Education Week - October 30, 2019 - 9

By Andrew Ujifusa
It may be a slow time for K-12 activity on Capitol Hill, but you can't say
the same about higher education: In
the last several weeks, both Democrats and Republicans have introduced bills designed to address college access, costs, and other policies.
On the GOP side, Sen. Lamar Alexander, R-Tenn., the chairman of
the Senate education committee, has
taken the lead on a package of bills
dealing with the Free Application for
Federal Student Aid, as well as shortterm Pell Grants and other issues.
Meanwhile, House Democrats
have unveiled the College Affordability Act, which builds on past
legislation and aims to increase Pell
Grant awards, lower student-loan
payments, and more.
Both proposals would amend the
Higher Education Act, which was last
reauthorized in 2008 and is overdue
for reauthorization. But it will be difficult for major revisions to the higher
education law to pass Congress, especially given the House impeachment
inquiry. Here are highlights of some
important aspects of the proposals.
In addition to making the federal
Public Service Loan Forgiveness
program accessible to a broader pool
of potential applications, the House's
College Affordability Act "reduces
the number of payments required

for teachers to receive loan forgiveness," according to a fact sheet
accompanying the bill. (That's accomplished through allowing repayments to the Stafford Student Loan
Forgiveness Program for teachers
to count simultaneously for repayments to the PSLF program.)
Public service loan forgiveness has
become a particularly controversial
issue in the last few years, after complaints that the program was rigid
and hard to interpret, leaving many
teachers who expected to have their
loans forgiven out in the cold.
The legislation would also increase
TEACH Grant awards-available to
students who agree to become teachers in certain subjects for a set time
period-from $4,000 to $8,000,
among other changes to that program. It would also protect against
recent "inadvertent" conversions of
these grants into loans.

Expanding Pell Grants
For high school students bound
for colleges and universities, the
A lexander-backed Student Aid
Improvement Act would expand
Pell Grant eligibility to 250,000
new students. It also would make an
additional 1.3 million students eligible
for the maximum Pell Grant awards,
which under the senator's bill would
increase by $1,080 over the most

Getty

Higher-Ed. Legislation Bubbling in Congress

recently appropriated limit before the
bill's passage. (The current maximum
Pell award is $6,195 for 2019-20.)
Alexander's legislation would also
extend short-term Pell Grants to certain programs such as vocational education, a controversial idea because
some have questioned the quality of
the educational programs that could
benefit from the grants. Democrats'
bills would index Pell Grants to inflation, which they estimate would result in a maximum award of $8,305
for fiscal 2029.
The House Democrats' legislation
would reauthorize Teacher Quality
Partnerships; among other changes
included in that reauthorization,
Democrats point to the fact that under
the bill, colleges and universities
could join states in applying for TQP

grants to work with school districts.
The bill would also allow TQP funds
to create new pipelines for principals.
In addition, the College
Affordability Act would establish
a funding stream for Historically
Black Colleges and Universities
and Minority Serving Institutions
for programs to help recruit and
retain a diverse teacher workforce.
Alexander's legislative package
has its own provision to establish
$255 million in annual mandatory
aid to HBCUs and MSIs, although
Democrats have objected to the idea
because it's tied to Alexander's other
higher education bills.
The proposals from both Alexander
and from the House Democrats aim
to "simplify" the FAFSA process. In
fact, both would do so in part by re-

ducing the number of questions. The
Senate proposal from Alexander and
Sen. Doug Jones, D-Ala., for example,
would cut the number of FAFSA questions from 108 to a minimum of 17 and
a maximum of 30. And the College Affordability Act would place students
into one of three FAFSA "pathways"
based on their financial backgrounds
in order to make the process easier.
The House and Senate proposals
both include what lawmakers say will
make it easier for students to understand different offers of financial aid.
Although Alexander likes to display
a paper FAFSA form to show just how
long it is, it's not the typical experience for students to fill out that entire form. A mobile-friendly FAFSA
app debuted last year, although there
were accompanying glitches.
Several factors complicate the already difficult path forward on these
proposals. Higher education is tangled up in national politics-for example, unlike proposals from some
Democrats on the 2020 presidential
campaign trail, the House bill doesn't
cancel all or a vast majority of student
debt.
Still, Alexander, who will not seek
reelection in 2020, is interested in getting at least some revisions to federal
higher education law over the finish
line before he retires. And he's stressed
that taken together, the proposals in his
chamber have bipartisan support.

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Education Week - October 30, 2019

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