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The Education Department\u2019s yearlong effort to roll out the sweeping higher ed changes signed into law last month kicked off Thursday with a four-hour hearing that highlighted the many tweaks college administrators and others want to see.<\/p>\n
The law, known as the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, capped federal student loans, created new loan-repayment plans, extended the Pell Grant to include short-term workforce programs and instituted a new measure to hold institutions accountable. Now, the department is planning to propose and issue new regulations that spell out how those various changes will work.\u00a0<\/p>\n
On nearly all fronts, college administrators, policy experts and students argued that lawmakers left significant gaps in the legislation, and they want a say in how Trump administration officials fill them in. For instance, the legislation doesn\u2019t explain what data will be collected for either workforce Pell or the accountability measure or who will have to take on that task. Some speakers raised concerns about how new reporting requirements could increase administrative burdens for colleges. <\/p>\n
But Nicholas Kent, the department\u2019s newly confirmed under secretary, said at the start of the meeting that he looks forward to clarifying all the details during the lengthy process known as negotiated rule making.<\/p>\n
\u201cSimply put, the current approach to paying for college is unsustainable for both borrowers and for taxpayers,\u201d Kent said. \u201cPresident Trump has laid out a bold vision, one that aims to disrupt a broken system and return accountability, affordability and quality to postsecondary education that includes reducing the cost of higher education, aligning program offerings with employer needs [and] embracing innovative education models\u00a0\u2026 Today\u2019s public hearing marks a key milestone in our accelerated timeline to implement this sweeping legislative reform.\u201d <\/p>\n
Neither Kent nor other department officials said what specific changes and clarifications are on the table.<\/p>\n
Negotiated rule making, or \u201cneg-reg,\u201d started in the early 1990s. It entails using an advisory committee to consider and discuss issues with the goal of reaching consensus in developing a proposed rule. Consensus means unanimous agreement among the committee members, unless the group agrees on a different definition. The department must undertake negotiated rule making for any rule related to federal student aid.<\/p>\n
Determining the details of the regulations and policy changes will be left up to two committees of higher education leaders, policy experts and industry representatives that will review and negotiate over the department\u2019s proposals during a series of meetings throughout the fall and into the new year. The first committee is scheduled to begin discussions in September.<\/p>\n
In the meantime, here are three key issues Thursday\u2019s speakers said they hope to see addressed by both the advising panels and department officials before the legislation starts taking effect in July 2026.<\/p>\n
Before the public hearing, some higher ed lobbyists and advocates raised concerns about who would be included on the advisory committees. Multiple constituent groups argued they weren\u2019t properly represented on the committees.<\/p>\n
For instance, neither committee includes a representative from the financial aid community, despite the fact that college financial aid administrators will play a key role in implementing the legislation on campuses. <\/p>\n
Multiple groups, including the American Council on Education, drew attention to the absence, but Melanie Storey, president of the National Association of Student Financial Aid Administrators, voiced the most concern.<\/p>\n
Financial aid professionals will \u201cinterpret, communicate and operationalize the intricate details of this wide-ranging bill for millions of students and families. To exclude their practical, technical experience from the negotiation table risks developing rules that are difficult to administer, creating unintended negative consequences,\u201d she said. \u201cWe have heard the perspective that representatives from each college sector can speak to the needs of their institutions. However, their role is to advocate for the broad interests of that sector. That is fundamentally different from representing the profession responsible for the\u00a0\u2026 mechanics of aid delivery. <\/p>\n
A department official who moderated the hearing, responded, \u201cWe expect we will have financial aid administrators at the table,\u201d as the department has in the past, but he did not clarify how that would be done. (This paragraph has been corrected.)<\/em><\/p>\n Other speakers called for better representation of <\/strong>civil rights advocates, apprenticeship program leaders and minority-serving institutions, but none of those requests were directly addressed by government officials.<\/p>\n Speakers also raised questions about how the new caps to student loans would work and whom they would affect.<\/p>\n As part of negotiated rule making, the Education Department must:<\/p>\n Congress\u2019s Big Beautiful Bill caps loans for professional degrees at $200,000 and limits loans for graduate programs to half of that. But lawmakers didn\u2019t specify which degree programs fall in which category. Determining how to sort programs will likely be a key point of debate for the rule-making committee, the comments showed.