Office of the Registrar

From: University Relations and Marketing

Dear OSU Community Members:

Immediately upon the release of Thursday’s executive order directing the U.S. Secretary of Education to take steps leading to the potential closure of the U.S. Department of Education, Oregon State University gathered subject matter experts to assess the potential impacts to OSU students and employees.

Importantly, the federal administration has stated that the executive order will not impact federal student aid. Further, OSU spring term financial aid disbursements are already in process and are not impacted by Thursday’s announcement.

Nevertheless, the university is taking preemptive steps to advocate on behalf of OSU students and our access mission, which provides opportunities to families across the state. Here, one in four undergraduates is the first in their family to attend college, and nearly 9,000 of 33,000 undergraduates receive Pell Grants administered by the U.S. Department of Education. These are financial lifelines for students with exceptional need, many of whom use this federal support to graduate, start careers and create prosperity for themselves, their families, the state, the nation and the world. The Pell Grant program accounts for $38 million in tuition, room and board for OSU students alone. 

For these reasons, Oregon State University provided a legal declaration last week in support of a lawsuit brought by the State of Oregon and 19 other states and the District of Columbia that declares the Department of Education to be essential and that any threat to dismantle it – including massive reductions in force – must be forestalled.

Thursday’s executive order also addresses illegal discrimination “obscured under the label ‘diversity, equity, and inclusion’ or similar terms and programs promoting gender ideology.” As we communicated last month, OSU-sponsored programs and curricula are compliant with all state and federal policies and laws, including recent guidance from the Department of Education. No adjustment is required as a result of Thursday’s executive order.

While OSU researchers have received only a handful of stop work orders and federal research funding cuts remain under preliminary injunction, we continue to monitor progress through the courts while asking principal investigators to forward any new federal stop work orders, terminations, requests for responses to questionnaires/surveys, and modification directives to [email protected]. Additional information for OSU researchers is available on the Division of Research and Innovation website.

Finally, we are hearing concerns from OSU community members about recent immigration actions on university campuses as well as threats to academic freedom and freedom of speech. While OSU is not among the universities under active investigation by the Department of Education and Department of Justice, we continue to monitor this developing situation closely while providing resources to interested OSU students and employees. These include resources for Beavers navigating immigration matters and comprehensive resources on free expression and academic freedom at OSU.

We anticipate offering additional resources and information sessions in the coming weeks and will continue to provide updates as we understand further potential impacts.

On behalf of the university,

Rob Odom, Vice President of University Relations and Marketing