A Message from TICAS President Sameer Gadkaree

Dear Friends:

As 2025 comes to a close, I hope each of you is enjoying a wonderful holiday season with your family and friends. No doubt, this year has been filled with challenges on our shared path to ensuring that this generation of Americans – and the next – will have access to a vibrant, affordable higher education system that improves and enriches their lives. But, as I reflect on the year, I am thankful for and inspired by the principled work of TICAS alongside so many of you.

For over two decades, TICAS has fought to ensure that the financial circumstances into which students are born do not prevent them from successfully pursuing a college education. High college costs have made it necessary for students, especially those from lower-income families, to take out student debt. That debt has inhibited economic mobility and increased the risk that college may not pay off. We have sought to defray these impacts, supporting well–targeted and robust federal and state grant aid and policies that prevent debt from creating a lifetime of financial hardship. We worked to ensure that students are not defrauded or left worse off because of schemes that seek to profit from them, and to increase graduation and post-graduate success to help ensure students see a benefit from their studies. We pursued redress for those who have faced past harm. Our work on these fronts has never been more essential – or faced a greater threat. 

Over the past year, the Trump Administration has cut or tried to cut student supports, basic data collection, and student grants, all while suggesting that fewer low-income students should go to college. And Congress made student loans more expensive and unpredictable, making default more likely. We must avoid a future where higher education becomes a gated community for the wealthy.

TICAS met the challenge in 2025. With more than 100 publications, 100 Hill office visits, 100 state policymaker visits, and 5000 press hits, we have informed policymakers and the public about the challenges students face and urged them to adopt evidence-based policies so more Americans can afford and complete college. This is a necessary step to preserve economic mobility for the next generation and to ensure that the lifetime benefits college can bestow are there for all those who seek them.

Some highlights of our federal work include:

• Educating federal policymakers about the importance of protecting and fully funding the federal Pell Grant program.
• Helping to ensure that borrowers will not be indebted for their whole lives.
• Analyzing the impact of proposed changes to loan repayment on the monthly and lifetime costs of borrowing for students.
• Working with Data for Progress to highlight the experience of student loan borrowers in the swirl of rapid change in the conditions of their loans and repayment.
• Documenting the risks created by the Administration’s changes to the Public Service Loan Forgiveness Program.
• Pushing back on the dismantling of the Department of Education.
• Upholding the importance of strong college transparency and accountability.
• Urging federal policymakers to protect and invest in the Postsecondary Success Grant Program, TRIO, SEOG, and basic needs grants.

Our state portfolio also saw several major accomplishments this year:

• Translating federal cuts to SNAP and Medicaid into likely impacts on state budgets and students in CA, MI, and NY.
• Advocating for a Michigan state budget that reflected incremental investments in FAFSA completion programming, streamlined state financial aid, and student success and wraparound supports.
• Reaching a California budget that prioritized investments in emergency aid, preserving access to financial aid and college access for all, and FAFSA education and outreach.
• Building momentum in New York for increased financial aid for independent students, establishing a pathway to aid for students worried about federal data privacy, and convening the state’s first higher education policy advocates forum.
• Designing state-level solutions to protect private student loan borrowers.
• Developing model legislation for states to use in response to Congress opening up the federal Pell Grant to short-term workforce related programs for the first time, and flagging the risks that could emanate from opening up the program to non-credit programs.

Additionally, in a testament to their leadership and successful tenure at TICAS, two senior TICAS staff were selected to lead other organizations in the field. Kyle Southern became the Executive Director of the Partnership for College Completion and Onjila Odeneal became the CEO of Detroit Promise.

And in bittersweet news, at the end of this month, I will finish my own four-year tenure at TICAS. I will miss working with the talented team and board and working alongside all of you. But I leave knowing that TICAS is well-equipped to continue the fight for students across the country, with a dedicated, diverse, and skilled team. As announced, TICAS’s Board has retained Russell Reynolds to lead the search for the next President & CEO.

I thank each of you – TICAS staff and board, funders, fellow advocates, policymakers, and higher education leaders – for your partnership and friendship as we have worked together to defend the interests of students and borrowers.

Happy Holidays, and Happy New Year!

Sameer Gadkaree