Category: What We’re Reading

Here’s a selection of articles the Office of Federal Relations is reading this week.

NCLB? – The first item on the agenda for the Senate Health, Labor, Education and Pensions (HELP) Committee is the reauthorization of ESEA or No Child Left Behind. New HELP Committee Chair Lamar Alexander (R-TN) talks about how his views on the reauthorization and what might be coming for NCLB. Read it in Time.

$ Today for $$ Tomorrow – An op-ed on the changing nature of federal student loans, and the student loan landscape generally, and why higher education is becoming increasingly funded by the federal government, rather than state government. Read it at The New York Times.

Meet Our Demands! – As states try to fill the gaps in their budgets, many have started increasing the costs of licensing fees on applicants. Licensing discourages some applicants from pursuing those careers, which leaves nearly 3 million unfilled jobs. Additionally, many states require applicants to have taken certain courses to be eligible to apply for the programs, and these courses must be accredited. Read about it at The Washington Post.

Initial Offer – The President’s Budget Request for FY16 is expected to be $74 billion over budget levels set by the Sequester. Read about the budget at The Washington Post.

Plan B – The House Republican caucus is tossing around alternative ideas to stopping the Administration from implementing any immigration reform. The current idea is to sue the President. Read about it at Roll Call.

Out of State? – A recent study has found a correlation between falling state funding and public universities admitting more out of state students. Read it at The Chronicle.

Here’s a selection of articles Federal Relations is reading this week:

Meetings! – A guide on how to make the most of your DC visit. From Roll Call.

Due North – President Obama has issued an Executive Order on creating an Arctic Executive Steering Committee to eliminate overlapping areas of responsibility within the federal government and better focus efforts on the arctic. Read about it at USA Today.

Kickstarter Research – With ever shrinking federal research budgets, scientists are getting innovative and that includes crowdsourcing research. Read about it in The Washington Post.

Personal Medicine – In the State of the Union, the President called for a more personalized approach to cure diseases like cancer and diabetes. Read about it in The New York Times.

Changes to 529 – To pay for the two years of community college, the Obama Administration has proposed taxing 529 accounts. Read about it in The New York Times.

Athletics Scholarships – Schools and athlete representatives from the NCAA’s five wealthiest conferences voted 79-1 to expand what Division I schools can provide under an athletic scholarship. Read about it in USA Today.

Here’s a selection of articles that we are reading this week.

Real Power – With Republicans having a veto-proof majority in neither the House nor the Senate, a rare breed of politician:  moderate Democrats will become one of the most powerful players in the new Congress. This group will have the ability to help the Republicans accomplish their agenda. Read about it at The Washington Post. As a follow up, read about the veto battles that will start kicking off this week with  the Keystone pipeline. Read more at The Hill.

Universities Dealing with Fraudulent HR Scam – The FBI has noticed and advised of a recent internet scam where employees receive an email from the HR departments indicating a change in their employment status. The emails encourage them to log in to a site similar to the HR site, where the scammers steal credentials and redirect checks, among other things. Read about it from the FBI.

GOP Is not Against Science – Senator Rand Paul (R-KY) and House Science Committee Chairman Lamar Smith (R-TX) had an op-ed published this week that outlines why the Republican part is not against science, but pro-useful spending of tax dollars. Read it at Politico.

Legacy Building – Looking at the last two years of his Presidency, Obama has made some powerful strides and has arguably done more in the policy arena than many of his predecessors, but how will history judge him? Read an analysis from New York Magazine.

French Kiss Off – President Obama and other senior administration officials were conspicuously absent from the march in Paris following their series of standoffs and shootings. Forty-four heads of state went to Paris this weekend to participate in the protest against terror. Only Attorney General Eric Holder was in Paris, for another event, and didn’t participate in the rally. Read more about the fallout here.

Cyber Insurance – As companies and industries become more aware of their network vulnerabilities the cyber insurance industry is booming. After every high profile attack, Sony being the most recent example, the cyber insurance industry experiences a huge increase, and it’s an industry that’s growing between 35-50% annually already. With every attack, companies are exposed to huge liabilities both financial, like the Experian breach, or losses that are hard to quantify, like the Sony breach. Read about it at The Hill.

