Monthly Archives: August 2013

New Chair of the National Governors Association Announces Yearlong Initiative Focused on Education and Training

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Earlier this month the new Chair of the National Governors Association – Governor Mary Fallin (Oklahoma) – announced the yearlong initiative that will be the focus of her leadership.

America Works: Education and Training for Tomorrow’s Jobs will focus on improving education and workforce training systems and aligning those systems with the needs of individual state economies.

Specifically the initiative will center on:

  • Engaging education, business, and government leaders in a dialogue about what governors can do to more closely align K-12, higher education and workforce training providers with future labor demands, and
  • Supporting governors and their staff in using data and information to identify states’ future labor demands and prioritize changes in state education and workforce training systems to meet those demands and take action to achieve desired results.

Obama Administration Lays Out Aggressive Postsecondary Education Agenda

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In mid-August President Obama began a short bus tour beginning in New York to talk about college affordability and his plans for addressing access and affordability across the country.

The plan would highlight policy changes in three major areas:

  • Pay for Performance by tying financial aid to college performance, starting with publishing new college ratings before the 2015 year; challenging states to fund public colleges based on performance; and holding students and institutions receiving student aid responsible for making progress toward a degree.
  • Promoting Innovation and Competition to challenge colleges to offer students a greater range of affordable, high-quality options than they do today; give consumers clear, transparent information on college performance to help them make the decisions that work best for them; and encourage innovation by stripping away unnecessary regulations.
  • Ensuring that Student Debt Remains Affordable to help ensure borrowers can afford their federal student loan debt by allowing all borrowers to cap their payments at 10 percent of their monthly income; and reach out to struggling borrowers to ensure they are aware of the flexible options available to help them to repay their debt.

The first major step in implementing this plan will be issuance of new college ratings by 2015. The U.S. Department of Education will develop a new ratings system, to be displayed on institution’s federal scorecards, to help students compare the value offered by colleges and encourage colleges to improve. The ratings will be developed through public hearings around the country to gather input and will be based on such measures as:

  • Access, such as percentage of students receiving Pell Grants;
  • Affordability, such as average tuition, scholarships, and loan debt; and
  • Outcomes, such as graduation and transfer rates, graduate earnings, and advanced degrees of college graduates.

Between 2014 and 2018 the Department will refine these measures and seek legislation using this new rating system to transform the way federal aid is awarded to institutions once the ratings are developed. The goal will be to tie federal student aid funding to institutions to the rankings by 2018.

In addition the plan identifies a number of other policy proposals to work towards greater access and affordability for students. Among these proposals is a Race to the Top for Higher Education to spur state higher education reforms and reshape the federal-state partnership by ensuring that states maintain funding for public higher education. The promotion of innovation and competition by awarding credits based on learning and not seat time, using technology to redesign courses and for student services, and recognize prior learning and promote dual enrollment. Finally efforts will include proposals to ensure student debt is affordable by making borrowers eligible for the Pay as You Earn program.

President Signs Student Loan Interst Rates

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In early August President Obama signed into law legislation to reduce interest rates on all new student loans this year and over the lifetime of a student’s loans.

The bipartisan plan allows borrowers to benefit from the low interest rates currently available in the marketplace and guarantees borrowers are able to lock-in rates over the life of their loans. Fixed rates will be determined each year by market conditions.

Funding Model Task Force To Meet Next Week

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The Technical Incentive Funding Model Task Force established by the Legislature in the 2013-15 biennial operating budget will begin its work next week in Seattle.

Focused on the four-year, public higher education sector the Task Force will focus on developing an incentive funding model to provide new incentives for Washington’s public baccalaureate sector that demonstrate improvement in existing performance measures and control resident undergraduate tuition growth.

The focus of the first of five meetings will be to set the context for this discussion. Among the key questions that will drive the conversation are:

  • What’s the role for public four-year institutions in Washington?
  • What are the changes facing these institutions?
  • What is the role of performance funding within this context?

House Republicans Name New Ranking Member to Capital Committee

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This week the Washington House Republicans announced that Rep. Richard DeBolt would join the membership of the House Capital Budget Committee as the new ranking Republican member.

DeBolt stepped aside as the House Republican leader earlier this year. DeBolt will take on the role formerly held by Rep. Judy Warnick.

Warnick was named caucus chair earlier this year.

Student Loan Interest Bill Passes House Heads to President’s Desk

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This week the U.S. House of Representatives passed student loan interest rate legislation. The bill now heads to the President who is expected to sign it into law.

The legislation will tie interest rates on federal student loans to the market and, at least in the short term, forestall hefty increases that were to hit new borrowers beginning this fall.

The legislation passed the House of Representatives by a wide margin (392-31, with 10 abstentions) after originating in the Senate, which approved it last week. The measure, when signed by President Obama, will reset interest rates on federally guaranteed loans each July based on the previous May’s auction of 10-year Treasury bills. Undergraduate loans — those that are federally subsidized as well as those that are not — would be set at the Treasury rate plus 2.05 percentage points, while loans for graduate students would be set at 3.6 points above the Treasury rate, and loans for parents at 4.6 percentage points over the T-bill rate. The maximum rate would be capped at 8.25 percent for undergraduate loans, 9.5 percent for graduate student loans, and 10.5 percent for parent loans.