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Category: Higher Education

Last Week!!!

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With only five days left before a seven-week summer recess, Congress will at least try to keep up appearances. The House Appropriations Committee is scheduled to complete work on the final two of the 12 annual spending bills needed to fund the government for FY 2017. Meanwhile, the full House is set to vote on its FY 2017 Interior-Environment spending bill, which would be the fifth bill to pass the House this year.

By the time Congress reconvenes in September, there simply will not be enough time left to complete work on all of the regular spending bills before the new fiscal year begins on Oct. 1. To avoid a politically deadly government shutdown one month before the elections, some kind of stopgap spending measure, known as a Continuing Resolution (CR), will need to be approved. House Conservatives have expressed concerns about a short-term CR. 

On the Senate side of the Hill, the upper body’s rejection of a procedural vote on the FY 2017 Defense spending bill last Thursday may signify the final nail in the coffin for the regular FY 2017 appropriations process, as Democrats rebel and talk increasingly turns to staving off a government shutdown with a stopgap measure.  Regardless, he Defense spending bill is up, but the chamber could also pivot to take action on the FAA bill or the final version of a bill to fight opioid addiction. The House approved the opioid conference report on Friday.

House Committee Moves Forward with Labor-H

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The House Appropriations subcommittee marked up the FY 2017 Labor-H appropriations measure today. The legislation includes funding for programs within the Department of Labor, the Department of Health and Human Services, the Department of Education, and other related agencies. No report language has been released, so details of the bill will likely remain unclear until full committee consideration next week.

Full committee markup of the bill is scheduled for Wednesday, July 13, at 10:00 a.m. EDT in 2359 Rayburn House Office Building.

The measure would increase funding for the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to $33.3 billion, an increase of $1.25 billion above the FY16 level, but does not include the Senate bill’s funding to restore the year-round Pell Grant. The bill includes a provision to prohibit the Department of Labor from implementing its new overtime rule.

Highlights of accounts of note include:

NIH 

The $33.3 billion in NIH funding includes $165 million for the National Children’s Study, $511.5 million for Clinical and Translational Sciences Awards, and $333.3 million for Institutional Development Awards (IDeA) programs. Other details include:

  • $1.26 billion, a $350 million increase, for the Alzheimer’s disease research initiative;
  • $195 million, a $45 million increase, for the Brain Research through Application of Innovative Neuro-technologies (BRAIN) initiative; and
  • $300 million for the Precision Medicine Initiative.

The bill also maintains the salary cap on external NIH grants at Executive Level II of the Federal Executive pay scale.

Higher Education

The Pell Grant maximum award would be increased to $5,935 through a combination of discretionary and mandatory funds, which is the same as the Administration’s request and the Senate bill. The bill also would prohibit the Department of Education from moving ahead on regulations on teacher preparation, defining “gainful employment” and “credit hour,” and how states license institutions of higher education.

The Senate committee-passed bill funds NIH at $34 billion, a $2 billion increase, and uses part of the Pell Grant program surplus to restore the year-round Pell Grant.

Federal Relations will continue to update as we learn more details.

SCOTUS: Fisher v. Texas

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Today, the Supreme Court today upheld the University of Texas at Austin’s (UT) consideration of race and ethnicity in college admissions. The ruling came in a case, Fisher v. University of Texas at Austin, about the admissions practices at the UT, but will likely affect admissions and financial aid policies in most institutes of higher education.

In a 4-3 decision, the court ruled that that the primary reason that the plaintiff in the case was denied admission to the university was not its consideration of race in admissions, but of Texas’ “10 percent plan.” The plan, as enacted by the Texas legislature, allows students within the top 10 percent of their high school graduating class to be admitted to the public college or university of their choice.

The university does have “a continuing obligation to satisfy the strict scrutiny burden: by periodically reassessing the admission program’s constitutionality, and efficacy, in light of the school’s experience and the data it has gathered since adopting its admissions plan, and by tailoring its approach to ensure that race plays no greater role than is necessary to meet its compelling interests.”

New Regulations for For-Profits Proposed

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This week the Department of Education proposed new regulations to make it simpler for defrauded for-profit college students to have their loans forgiven and bans mandatory arbitration clauses in enrollment agreements.  In addition, the proposal provides ED with the ability to require for-profits to post collateral if officials have concern regarding the institution’s financial stability and requires institutions with financials strains to disclose those problems to current and prospective students.

Labor-HHS-Ed Passes Senate Appropriations

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This week the Senate Committee on Appropriations took action on the Labor-HHS-Education appropriations measure.  Most notably, the measure provides a $2 billion bump for the National Institutes of Health and restores year-round Pell Grants. 

National Institutes of Health is funded at $34 billion in the proposal, a 6.3% increase above FY2016. This includes:

  • $300 million for the Precision Medicine Initiative, an increase of $100 million;
  • $1.39 billion for Alzheimer’s disease research, an increase of $400 million;
  • $250 million, an increase of $100 million, for the BRAIN Initiative to map the human brain;
  • $333.4 million, an increase of $12.5 million, for the Institutional Development Award;
  • $463 million, an increase of $50 million, to Combat Antibiotic Resistant Bacteria;
  • $297.3 million for Title VII Health Professions, a 13.3 percent increase above the FY 2016 level.

Notably, the measure would restore the year-round Pell Grant, benefitting an estimated one million students. The reinstated year-round Pell program is modeled after the program included in S. 1062, the “Year-Round Pell Grant Restoration Act,” which does not have a minimum credit requirement or acceleration clause for eligibility.The bill would also raise the maximum Pell Grant award from $5,815 to $5,935. In addition, the provision would provide level funding year-over-year for Federal Work Study at $990 million, TRIO at $900 million, and GEAR UP at $323 million. Title VI International Education is funded at $67 million, which is a $5 million cut to the Fulbright Hayes program and level funding for the domestic programs.