Obama Announces Intent to Appoint New Board Members to the NSB

Posted on November 1, 2016

The White House announced that President Barack Obama intends to appoint W. Kent Fuchs, Victor R. McCrary, Emilio F. Moran, and Julia M. Phillips to the National Science Board (NSB).

Victor R. McCrary is Vice President for Research and Economic Development at Morgan State University. Dr. McCrary was the Business Area Executive for Science & Technology at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory, where he managed technology investment strategies for over $60 million for internal research and development (IRAD) projects targeted to the areas of national defense and national security. Dr. McCrary was also a division chief at the National Institute of Standards and Technology where he received the U.S. Department of Commerce’s Gold Medal for facilitating and developing the first global industry standard for e-books. He has published over 60 articles and is a Fellow of the American Chemical Society.

Emilio F. Moran is the John A. Hannah Distinguished Professor at the Center for Global Change and Earth Observations at Michigan State University. He is also a Research Professor at the University of Maryland’s Population Research Center. He brings experience as a NSF grantee in cultural anthropology, geography, ecosystem science, and other disciplines. He provides an important interface with the physical and biological sciences through his research on human interactions with the environment under conditions of change. Dr. Moran has published over 200 articles, 11 books and 15 edited volumes. He was elected to the U.S. National Academy of Sciences in 2010.

Julia M. Phillips is Director Emeritus at Sandia National Laboratories. As Vice President and Chief Technology Officer, she managed the Laboratory’s $160 million Laboratory Directed Research and Development Program. She was also responsible for research strategy development, implementation, and intellectual property protection and deployment. Dr. Phillips came to Sandia in 1995 after spending 14 years as technical staff and a manager at AT&T Bell Laboratories. She is a member of the National Academy of Engineering and a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

The White House also reappointed Arthur Bienenstock, W. Carl Lineberger, and Anneila Sargent to each serve a second six-year term. Dr. Bienenstock, Professor Emeritus of Photon Science at Stanford University, has led the Board’s initiatives on reducing administrative burdens on federally funded researchers. Dr. Lineberger, E. U. Condon Distinguished Professor of Chemistry at the University of Colorado, and Dr. Sargent, Ira S. Bowen Professor of Astronomy at the California Institute of Technology, have both played key roles in NSB’s oversight and guidance of major NSF facilities and programs.

The NSB began accepting nominations for the Board last fall and made recommendations to President Obama for his consideration. Every two years, eight members rotate off the Board and a new class is appointed. Board membership will be complete when one more new member is appointed to the class of 2022.

DeVry Commits to 85/15 Revenue Threshold

Posted on September 20, 2016September 21, 2016

Today, one of the nation’s largest purveyors of for-profit higher education, the DeVry Education Group, made a commitment to limit how much revenue it receives from federal student aid to 85 percent. Federal law stipulates that no more than 90 percent of revenue originate from federal aid. The move is broadly viewed as a response to broad criticisms of the for-profit education industry.

Eager to know more? Check out coverage from the Washington Post here.

GOP Unveils Higher Ed Party Platform

Posted on July 19, 2016July 22, 2016

Monday kicked off the Republican National Convention. One of the first orders of business approving a 58-page party platform, which takes a stance on an array of issues that are important to higher education, including: campus sexual assault, transgender student issues, student loans, college accreditation, for-profit education, and campus protests and student activism. More information on the particulars can be found here.

Off to Convention

Posted on July 18, 2016

Congress has left town for its seven-week summer recess, having made progress on considering FY 2017 appropriations measures, but both chambers left town without a clear path forward. For the first time in many years (since FY 2010), the House and Senate Appropriations Committees have approved all 12 of their respective FY17 appropriations bills, although none has received final congressional approval.

Despite this progress, there appears to be growing support among House Conservative Republicans for enactment of a six-month continuing resolution (CR), which would last through March 2017, rather than a short-term CR through December that keeps the government funded through the election while an omnibus appropriations package is negotiated. Of note, Congress typically does kick the can on passing a full fiscal year funding in presidential election years,or has since 2002. The lame duck Congress typically leaves the fiscal completion up to the new Administration and not complete full appropriations during a lame duck session, the notable exceptions were 2004 and 2014.

Among other issues, a long-term CR would place at risk funding increases approved by both appropriations committees for the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and the possibility of restoring the year-round Pell Grant, as approved by the Senate committee (see next item below).

The House Appropriations Committee needed two days to finish work on its FY 2017 Labor-HHS-Education appropriations bill, which it did the morning of July 14. The vote was 31 to 19. This was the first House Labor-HHS-Education bill brought to a full committee vote since 2006.

