Today, Dept. of Education officials announced a series of actions centering on transparency in an effort to force accreditors to focus more on student outcomes and hold failing colleges accountable. For the most part, the accrediting agencies will not be required to change their practices. Instead, ED hopes to drive change by publishing and disseminating a wealth of information about accreditors and the colleges they oversee on a revamped department web page. One definite change accrediting agencies will have to make: submitting decision letters – which the department will then publish online – when they put institutions on probation.
Category: Administration
Senate Passes Budget Around 3 am
The Senate cleared a bipartisan budget and debt limit accord early Friday morning which would send the legislation to the President’s desk. Roughly 72 hours after it was unveiled and buying roughly two years of relative budgetary stability after months of partisan sniping on spending, the Senate passed HR1314 shortly after 3 am. The House passed the measure Wednesday evening.
Just after 3 am, the upper chamber passed the deal by a vote of 64-35, roughly 90 minutes after voting to cut off debate on the legislation. Eighteen Republicans voted in favor of final passage, including Senate GOP Leadership, while 35 Republicans voted against the measure. Forty-four Democrats and two independent senators who conference with Democrats backed the package. See the vote total here.
The budget deal would raise discretionary spending caps for defense and nondefense accounts by $80 billion above the sequester level for fiscal 2016 and fiscal 2017 and suspend the debt limit until March 15, 2017. The increased discretionary spending is offset with cuts to various entitlement programs and revenue raisers.
House Goes First on Budget Deal
At midnight last night, the Bipartisan Budget Agreement of 2015 was introduced in the House, and the House Rules Committee is expected to consider the measure tomorrow paving the way for the full House to consider the legislation Wednesday. Passage is expected Wednesday and the measure will move to the Senate Wednesday night. The Senate is expected to consider and pass the measure by the end of the week.
The timing will give Boeher plenty of time to pass something before he retires and the elections for Paul Ryan as Speaker are held Thursday as well as before the national debt limit expires on November 3rd.
After the measure passes, the House and Senate Appropriations committees will begin working with the new top line budget amounts, known as 302(b)s, and those committees will begin on crafting new FY16 appropriations bills to pass before the December 11th Continuing Resolution expires.
Biden NOT Running for President
After weeks of speculation and “Draft Biden” efforts, the Vice President today announced that he is not going to run for President.
GI Benefits Returned Because of Bad Actors?
Last week, The Defense Department’s chief of voluntary education, Dawn Bilodeau, recently placed the chain of for-profit colleges on probation and said no new active duty service members can enroll under its tuition assistance program. The University of Phoenix is the most popular destination for Post-9/11 GI Bill college goers. This prohibition could be a hot topic today as an education advisory committee to the Veterans Affairs Department Secretary gathers for a two-day meeting starting today. Bilodeau sits on the advisory committee and the University of Phoenix has RSVP’d for the meeting.
Meanwhile, the Education Department has been working with the Defense and Justice departments on an ongoing investigation. University of Phoenix President Timothy Slottow recently wrote to hundreds of thousands of alumni and students to defend the schools’ track record.
The Defense Department’s action does not affect veterans using the GI Bill. And yet, some veterans advocacy groups say the VA should be more aggressive about cutting off GI Bill dollars when schools have deceived students.
It is possible that the meeting will address whether GI Bill recipients, who attended the now-defunct chain of Corinthian schools, should have their benefits reset, which would require congressional action.