Here’s What the Trump Administration Wants to Change in Higher Ed’s Landmark Law

Alex Wong, Getty Images

The White House on Monday released its first stand-alone proposal for higher-education reform, urging the U.S. Congress to enact laws affecting accreditation, Pell Grants, and student-loan repayment.

The plan repeats themes raised in President Trump’s 2020 federal budget proposal and reflects division between Democrats and Republicans over the federal government’s role in regulating the forces that shape colleges and the for-profit sector.

Trump’s budget proposal for 2020, released last week, includes a $7-billion cut in the U.S. Department of Education, a changed student-loan repayment process, and the elimination of the Public Service Loan Forgiveness program.

Monday’s proposal includes requests that Congress consolidate income-driven repayment programs into one “simplified” program, allow Pell funds to be directed toward students leaving prison and toward shorter-term programs offering certificates and licenses, and create a pilot program to direct nontraditional students toward “market-driven work-force development programs.” It would define accreditors by mission rather than by geography. It would also orient federal work-study dollars toward specific career paths rather than “just subsidized employment as a means of financial aid.”

The proposal alludes to risk-sharing, the idea that colleges should share financial responsibility for student loans. And it asks Congress to make permanent the White House’s working group and advisory board for historically black colleges and universities.

An alternative to public-service loan forgiveness, Monday’s proposal suggests, could be forgiving all undergraduate student loans after 180 months of income-driven repayment.

The White House needs congressional action to enact its proposals. A divided Congress has revived talks to reauthorize the Higher Education Act, which has gone unrevised for more than a decade. The Democratic-controlled House Committee on Education and Labor has released its own priorities for reauthorization; meanwhile, Sen. Lamar Alexander, the Republican chair of the Senate’s education committee, and Sen. Patty Murray, the panel’s top Democrat, have begun talks of their own. Alexander has said he hopes to pass a bipartisan bill by the end of the year.

Last year, negotiations for reauthorization broke down again, as Senate Democrats and Republicans blamed each other for abandoning talks.

“I share the administration’s goals to make a college education worth it and to make it simpler to apply for federal student aid and pay back student loans,” Alexander said on Monday in a written statement. “It is helpful to have these suggestions as I work with Sen. Patty Murray, the senior Democrat on the education committee, to develop bipartisan recommendations so that we can report legislation to the full Senate before summer.”

On a call with a reporters, a senior administration official said that the White House would like to have a bill as soon as possible, but that the administration supported Alexander’s timeline.

The White House also suggested limiting Direct PLUS loans, which the federal government offers to graduate students and parents but which congressional Republicans have targeted before. But those limits have yet to be determined, the official said.

Follow Steven Johnson on Twitter at @stetyjohn, or email him at steve.johnson@chronicle.com.