unlawfully. No further details are available at this time.” ICE...

America’s eighth-largest school district handed taxpayer cash to Planned Parenthood to train teachers that biological sex is a “myth,” according to documents obtained by the Daily Caller News Foundation. Philadelphia School District (PSD), which oversees almost 200,000 students, paid Planned Parenthood Southeastern Pennsylvania (PPSP) nearly $40,000 in Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) HIV grant funds to provide up to 70 trainings which decry biological sex as a “myth,” support medical child sex-changes and normalize men in women’s sports, according to documents obtained by the DCNF through a public records request. Planned Parenthood delivered Comprehensive Sexual Education to more...

As the administration continues to remake the federal bureaucracy to President Trump’s liking, the Office of Personnel and Management has developed an intensive new training program for those aspiring to join the Senior Executive Service, the upper echelon of government employees. Per an OPM memo, obtained first by RealClearPolitics, the syllabus includes course work grounded in the U.S. Constitution, “Founding ideals of our government,” and Trump’s own executive orders. The development program requires 80 hours of video-based training and culminates in two days of in-person training in Washington, D.C. It will affect government employees across the administration and disparate agencies...