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Category: Higher Education

HELP Committee Passes ESRA

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This morning, the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP) Committee marked up a bill to reauthorize the Education Sciences Reform Act or ESRA. The Senate Committee passed voice vote a bipartisan substitute amendment that closely tracks the House-passed version of this bill, H.R. 4366, the Strengthening Education through Research Act. The House passed the bill in March of this year.

ESRA authorizes education research activities at the Institute of Education Sciences, which is the research arm of the Department of Education.

The Senate version of ESRA represents a bipartisan, bicameral agreement on H.R. 4366.  After it is approved by the full Senate, the House is expected to approve the Senate’s changes to the bill before it goes to the President.

The schedule for Senate floor action and final House action is not yet clear. It is unlikely the bill receive final Congressional approval before the November elections.

House Passes VA Conference Report

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The conference report to accompany H.R. 3230 (reported earlier on the Federal Affairs Blog) was adopted by the House – 420 Yeas, 5 Nays.

The Senate is expected to pass it later this week.

McCaskill Introduces Sexual Assault Legislation

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Today US Senator Claire McCaskill (D-MO) is introducing The Bipartisan Campus Accountability and Safety Act. The legislation will address sexual assault on college and university campuses throughout the nation. The bill has bipartisan support with sponsorship from Republican Senators Heller (R-NV), Grassley (R-IA), Ayotte (R-NH) and Rubio (R-FL) and Democratic Senators Blumenthal (D-CT) and Gillibrand (D-NY). Congresswoman Carolyn Maloney (D-NY) will introduce a companion bill in the House.

Key provisions of the bill include:

  • Establishing new campus resources and support services for student survivors of sexual assault.
  • Ensuring minimum training standards for on-campus personnel.
  • Creating new historic transparency requirements.
  • Increasing campus accountability and coordination with law enforcement.
  • Establishing enforceable Title IX penalties and stiffer penalties for Clery Act violations.

Earlier this summer, McCaskill held a series of roundtable discussions on campus sexual assault and requested over 400 colleges and universities complete a survey on the topic as well.

House Considers VA Conference Report

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Both the House and Senate intend to bring to the floor this week a conference agreement to reform the Veterans Health Administration (VHA) and increase transparency and services in the Department of Veterans Administration (VA). The House will be the first to consider, what has been a delicate and sometimes contentious agreement to create, the conference committee report this afternoon. 

The legislation (conference report to accompany H.R. 3230, the Veterans’ Access to Care through Choice, Accountability, and Transparency Act of 2014) primarily deals with care at veteran medical facilities.

Provisions of interest to UW include:

  • The conference report requires the VA to establish medical residency programs, or to ensure that sufficient residency positions exist at facilities with programs in specialties facing a shortage of physicians or located in a community that is designated as a health professional shortage area. It increases by up to 1,500 the number of graduate medical education residents over a five-year period, with a priority for primary care, mental health and other specialties as VA determines is appropriate.
  • It also expands certain educational benefits to the spouses of servicemembers who die in the line of duty, including those who died since the 9/11 terrorist attacks, and it requires colleges and universities to provide in-state tuition to veterans under the Post-9/11 GI Bill regardless of how long they have lived in the state.

After whistleblowers revealed that some employees of the Veterans Affairs (VA) Department were falsifying wait-time records for medical appointments and keeping many patients on unofficial waitlists to create the appearance that they were reaching wait time targets, there has been nearly universal Congressional support to make the VA more accountable.

A Congressional Budget Office estimate released late Tuesday stated the agreement would be a net increase to the deficit by about $10 billion through FY 2024.

The House is expected to pass the measure today and the Senate is expected to consider it later in the week.

Rep. Ryan Anti-Poverty Plan and Higher Education

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On Thursday, House Budget Committee Chairman Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI) announced what he is calling  a new anti-poverty plan that proposes sweeping changes to the safety net through a state-led pilot program. Announced at the the conservative American Enterprise Institute, Ryan’s plan calls for streamlining the student-aid system, capping federal loans to parents and graduate students, a database for tracking recipients of federal aid, and further consolidation of federal job-training programs.

Big focus points that impact higher education include:

  • Simplify the Free Application for Federal Student Aid.
  • Modernize and reform the Pell program.
  •  Cap federal loans to graduate students and parents.
  • Consider reforms to the TRIO programs.
  • Expand funding for federal Work-Study programs.
  • Build stronger partnerships with post-secondary institutions.
  • Reform the accreditation process.

Some of the proposals in Thursday’s plan mirror ideas in the House Republican road map for reauthorization, including replacing the current patchwork of federal student-aid programs with one grant, one loan, and one work-study program. Both plans would make Pell Grants available year-round, creating “flex” funds that students could draw from until they graduated or exhausted their eligibility for aid. Also, both would remake federal college-access programs, with Mr. Ryan’s plan suggesting a single program.

But the Ryan plan offers more specifics than does the House Republican list, particularly when it comes to accreditation. His plan would make it easier for new accreditors to gain federal approval and would allow accreditors to recognize specific courses, not just colleges or programs.

The plan also calls for the creation of a “Commission on Evidence-Based Policy Making” that would explore whether, and how, to create a federal clearinghouse that could link anonymous participants across programs to provide a more complete picture of their effectiveness. The clearinghouse might also contain state, local, and educational data sets, like National Student Clearinghouse.

As this proposal and others continue to be introduced and move through Congress, the Office of Federal Relations will continue to monitor and update this issue.