Inside Higher Ed’s editor in chief Sara Custer is in the studio with news editor Katherine Knott and federal policy reporter Jessica Blake to hear the latest about movements on The Hill and in the White House affecting higher ed.

On the agenda: the interagency agreements between the Department of Education and agencies across the federal government are the latest efforts by officials to close the department. Meanwhile, the department’s plans to allow some graduate programs access to higher federal loan caps over others attracted more than 80,000 public comments. And accreditation is back in the news with an eventful NACIQI meeting and the run up to negotiated rulemaking.

Sonya Christian is chancellor of California Community Colleges, the largest higher ed system in the country with 116 institutions and 2.2 million students. The sheer size of the system makes every initiative an exercise in scale. In this episode of The Key, Sonya speaks with Inside Higher Ed’s editor in chief Sara Custer about the governor’s proposed $15 billion investment in the system as well as her team’s efforts to use AI to create a credit for prior learning framework for all 116 colleges and why she thinks the institutions in her system should be creating more four-year degrees.

Last month the Congressional Budget Office projected an $11.5 billion shortfall in Pell funding by fiscal year 2027. The program provides need-based federal financial aid for more than 30 percent of American college students. Part of the funding problem is that Congress made getting aid easier without appropriating more money to cover the increase in students gaining access.

Finding a solution requires out of the box thinking that creates sustainable funding without limiting opportunity for first-generation students, according to this week’s guest, Kristin Hultquist, the founder and CEO of HCM strategies and an expert in higher education policy and strategy development. In this episode of The Key, Hultquist speaks with Inside Higher Ed’s editor in chief Sara Custer about what a long-term funding strategy for a modern Pell Grant program could look like.

Thank you to our partners at the Gates Foundation for sponsoring this episode.