Senate GOP launches higher education reform proposals

Senator Bill Cassidy (R-LA), ranking Republican on the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions, and several of his Republican colleagues have released a series of five substantive higher education reform bills in an effort to jump-start long-overdue work in Congress to update the Higher Education Act. Congress last amended the Higher Education Act in a bipartisan manner in 2008.

Two major themes emerge from these initial bills: transparency and cost.

Transparency

• Providing more information to students, taxpayers, and Congress about student success and outcomes through a student-unit record system so students better understand whether the programs they are pursuing add value and
• Helping students better understand the cost of their program of study and the cost of borrowing through student loans.

Cost 

• Major reforms to the complex series of student loan repayment options to streamline and simplify loan repayment and loan forgiveness options to improve repayment of loans and reduce cost to taxpayers and
• Significant overhaul to Graduate PLUS loans to place limits on the amount of loans that can be borrowed from the federal government to a maximum of $65,000 for graduate school and $130,000 for a professional degree. (Currently, Graduate PLUS loans are essentially unlimited up to the total cost of attendance for the entire program of study.)

Context

At any moment in the next two weeks, the Supreme Court is expected to issue decisions on lawsuits surrounding the Biden Administration’s effort to cancel a portion of student debt for existing borrowers. The two cases, Biden v. Nebraska and Department of Education v. Brown, are among the remaining decisions to be released by the Court before it adjourns for the summer.

Representative Virginia Foxx (R-NC), chairwoman of the House Education and Workforce Committee, also has begun releasing individual pieces of legislation that she will likely ultimately wrap up together into a larger package. She started with H.R. 4144, the Federal Assistance to Initiate Repayment (FAIR) Act, which would address concerns about returning student borrowers to repayment that was halted during the pandemic and prevent additional regulatory efforts by the Biden Administration to provide additional student loan forgiveness through regulation.

Senator Bernie Sanders (I-VT), chair of the Senate’s Education committee, is also joining the fray, having introduced the College for All Act of 2023, which would make public institutions of higher education tuition free for students earning under $125,000 for individuals or $250,000 for families.

After such a long hiatus regarding legislation in the higher education sector, members of Congress are increasingly interested in working on this issue. Organizations now have an opportunity to raise issues and suggest further reforms, and DLA Piper is well situated to provide effective counsel on what is feasible.

For more information, please contact David P. Cleary and Senator Richard Burr.