A slight thaw in a funding freeze
The U.S. Department of State has released a small portion of frozen funding that has imperiled key international education and exchange programs like the Fulbright and Gilman scholarships. Some funding is “trickling through,” a month after the State Department quietly suspended all grant payments, said Mark Overmann, executive director for the Alliance for International Exchange. Overmann, whose organization represents groups and providers that run exchanges and support global-education programming, estimates that about 15 percent of pending payments have begun to be disbursed over the last few days… Overmann said that it is unclear if the payments signal a regular resumption of funding, nor is there any indication about why specific spending has been restored. He also noted that the money that has been coming in does not cover operational or staff costs for the groups that administer many of the State Department programs.
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by Karin Fischer, The Chronicle of Higher Education.