The House Veterans Affairs Subcommittee on Economic Opportunity Oversight held a hearing to question leaders of the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) about the implementation of Risk-Based Surveys (RBS).  Specifically, the hearing highlighted and focused on the issues institutions have experienced with the recent uptick in oversight. Subcommittee members at the hearing voiced bipartisan concern to the VA about misunderstanding congressional intent for using RBS, and bipartisan understanding toward institutions about the burdensome process that occurred during the last year.  

Subcommittee Chairman Derrick Van Orden (R-WI) said to Joseph Garcia, Executive Director, Education Service, at the VA, that the agency continues “to get in its own way” and “follows a pattern of misinterpretation” when implementing the law, admonishing VA that “Congress should not have to continually intervene to fix things, especially with additional staff in Education Service.” Ranking Member Levin (D-CA) followed that by saying that VA needs to continue to “police bad actors,” but that “the congressional intent of RBS is for when schools grossly fail, not to duplicate compliance audits.” Members were also concerned that the VA had a quota for the number of surveys to conduct this fiscal year, which does not reflect the purpose of the initiative. 

Witnesses representing institutions, state approval agencies, and school certifying officials highlighted how the VA has misunderstood the congressional intent of RBS from the Isakson-Roe GI Bill Benefits Improvement Act of 2020. The examples given in testimony reflect the reports from institutions about surprise notices, short turnaround time for producing documentation, and the sense of VA being on a “fishing expedition” for bad behavior. 

The National Association of Veteran Program Administrators noted that most bad actors in recent history have not been accredited schools, but that most of the surveys conducted this time have been of accredited institutions. And the National Association of State Approval Agencies noted that the VA did not use the pilot program for RBS that it created in conjunction with higher education stakeholders in 2019 to ensure targeted narrow oversight for evidence of fraud. 

Rep. Van Orden asked the VA to work directly with representatives of higher education and veteran program services to figure out a way to implement RBS with more targeted efficiency.