A YEAR’S WORTH OF DEADLINES – This week, the Federal Register lists deadlines for colleges and universities applying for the Perkins loan program, work-study programs or the Federal Supplemental Educational Opportunity Grant. Read it here.

Here’s a selection of articles that the Federal Relations team is reading this week.

International Optimism? – The international community is cautiously optimistic that the 114th Congress will be more productive that the 113th…at least a little more productive…hopefully. Read it in The Economist.

Problem Before It Starts – A national college rating system is facing tough criticism before the draft framework has been announced. First announced by the President in 2013 as an accountability measure, both for profit and nonprofit institutes expressed concern with the idea. The framework has taken over 15 months of discussion and there is still no public plan.  Most non-profit colleges are concerned, not about rankings showing value, but about unintended consequences from the rankings. Read more at the LA Times. 

Toot, toot – Obama Administration touts their accomplishments for 2014. Read it here.

Game On! – Adding to the may-lay of the 2016 elections (which only was going to be a presidential election, the House of Representatives, and the re-election of 20 Republican Senators in Democratic states), US Senate liberal institution, Senator Barbara Boxer, announced her retirement at the end of 2016. Boxer was first elected to the US House in 1983 and the US Senate in 1992. California has not seen an open Senate seat since 1992, when George H.W. Bush was president. This race is expected to be one of the most expensive, due to the make up of California, and contentious, due to the deep bench of Democrats expected to vie for the seat.  Read more about it from The LA Times and The Washington Post.

Here is a selection of articles the Federal Relations team is reading this week:

What to Expect for Higher Education – Issues raised by both Congress and the Administration that will affect higher education this year from new (and more!) regulations by the Administration to how Congress will impacts student loans to how states will address funding shortfalls though tuition freezes to public institutions. Read here at Ed Central and The Chronicle of Higher Education.

Meet the New Guy – A profile of the newest member of the Washington State Congressional Delegation, Dan Newhouse.

Rep. Newhouse won the open seat for Washington’s 4th Congressional District. It is the district formally held by Doc Hastings, who retired. Read more about Rep. Newhouse here.

Optimistic Pragmatists – Politico asked some of DC’s biggest Republican, hired-gun lobbyists what to expect from the GOP-controlled 114th Congress. The answer: practical realism. Read More at Politico.

Another blow to Obamacare –  Harvard University faculty, some of which helped shape and advise on the creation of the Affordable Care Act, voted to oppose paying increased premiums and out of pocket expenses for their heath care in 2015. An increase the Harvard Administration said was due to impacts and added costs from health care reform. The vote came to late to defer the changes, but read about it in the New York Times.

Redshirts in STEM – UW is borrowing an idea from athletics and automatically admitting students to the College of Engineering.  The STARS program enrolls promising engineering students — many of them women and minorities — to give them an additional year of collegiate academic work in an effort to give students a better platform and graduate as engineers. Read Katherine Long’s story in the Seattle Times.

Less $ from State, Mo’ $ is coming from Students (percentage-wise) – The GAO came out with a report in December which revealed that public institutes of higher education now receive more from student tuition than state funding support. The report has some stark numbers about 2012-2013, where state support, on average, fell 32 percent to only 23 percent of total revenue. Learn more from KUOW and the Huffington Post.

Top Science of the Year – Science Magazine ranked the Top 10 Breakthroughs for science in 2014. These include a host of biological, physical, and social sciences. Most importantly, four of these break throughs are the direct result of NIH funding (fountain of youth, diabetes cure, a better understanding of our genetic alphabet, and a better understanding of what is memory). NIH Director Francis Collins highlights the NIH-funded achievements here, with a look forward into what 2015 might bring. Read the whole list from Science Magazine here. And, read Popular Science’s take on what 2015 will bring (we didn’t shoot Katy Perry into space in 2014, so…).