<\/p>\n Certain programs, like law and medical school, will almost certainly be considered professional programs, but other programs, like master\u2019s degrees in nursing, education or social work, are not guaranteed. Knowing this, a variety of academic association representatives, workforce advocates and college administrators made their case throughout the hearing for why their own discipline should be a professional program. <\/p>\n Matt Hooper, vice president of communications for the Council on Social Work Education, said to not include certain programs in the professional bucket would mean ignoring their critical nature as a public service.<\/p>\n Social work graduates \u201cpursue careers in health care, children and family services, criminal justice, public policy, government, and more,\u201d he said. \u201cAn M.S.W. provides full professional preparation, similar to a J.D. in law or an M.D. in medicine, and we think it should be categorized in the same respect.\u201d<\/p>\n A handful of speakers went so far as to argue that certain bachelor\u2019s programs, like aviation or aeronautical science, that are often paired with certification from the Federal Aviation Administration should be grouped into the professional category, as they come at a cost and time commitment similar to graduate school.<\/p>\n If those programs don\u2019t get the benefit of a higher loan cap, multiple airline advocates said, America could see a steep shortage of pilots within the next two decades.<\/p>\n \u201cOver the next 15 years, nearly half of our nation\u2019s airline pilots will retire due to mandatory age limits,\u201d said Sharon DeVivo, president of Vaughn College of Aeronautics and Technology. \u201cThe current training pipeline is not equipped to meet that demand, putting at risk the transportation infrastructure, especially the economic health of small and rural communities that depend on reliable air service.\u201d <\/p>\n Training to become a pilot can cost $80,000 to $100,000 more than a traditional bachelor\u2019s degree, added Carlos Zendejas, vice president of flight operations at the regional airline Horizon Air. So to hold these students to the same loan limit as other undergraduates would deter prospective pilots from pursuing a high-return-on-investment career.<\/p>\n \u201cThe need to stabilize the pilot pipeline is real,\u201d he said. \u201cThe One Big Beautiful Bill gives the department the ability to fix this.\u201d<\/p>\n Since the inauguration, Trump officials in all sectors of the federal government have been vocal about combating fraud, waste and abuse. But higher education experts are concerned that one measure in the reconciliation bill could do the opposite. <\/p>\n The new accountability tool it introduced uses a new earnings test to evaluate colleges\u2019 eligibility for federal student loans. But it does not apply to certificate programs, which some policy and data analysts say are more likely to provide a poor return on investment.<\/p>\n According to a recent report from the Postsecondary Education and Economics Research Center at American University, only 1\u00a0percent of college programs at the associate level and higher will fail the new earnings test, but about 19\u00a0percent of certificate programs would do so. <\/p>\n Representatives from American as well as New America, Third Way and the Century Foundation, all progressive think tanks, sounded the alarm on the matter at Thursday\u2019s hearing. As a solution, they encouraged the administration to keep an existing accountability policy in place that applies to certificate programs and for-profit institutions. That metric, known as the gainful-employment rule, is not codified in law.<\/p>\n \u201cA recent publication from the Senate health committee\u2019s chairman, Bill Cassidy, confirms it was not lawmakers\u2019 intent to exempt such programs from any accountability,\u201d said Clare McCann, the PEER Center\u2019s managing director of policy and operations. \u201cSo to carry out that intent, the department should maintain a strong gainful-employment program regulation for those programs that should include maintaining the debt-to-earnings tests under the gainful-employment rules, which are an important check on institutions offering unaffordable degrees.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The Education Department\u2019s yearlong effort to roll out the sweeping higher ed changes signed into law last month kicked off Thursday with a four-hour hearing that highlighted the many tweaks college administrators and others want to see. The law, known as the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, capped federal student loans, created new loan-repayment plans,<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":15051,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[57],"tags":[280,496,5261,495,1015,177],"class_list":{"0":"post-15050","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-education","8":"tag-dept","9":"tag-education","10":"tag-hears","11":"tag-higher","12":"tag-overhaul","13":"tag-public"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15050","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=15050"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15050\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/15051"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=15050"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=15050"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=15050"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}What Qualifies as a Professional Program?<\/h2>\n
How to Make a Policy, Neg-Reg Edition<\/strong><\/h4>\n
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Should Gainful Go?<\/h2>\n