Some Room for Agreement on HEA Reauthorization?

Following dozens of hearings over many months, the House and Senate are finally putting some specifics on the table for reauthorization of the Higher Education Act (HEA). The last week alone saw the release of a bill from Sens. Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.) and Michael Bennet (D-Colo.) to simplify the Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA), a complete reauthorization bill from Sen. Tom Harkin (D-Iowa), and three small bills from the House Education and Workforce Committee. And we’re likely to see more bills since the House Republicans also released principles for reauthorization that go beyond the three public bills.

While the House Republican’s HEA reauthorization principles suggest a lot of things that conflict with the goals of Harkin’s bill, there do appear to be some areas of agreement. Probably the clearest is the use of earlier tax data for filling out the FAFSA. Known as “prior prior,” this provision would change the tax year used to fill out the FAFSA from the year before the most recently completed tax year to the year before that. (Think of it as Year N minus two instead of Year N minus one.) This matters because the FAFSA comes out each year on January 1, but requires income data from the calendar year completed one day prior. For example, someone filling out the FAFSA for the 2014-15 academic year would use calendar year 2014 information. This means people cannot fill out the FAFSA until they complete their taxes, which can take several months into the new year and puts late filers at risk of missing out on aid deadlines. Prior prior fixes this issue by using income data from one year older (e.g., calendar year 2013 for the 2014-15 academic year), allowing families to immediately fill out the FAFSA when it becomes available.

Beyond prior prior, there appears to be some consensus around the need for improved student loan counseling. Harkin’s bill calls for more personalized loan counseling, annual notification of loan information, and required additional counseling for certain types of borrowers, such as those who transfer, appear to be at a greater risk of going into default, or attend schools with high default rates. It also adds counseling for Parent PLUS borrowers and a study on the effectiveness of different loan counseling strategies. The House bill calls for annual loan counseling and expands it to include Parent PLUS borrowers as well. It also requires student borrowers to annually affirm that they are accepting a loan before receiving a disbursement and adds annual counseling for Pell Grant students.

Finally, both the House Republicans and Harkin’s bill call for additional information for prospective college students. Harkin’s bill would add a number of measures to the College Scorecard, including net price by income, more complete graduation rates, better debt information, and a loan repayment rate. The House bill replaces College Navigator with a “College Dashboard” that consists of similar information, though has more on enrollment information and does not have a repayment rate.

What might these consensus areas mean for students? Prior prior is probably the change with the biggest potential benefit since it would directly ease the aid application process and is also the most straightforward reform. Loan counseling probably could help with borrowing choices, but needs more experimentation to determine effectiveness. Consumer information probably needs to be paired with a consideration of how the information gets to students, not just its online placement.

The future of these three policies is less clear. Harkin's bill aims for large-scale reform, while Republicans have suggested piecemeal legislation. There's also only so many legislating days left between summer recess and the upcoming election season. And of course seemingly anything can get sucked into politics. But it is at least somewhat encouraging to see some agreement at the start of the HEA reauthorization process.