Dear Colleagues,

This week, NAICU’S board of directors, committee leadership, state executive network, secretariat, and Legal Services Review Panel met in Washington, DC during our annual Fall Leadership Conference for three days of meetings and conversations.

During these meetings, especially our committee meetings, our leadership tackled the issues facing private, nonprofit higher education and helped chart our path forward. Our committee meetings, as always, have been motivating and rewarding. I am always energized when our membership gathers to discuss the opportunities and challenges facing our students and institutions. I also leave these gatherings inspired by the commitment and drive our membership has for ensuring that our institutions are positioned to successfully educate our students and continue to serve as anchors for their communities. 

As I wrote last week, the value of higher education, specifically private, nonprofit higher education, was front and center in our deliberations. As we analyze the feedback and input, we will be working to create messages, talking points, data and research findings to help our sector tell its unique and successful story.

This week’s Washington Update, covers the release of Consumer Financial Protection Bureau’s annual report to Congress regarding the contractual agreements between institutions of higher education and financial companies that found that these agreements may be causing students to face unnecessary and burdensome financial challenges. You can read more details in our story below.

Soundbites

• The Department of Education has officially made the student debt forgiveness application available to all borrowers. So far, 12 million borrowers have applied for forgiveness and the Department expects around 81% of eligible borrowers to actually apply for relief and projects that it will ask between 1 million and 5 million borrowers to verify their income through additional documentation, such as tax forms.

• REMINDER: All applications for the Public Service Loan Forgiveness waiver must be submitted by October 31. All borrowers who submit their application by the deadline, regardless of whether the employer has certified the employment, will be eligible for forgiveness.

• The Biden Administration has extended the declaration of a public health emergency related to COVID-19 for an additional 90 days. The declaration grants emergency powers to the Administration to use during the ongoing pandemic.

• The National Association of College and University Attorneys (NACUA) is offering a continuing legal education workshop on sponsored research and technology transfer November 2-4, in Washington, D.C. The program is directed at college and university counsel and campus administrators with significant responsibilities related to the institutional research enterprise and technology transfer function. NAICU has joined several other higher education organizations in serving as a cooperating association in support of the workshop. The schedule will focus on a range of issues related to research and technology transfer, including foreign influence, controversial research, research misconduct, and more.

Sharon DeVivo, president and Chief Operating Officer of Vaughn College (New York) chaired a national task force appointed by the Secretary of Transportation to look at how to bring underrepresented populations to aviation and aerospace careers. The task force authored a report identifying the opportunities and challenges to getting more young adults in aviation and aerospace careers. Among the recommendations from the task force was a call for doubling the maximum Pell Grant award. Specifically, the report recommends:

Concurrently, and especially for those students who are pursuing degrees with additional training costs, increasing Pell Grants reduces the need for additional loans, especially alternative loans with higher interest rates while providing an attainable career pathway. Proposed implementation: Congress should support increasing Pell Grants as soon as possible to make education and training possible for more low-income individuals.

The report was sent earlier this week to the leadership of Committee for Science, Commerce and Transportation, Sens. Maria Cantwell (D-WA) and Roger Wicker (R-MS), as well as the leadership of the Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure, Reps. Peter DeFazio (D-OR) and Sam Graves (R-MO).