DC Shuttle …
President Releases Budget with Increased Education Funding. The U.S. Education Department would see an increase as part of the proposed budget the White House released Friday, which also proposes billions of dollars in new programs for school infrastructure and technical education. The department would receive a 40% increase in fiscal 2022 over the current fiscal year, the largest increase of any department. The budget proposes a $100 billion school infrastructure plan, as well as support for increased teacher pay. Overall, the department would receive a more than $28 billion increase from current year spending, to $102.8 billion. Much of that increase would be a $20 billion increase in the Title I program. The budget also includes a 10-year, $100 billion school infrastructure plan contained in President Joe Biden’s infrastructure proposal released in March. The program would include a mix of competitive grants and bonds to improve basic infrastructure and to help schools build high-technology laboratories and provide other equipment for education.
Ed Dept Reversing Policy on Student Loan Servicers. The Biden administration is rescinding a policy that blocked state and federal regulators from accessing records to oversee and investigate student loan companies. Richard Cordray, the new federal student aid chief, announced the change in a blog post. Under a new policy, the Education Department will create a “streamlined and expedited process” for any federal, state or local authorities to request access to information they need to investigate or oversee student loan companies.
Administration to Review Student Loan Regs. The Biden administration last week announced that it will begin the process of reviewing and overhauling regulations governing major federal student loan relief programs, including student loan forgiveness programs and income-based repayment plans. The announcement pertains to a regulatory rewrite process, which involves the Department of Education reviewing and possibly dramatically changing complex federal regulations that govern key federal student loan programs. A wide array of programs will be subject to review, including Borrower Defense to Repayment, Total and Permanent Disability Discharges, Income-based repayment plans and Public Service Loan Forgiveness.
We publish the DC Shuttle each week Congress is in session featuring higher ed news from Washington collected by the New England Council, of which NEBHE is a member. This edition is drawn from the Higher Education Update in the Council’s Weekly Washington Report of June 1, 2021. For more information, please visit: www.newenglandcouncil.com.
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