I caught a bit of flak in my earlier post for failing to mention, in my post about the scrubbing of references to DEI from the ETS website, that ETS has contracts with the Department of Education that last year paid them about $67 million dollars. That equaled about 5% of their overall operating revenues. Those revenues, one imagines, were a consideration when that decision was made. As we all know, the new American president and his team don’t like DEI. I should have mentioned that. Mea culpa.
But the ETS team may have jumped the gun. President Trump has begun efforts to wind down the Department of Education, so those revenues might be impacted in any case.
I’ll end with a bit of editorializing. Here you go:
It seems to me that organizations which spend the next four years laying low in an effort to avoid being noticed run the risk of losing their seat at the table in the post-Trump world. The leadership team at ETS has often mentioned their dream of “rebuilding the pillars of education” together with the Carnegie Institute. Opportunities to do that sort of work may end up falling on other shoulders. So to speak.