Faculty Address New Federal Government Regulations on Higher Education

On Monday, during the first faculty meeting of the 2025-26 academic year, President Michael Elliott addressed the impacts of the federal government’s new regulations regarding higher education. While Elliott acknowledged that the college will be unaffected by an increased federal endowment tax, he also discussed other potential threats faced by the institution and how the college plans to respond. 

The Federal Endowment Tax

Elliott began by reflecting on how the proposed federal endowment tax evolved over the course of the summer. He reminded the faculty that, during their last meeting in May, the House of Representatives had just passed legislation that would have increased taxed returns on the college’s endowment from a rate of 1.4% to 21%, which would have taken 20-25% of the college’s operating budget. However, he affirmed that Amherst “achieved an outcome even better than expected” as the passed bill ultimately exempted schools with fewer than 3,000 tuition-paying students from an increased tax. 

He then acknowledged that this achievement was a direct result of the tireless hard work of Amherst and other small colleges to educate legislators about the devastating effects of an increased endowment tax on small colleges. However, he also emphasized that this outcome was uncertain until the very last second and stated that the imposition of the tax on other institutions was “deeply disturbing.” 

While Elliott affirmed that Amherst “escaped the worst of it for now,” he also emphasized that these threats aren’t going to go away. 

Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion

Elliott then discussed what the college has been doing regarding the federal government’s regulations on diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) and Title VI, which prohibits discrimination on the basis of race, color, and national origin in programs receiving federal funds. In May, the grant-awarding federal agencies announced that they would be requiring that grant recipients must not violate Title VI by having, in their words, “illegal DEI.” Any violations will be subject to the False Claims Act, which is traditionally used to eliminate government fraud. 

According to Elliott, this new federal policy would impose serious penalties, including criminal charges, on both individuals and institutions. He also explained that violations do not have to be related to the grant activity. For example, someone who filed a grant in the sciences could suffer penalties if a nonacademic program like Book and Plow Farm was alleged to violate Title VI. 

However, the college intends to continue the work of DEI. “We’re looking at this carefully because we want to protect and continue the work that’s important to us,” Elliott said.

He said the college works with a law firm to review the college’s activity and ensure that it is complying with current civil rights law. While the law firm will give advice to the college about any changes it has to make, it doesn’t necessarily mean the college will follow its advice. 

“This is not anticipatory compliance,” Elliott said. “This is about being able to continue our work and protect our colleagues. We don’t anticipate needing to make major changes to what we do, but for those changes that we do need to make, we’ll work to mitigate the impact.”

Elliott also said that the firm will not be assessing any activities relating to faculty research and teaching because they have academic freedom protections. 

Demographic Data for the Class of 2029

Elliott said the college will not yet publicly release demographic data about the class of 2029 due to new federal regulations on higher education. He explained that an executive order by the Department of Education has led to “some very concerning” proposed regulations regarding what demographic data must be shared with the agency. 

“We’d like to wait and see until there’s more clarity about what that demographic data request actually is before we release our numbers,” Elliott said. “We want to be very careful about how we report data in an environment in which the demographic rates of college classes are under incredible scrutiny from the federal government.”

While Elliott declined to share any specific numbers, he said he thought the college had made significant progress in terms of the number of Black and Latinx/Hispanic students in the class of 2029 compared to the notably whiter class of 2028. 

“We are not where we were just a couple of years ago, but we are in a better place than we were just a year ago,” he said. 

Later in the meeting, Elliott elaborated that the Education Department's proposed regulation, which is still in the comment period, would require that admissions offices across the country provide six years of data on admitted students, which includes GPAs and test scores broken down by race and sex.

“This is very real, and this is very concerning,” Elliott said, noting that, at a small school like Amherst, the breakdown of data could mean reporting on individual students. He also believed that this regulation would be harder to successfully challenge in court than the administration's previous actions, since the federal government is legally permitted to request data from educational institutions. 

Academics at Amherst

In her address, Provost and Dean of the Faculty Martha Umphrey said that the Office of the Provost will reevaluate aspects of the college’s academic policies over the course of the year. Umphrey specifically mentioned a recent Provost's Office retreat titled “What’s in a Grade?” which sparked conversations about how faculty think about grading at Amherst as well as potential changes that could be implemented. “This is a particularly acute moment for thinking about grading, both because of the trends in higher education toward the upward end of the grading spectrum, and because all of that data will now become public by demographic category,” Umphrey said. 

Near the end of his address, Elliott affirmed that the college will be thinking more about what it could do to advance academic freedom both at Amherst and in the broader academy. This year, the Center for Humanistic Inquiry will be inviting various speakers to the college to discuss various perspectives on what academic freedom means. This project is supported by The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation with the intention of resulting in an academic freedom index. 

There will also be a series of events on open inquiry hosted by the Center for Teaching and Learning in collaboration with the Provost Office and the Office of DEI.

Elliott concluded his speech by urging the faculty to continue questioning what responsible academic inquiry should look like. He quoted from Felix Frankfurter’s opinion in the 1952 Supreme Court case Wieman v. Updegraff: “[Teachers] must be exemplars of open-mindedness and free inquiry. They cannot carry out their noble task if the conditions for the practice of a responsible and critical mind are denied to them. They must have the freedom of responsible inquiry by thought and action.”