This afternoon, the Senate confirmed Ted Mitchell as the new Under Secretary of Education. Mitchell succeeds Martha Kanter, who stepped down in December to take a post at NYU. Mitchell has been President at the New School Venture Fund.
Mitchell was nominated in October of 2013. The nomination was approved unanimously by voice vote.
The House Veterans’ Affairs Committee, Subcommittee on Economic Affairs is holding a hearing this morning called, “Defining and Improving Success for Veterans Students”. The hearing will have two panels, which will be as follows:
Panel 1
Panel 2
The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) today announced the publication of two proposed regulations, including a rule to extend employment authorization to spouses of certain H-1B workers, and a proposal to enhance opportunities for certain groups of highly-skilled workers by removing obstacles to their remaining in the United States.
Both Notices of Proposed Rulemaking will soon publish in the Federal Register. DHS encourages the public to comment on the proposed rule through www.regulations.gov. All public comments will be considered before the final rule is published and goes into effect.
The House is expected to consider H.R. 4366, the Strengthening Education through Research Act on Wednesday of this week. The legislation would reauthorize the Institute of Education Science, which is the research arm of the Department of Education.
Reauthorizing legislation of research agencies is typically noncontroversial, and surprisingly, that spirit has held true this year with the IES reauthorization — so far. The House is expected to pass the legislation as a Suspension bill, which requires 2/3rd of the House in the positive for the bill to pass.
This measure is one of several higher education reauthorization bills the Office of Federal has been tracking.
The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities released a study late last week about national trends in state funding allocations to public higher educational institutions. The report explains broad national trends in cost shifting of tuition from the state to the student. Overall, after counting for inflation, forty-eight states are still spending less per student in higher education than before the recession. Since the start of the recession, states have cut higher education funding by 23 percent per student. While states have begun to restore funding, resources are well below what they were in 2008.
Some additional take aways: