Higher Education Quick Takes

House and Senate Republicans are planning to introduce a resolution to overturn President Biden’s student loan forgiveness plan after the Government Accountability Office determined that the plan meets the definition of a rule under the Congressional Review Act.

That means that a simple majority of lawmakers in the House and Senate can vote to block the administration from carrying out the rule, though a Congressional Review Act resolution is subject to a presidential veto.

“This resolution prevents these Americans, whose debts look different from the favored group the Biden administration has selected, from picking up the bill for this irresponsible and unfair policy,” said Senator Bill Cassidy of Louisiana, ranking member of the Senate education committee, in a statement.

Similarly, North Carolina representative Virginia Foxx, the Republican who chairs the House Committee on Education and the Workforce, said in a statement she looked forward to working with other lawmakers “to hold the Biden administration accountable for this illegal, unfair, and costly student loan bailout.”

“The Government Accountability Office confirmed today what the American people already knew: the President cannot rule by press release,” Foxx said. “The Congressional Review Act is one of Congress’s key tools to hold the executive branch accountable for not implementing laws with fidelity.”

An Education Department spokesperson said in a statement the administration will continue fighting to deliver debt relief to borrowers.

“It’s a shame for working families across the country that Republican lawmakers continue to fight tooth and nail to deny critical relief to millions of their own constituents impacted by the pandemic,” the statement says.

The GAO’s determination, released Friday, said the debt relief is considered a rule because it has a future effect, implement law and policy, and that the waivers and modifications of the Higher Education Relief Opportunities for Students Act of 2003 were published in the Federal Register.

“The Biden-Harris Administration’s plan to provide targeted, one-time student debt relief to more than 40 million Americans is based on the Department of Education’s decades-old authority granted by Congress and is a result of the same procedures used by multiple administrations over the last two decades to protect borrowers from the effects of national emergencies,” an Education Department spokesperson said in a statement. “This longtime statutory authority has never been subject to the Congressional Review Act. GAO’s decision is at odds with clear longstanding practice, and the Department remains fully confident that its debt relief plan complies with the law.”

Women majoring in science, technology, engineering and math fields are subjected to sexual violence at higher rates than their non-STEM counterparts, a new Georgia State University study suggests. Additionally, it showed that women in STEM fields that have equal numbers of men and women—such as chemistry, biology and math—faced more sexual violence than those in disciplines that are not gender balanced. Women in gender-balanced STEM disciplines reported 3.4 times as many attempted rapes—not necessarily by the men in their department—as the average female undergraduate.

The study surveyed 318 undergraduate STEM and non-STEM majors at five U.S. institutions.

One of the study’s researchers said the results reflect the “backlash effect,” in which gender equality is associated with increased violence against women.

Nevertheless, further research is needed to understand why this pattern exists, the researchers said.

“This study demonstrates that the problem exists, but it doesn’t really explore the why. That’s really the next step in this line of research,” said co-author Leah Daigle, a professor in Georgia State’s Department of Criminal Justice and Criminology, in a press release. “If you see an equal number of women and men in your classes, you might think that, by definition, the women are being treated fairly. But that’s not what our study shows. It should be a wake-up call for people to realize that even when people are not in the minority in a group, they can still be at risk for discrimination and harm.”

Hampshire College on Thursday offered admission to all New College of Florida students in good standing. The offer also includes a match of their costs on tuition, which is much greater for Hampshire students than Florida students.

“This opportunity is in response to the continuing attacks on New College of Florida intended to limit intellectual exploration, turn back progress toward inclusion, and curtail open discussion of race, injustice, and histories of oppression,” Hampshire said. “By committing to impose a narrowly politicized curriculum on New College, the newly appointed trustees broke promises made to its current students to support a self-directed, rigorous education grounded in a commitment to free inquiry.”

The college added, “What is happening at New College of Florida is merely the most radical example of increasingly aggressive efforts to suppress meaningful examination of the realities of our society and curb the advancement of democratic ideals, aspirations that should be the mission of higher education. Increasingly, public institutions are a target for those trying to censor discussions of racism, white supremacy, gender identity, structural barriers to equity, and the reproduction of oppressive hierarchies. This doesn’t serve the students, it doesn’t serve democracy, and it certainly doesn’t serve the world those students seek to improve.”

A spokeswoman for Hampshire told CBS News that four students applied to the college Thursday.

A spokesman for the Florida Department of Education did not respond to a request for comment.

University of Chicago graduate student workers have voted 1,696 to 155 to unionize, the National Labor Relations Board announced Thursday evening.

On Friday, Ka Yee C. Lee, Chicago’s provost, said in a statement that “the university will bargain in good faith with” the union.

The NLRB said there were 3,200 eligible voters. Lee said in her statement that, “Of the 9,904 graduate students at the university, 3,287 were eligible to vote based on their current or recent appointments under the election petition” the union filed.

“The parties have five business days to file objections to the election,” an NLRB spokeswoman wrote in an email Friday. “If no objections are filed, the result will be certified and the employer must begin bargaining in good faith with the union.”

The provost’s statement gave no indication that Chicago will object. The new union will be called Graduate Students United, affiliated with the United Electrical, Radio and Machine Workers of America.

“Almost every graduate student at the university could potentially be represented by GSU-UE at some point during their academic career,” Lee said. “I encourage them to continue learning about and engaging with GSU-UE to make sure their voices are heard and represented during the bargaining process.”

Valay Agarawal, a chemistry Ph.D. student researcher and the union’s communications secretary, said the election occurred in person Jan. 31 and Feb. 1 and by mail from Jan. 31 to March 14.

“We are already happy with the result and, as organizers, we’re also very gratified by the result because of the amount of effort we have put into it,” he said. “And we are very excited for what comes next. We want to start improving the working conditions of everyone as soon as possible.”