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News and updates

What We’re Reading, January 5th — Part 2

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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.

White House Proposes Two Years of Free Community College

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In advance of his State of the Union address, President Obama is traveling to Tennessee today to announce one of his keystones of his 2015 agenda: two free years of community college.  The proposal, called America’s College Promise, is based on Republican Governor Bill Haslam, who developed and launched Tennessee Promise, which begins this year. Tennessee Promise allows any high school graduate in that state is eligible for two years of free community college tuition under the Tennessee Promise. The President’s announcement is expected to be a cornerstone of his FY16 Budget Request.

The Administration’s proposal would make community college free for any student who enrolls at least part-time and maintains a 2.5 grade point average. The plan would allow anyone admitted to a community college to attend without paying tuition, so long as they enroll in a program meeting certain basic requirements, and they remain on track to graduate in three years.Qualifying programs would be one of  two types: it would had credits that fully transfer to local public four-year colleges and universities or it would consist of training programs with high graduation rates that lead to in-demand degrees and certificates. All community college students, including those first entering community college or those going back to school, would be eligible for the program.

The White House estimates that approximately 9 million students would participate a year.

Any state participating would have to maintain funding for all higher education as well as pay 25% of the total cost. It is estimated the program could cost upwards of $15 billion per year. It is unclear how it would be paid for, but that information is expected to be made clear in the President’s Budget Request for FY16 on February 2.

Typically, the President would do these visits to promote new initiatives after the State of the Union and before the release of the President’s Budget Request. However, the President will be making a state visit to India after the State of the Union, and so promotion for big initiates is happening now in what the Administration is calling a Spoiler Alerts.

The President is expected to formally announce the America’a College Promise at 1 pm Eastern. In addition to Governor Haslam, the President will be joined by both of Tennessee’s Republican Senators, Bob Corker and Lamar Alexander. Senator Alexander is the Chairman of the Senate Health Education Labor and Pensions Committee.  Watch the announcement live here.

The Office of Federal Relations will continue to track and update information on this initiative as it becomes available.

 

What We’re Reading, Week of January 5th

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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.

Library of Congress

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…).

Getting to know the 114th Congress

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Today, Tuesday, January 5th, kicks off the 114th year the United State’s federal government has met to legislate. Over the next two years, the Republican party will control both houses of Congress for the first time since President Obama took office in 2004.

US House of Representatives
US House of Representatives Photo: House Clerk

This Congress will be the largest Republican majority since 1928 when the party won 270 seats. The House will have 246 seats (having gained 12 seats), which is 56% of the House. While significant, it is not the 60 votes needed to overcome cloture or override a Presidential veto. In the Senate, the GOP will control 54 seats (having gained 9 seats in the 2014 election), but again, short of the 2/3s needed to invoke a cloture vote or override a Presidential veto.

Some other facts:

  • The median age in the House will be 57 years old with the youngest member Elise Stefanik (R-NY-21) at age 30 and the oldest member John Conyers (D-MI-13) at age 85. Conyers will also be the longest-serving member of either house of Congress, having been first elected in 1964.
  • Forty-nine percent of the House, or 212 members, will have served less than a full six years, including 57 percent of Republican Representatives.
  • The House also has a record number of women — 84 total — and there are 20 female Senators. In both chambers, women are very disproportionately Democratic and in the House they make up more than three times as much of the Democratic caucus (62 members) than the Republican caucus (22 members). That said, the 114th Congress is 4/5th white and 4/5th male.

The Office of Federal Relations is excited to work report the ups, downs, turmoil, stagnation, energy and ennui which is Congress, and how that affects the University of Washington and our federal priorities.