What Cuts in Institute of Education Sciences Funding Means For Higher Education Research
By Maria Carrasco, NASFAA Staff Reporter
Earlier this month, the Trump administration terminated nearly $900 million in Institute of Education Sciences (IES) contracts, leaving the higher education community with many questions on how this may affect tools and data from the Department of Education (ED).
The IES is an independent, non-partisan statistics, research, and evaluation branch of ED. Part of IES’s work is to fund education sciences, evaluate federal programs, collect and report education statistics, and more. Under the IES are four major research and statistics centers, which include the National Center for Education Evaluation and Regional Assistance (NCEE), the National Center for Education Research (NCER), the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES), and the National Center for Special Education Research (NCSER).
The decision – which came from the Trump administration’s “Department of Government Efficiency” (DOGE) – terminated 89 IES contracts worth $881 million, according to the organization. However, the American Educational Research Association (AERA) and the Council of Professional Associations on Federal Statistics (COPAFS) said that 169 contracts had been canceled.
According to the DOGE website, which lists the program reductions DOGE has made since President Donald Trump took office, part of the terminated IES contracts include work for the National Postsecondary Student Aid Survey (NPSAS) and the Beginning Postsecondary Students (BPS) survey.
According to Higher Ed Dive and other news reports, ED has said that the National Assessment of Educational Progress, the College Scorecard, and the College Navigator were not impacted by the terminated IES contracts. However, questions remain about how this could impact the Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System (IPEDS), such as delays in publishing data or difficulties for institution reporting.
Many higher education organizations and experts have expressed concerns over the Trump administration’s move to terminate IES contracts. AERA and COPAFS in a statement last week stressed the importance of NCES, which is congressionally mandated to collect data on several aspects of education in the U.S.
“We call on this administration to reinstate these contracts to ensure that those who rely on and trust NCES data are able to access them without interruption and can continue to monitor educational progress and performance and inform sound educational policy and practice,” AERA and COPAFS said in their statement.
NASFAA is following how these cuts to IES contracts will impact institutions. Stay tuned to Today’s News for more information on IES funding.
Publication Date: 2/24/2025
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