Dive Brief:
- The U.S. House of Representatives is moving ahead with a plan to rewrite and pass the massive Higher Education Act in bite-size pieces, holding two votes last week to pass related bills and one vote against a student loan relief bill.
- Meanwhile, the U.S. Senate Education Committee Chairman Tom Harkin (D-IA) is taking comments on his massive, 700-page rewrite of the legislation, which he would like to pass all at once.
- The House vote to boost competency-based education was unanimous, and it also overwhelmingly passed a bill overhauling how the U.S. Department of Education Department discloses college data, Inside Higher Ed reported.
Dive Insight:
Inside Higher Ed predicts that reauthorization of the Higher Education Act, which expires Dec. 31, is a long way off — and probably not even occurring in 2014. The law, among other things, governs federal student aid. On the House side, several Democrats complained that the bills passed didn’t go far enough in addressing college student debt and cost issues, and the bill that was voted down was a Democrat’s proposal to give direct relief to existing student loan borrowers over the last year by giving them a rebate for the amount they would have saved with lower interest rates. The House votes were the first on the reauthorization efforts.