The bill’s $161.6 billion in discretionary spending is about $257 million below the Senate committee-approved level, $569 million below the FY16 enacted level, and $2.8 billion below the Administration’s FY17 request.

The measure would raise funding for the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to $33.3 billion, an increase of $1.25 billion above the FY16 level. On a party-line vote of 19-29, the committee rejected an amendment to raise NIH funding by an additional $750 million to the Senate committee-approved level of $2 billion. The increase would have been offset by declaring certain other health-related funding in the bill as emergency spending. Labor-HHS-Education Appropriations Subcommittee Chairman Tom Cole (R-OK) reiterated the statement he made in the subcommittee markup that he viewed the committee’s NIH funding level as a floor, not a ceiling.

The committee also voted down an amendment that would have restored the year-round Pell Grant. The amendment failed by a vote of 19-27, with two Republicans joining all Democrats in support of the amendment. Chairman Cole said he would welcome restoration of year-round Pell, suggesting the Senate position might prevail in the House-Senate conference on the bill.

The panel also rejected amendments to eliminate four provisions in the bill intended to block Obama administration regulatory actions. Left standing were the provisions to prohibit the Department of Labor from implementing its new overtime rule and to prohibit the Department of Education from moving ahead on regulations on teacher preparation, defining “gainful employment” and “credit hour,” and how states license institutions of higher education.

The National Institutes of Health (NIH) funding includes $165 million for the National Children’s Study, $511.5 million for Clinical and Translational Sciences Awards, and $333.3 million for Institutional Development Awards (IDeA) programs. Other details include:

$1.26 billion, a $350 million increase, for the Alzheimer’s disease research initiative;
$195 million, a $45 million increase, for the Brain Research through Application of Innovative Neurotechnologies (BRAIN) initiative; and
$300 million for the Precision Medicine Initiative.

The bill would maintain the salary cap on external NIH grants at Executive Level II of the Federal Executive pay scale.

For higher education, the bill would raise the Pell Grant maximum award to $5,935 through a combination of discretionary and mandatory funds (which is the same as the Administration’s request and the Senate bill).

The circulated report language provided the following funding levels for key higher education programs.

Supplemental Education Opportunity Grants, Federal Work-Study, and Title VI/Fulbright-Hays were flat funded at their FY16 levels of $733 million, $989.7 million, and $72.2 million, respectively. The bill would increase funding for TRIO to $960 million, an increase of $60 million above the FY16 level, and increase funding for GEAR UP to $344 million, an increase of $22 million above the FY16 level.

In contrast, the measure would reduce funding for the Institute for Education Sciences to $536 million, a cut of $81.9 million from the FY16 level. The bill also would zero out funding for the Graduate Assistance in Areas of National Need (GAANN) program-the only graduate education-specific aid program left in the Department of Education-on the basis that GAANN duplicates grant funding available through other agencies. The report also encourages using the $100 million that the Administration proposed to use in restoring the Fund for the Improvement and Support of Education (FIPSE) in FY17 to fund the First in the World program.

Meanwhile, it turns out the 10-year forecast it made just six months ago, in President Barack Obama’s fiscal 2017 budget, was way off. A revised forecast, issued Friday by the Office of Management and Budget, identified an extra $881 billion in savings over the next decade, if Obama’s budget were to become law.

House and Senate Pass Approps and then Done Until September

Posted on July 15, 2016

After three days of amendments, the House passed yesterday the FY2017 Interior Appropriations Bill (H.R. 5538) by a vote of 231 to 196. The $32.1 billion spending bill passed the House for the first time since 2009.

The measure that takes aim at the Obama’s environment and climate change agenda would cut by $64 million the budget for the EPA, the Interior Department and other similar agencies. Funding under the bill is also $1 billion below the Administration’s request. The White House had already promised to veto the measure.

Earlier in the week, the Senate voted to clear the final version of legislation to combat prescription opioid and heroin abuse, sending the conference report to President Barack Obama, who is likely to sign it. The measure passed by a vote of 92-2. The vote followed a similarly lopsided 90-2 vote earlier Wednesday to end debate on the measure.

The measure would authorize new grant programs at the Department of Justice and Department of Health and Human Services. However, it does not include appropriations for the programs. Democrats fear funding will be short-changed when the annual spending bills are finalized later this year.

With the passage of both bills, the House and Senate, respectively, recessed until after Labor Day. Next week is the Republican National Convention and the following week the Democrats hold their convention.