House Democrats offered their vision for overhauling the federal higher education law, introducing Tuesday a rewrite that would boost federal funding for low-income students, simplify how borrowers repay federal student loans, incentivize states to make community colleges tuition-free and reestablish Obama-era regulations on campus sexual assault and for-profit colleges.
“This proposal immediately cuts the cost of college for students and families and provides relief for existing borrowers,” Rep. Bobby Scott, Democrat of Virginia and chairman of the Education and Labor Committee, said in a statement. “At the same time, it improves the quality of education by holding schools accountable for their students’ success, and it meets students’ individual needs by expanding access to more flexible college options and stronger support – helping students graduate on time and move into the workforce.”
Committee aides said the proposal to rewrite the Higher Education Act, which hasn’t been updated for more than a decade, reflects the reality of a Democratic-controlled House, a Republican-controlled Senate and President Donald Trump in the White House.
“The College Affordability Act is a proposal that members across the political spectrum should be able to support,” Scott said. “It is a necessary and sensible response to the challenges that students and families are facing every day.”
Even still, the proposal stands in stark contrast to the bipartisan negotiation taking place in the Senate, where Sen. Lamar Alexander, Republican of Tennessee, and Sen. Patty Murray, Democrat of Washington state, have been trying to cobble together a robust update of their own that can appease both sides of the aisle.
But the complicated law, which dictates various forms of tuition assistance for low-income students, the entire federal student loan program and a host of other provisions that form the foundation of the higher education system in the U.S., has proven difficult to tackle from the middle.
Indeed, committee aides said early efforts to broker a bipartisan version of the House proposal were waylaid by intractable bright lines from both Scott and ranking member Rep. Virginia Foxx, Republican of North Carolina.
Most recently in the Senate, Alexander broke from his path with Murray, and instead offered a bill that includes a handful of the most bipartisan measures to provide a partial update to the Higher Education Act. But Alexander’s tender is about as unlikely to pass the Democratic-controlled House as Scott’s is to pass the Senate – underscoring just how much daylight is between them.
Among many other things, the House bill would increase the maximum Pell Grant award and allow students to use Pell to cover short-term programs; establish a federal-state partnership that would direct federal funding to states that make community college tuition free and invest in their other public colleges and universities; and replace the current suite of federal loan repayment plans with one income-based repayment plan.
The bill would also increase and make permanent funding for historically black colleges and universities; block the Title IX regulation regarding campus sexual assault that Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos’ has proposed; reinstate regulations on for-profit colleges that DeVos has repealed; and fund wraparound services, like campus child care, to help students stay enrolled and graduate.
Even if they were to push the dueling proposals through their respective chambers, conferencing the bills would be difficult at best. And the looming 2020 election aside, the entire legislative calendar is unclear as House Democrats pursue an impeachment inquiry into President Donald Trump.
Despite the anticipated uphill battle to move the legislation, committee aides said Scott expects to get the bill on the floor of the House for a vote by the end of the year.
