Dive Brief:
- The impact of the government shutdown on colleges, students and university researchers should be minimal at first.
- The shutdown should not disrupt student aid in the short term; the Education Department has a contingency plan in place.
- The National Institutes of Health is closing most operations, but the shutdown comes at a natural break in its grant cycle.
Dive Insight:
Archives and museums such as the Smithsonian Institution also are affected by the shutdown. The Washington Post has an agency-by-agency rundown of how government is affected that includes the Education Department. The shutdown will see 3,983 of the department's 4,225 full- and part-time employees staying home, but 30 may be called back if it lasts longer than a week. K-12 education is affected, too: All $22 billion in federal grants for special programs should be paid this week, but a protracted shutdown could put some programs in jeopardy. The department will still get the $22 billion to public schools on Oct. 1