The U.S. Education Department is scrapping last-minute guidance issued by the Biden administration that threatened to upend colleges’ plans to pay athletes for their name, image and likeness by making those payments subject to federal Title IX rules.

Two private Seattle colleges are joining forces. Seattle University, the largest private university in Western Washington, and the smaller Cornish College of the Arts plan to combine into one school, eventually creating Cornish College of the Arts at Seattle University.