This morning the House Committee on Education and the Workforce released its legislation to reauthorize the Higher Education Act, the source of most of what the federal government does in higher ed, especially provide hundreds-of-billions of dollars in student aid. The new legislation is called the Promoting Real Opportunity, Success and Prosperity through Education Reform—or PROSPER—Act. (Oh, these names!) It will take a while to comb through in detail—it’s 542 pages long—but here is a quick reaction to some core parts from a rapid skimming of the bill (and some reporting on a leaked draft):
- What needs to happen, ultimately, is for federal student aid to be phased out. It fuels tuition inflation, credential inflation, and noncompletion, and students with a demonstrated ability to do legitimate college-level work in in-demand fields would almost certainly be able to find private loans; both borrower and lender would likely profit. This bill, not surprisingly, does not phase aid out. It does, though, consolidate aid programs, and takes some small steps forward, capping total amounts students and their families can borrow from Washington, and letting schools say they won’t let students borrow a lot if the program doesn’t seem to justify it. The federal loan limits aren’t low—from a cap for undergraduate dependent students of $39,000, to a grand possible limit for certain borrowers of $235,500—but just saying there should be caps below the “cost of attendance”—basically, whatever colleges charge plus other expenses—is a start.
- Other efforts to curb prices and noncompletion include making schools responsible for paying back some of the debt of students who are struggling to repay, and conditioning some funds for minority-serving institutions on at least 25 percent of students completing their programs or successfully transferring to other institutions. Both of these changes appear to put blame on institutions while ignoring the root problem—the federal government gives people money to pay for college without any meaningful assessment of their ability to do college-level work—but it might have some positive effects on prices and completion.
- The law would end “gainful employment” regulations targeting for-profit colleges, and would also end a requirement that for a school to be accessible online in a state, it must be approved by that state even if its physical home is somewhere else. These things would free the system up a bit, but how much is unclear.
There is a lot else in there—provisions on TRIO programs, accreditation, a data “dashboard” on school and program outcomes, and more—and I’ll really have to scrutinize the thing to make sure I have all the details right. But from a quick look, this bill would generally move in the right direction, though with many miles to go to reach good higher education policy.
