Higher Ed Policy Roundup: Vol. 9 - Issue 29

This Week In Washington

On Wednesday, the House Appropriations Committee approved an appropriations bill to fund the Education Department (ED) for fiscal year (FY) 2026. Recall that last week, the House Appropriations Subcommittee on Labor, Health and Human Services, Education, and Related Agencies advanced the measure which would fund ED at $67 billion, a 15% cut from FY2025 funding levels, and eliminate the Child Care Access Means Parents in School program, which provides low-income parents with grants for campus-based child care services. Government funding is set to expire on September 30, and Congress will need to either pass a funding bill or a short-term stopgap bill to avoid a government shutdown.

Also on Wednesday, ED announced that it would no longer provide discretionary funding to some Minority-Serving Institution grant programs. ED claims that these programs discriminate by providing benefits to institutions based on racial or ethnic criteria.

On Tuesday, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) released a report expressing concerns that issues with the oversight of contractors used to manage the Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA) could cause delays in students receiving federal student aid. Some of the issues found in the report were that ED was not providing training to key staff, validating contractor performance data, or implementing thorough testing conditions. To resolve these issues, GAO made seven recommendations, including abiding by agency policy for managing requirements and testing and developing policy for independent acquisition reviews.

News You Can Use

Analysis from Urban Institute, Jobs for the Future, and the Postsecondary Education and Economics Research Center at American University, shows that nearly half of all students in professional programs may need to take out more loans than the new federal limit allows.

Recent Legislation

The following bill(s) have been recently introduced for consideration by the 119th Congress (2025-26):

S. 2764 – Student Transparency for Understanding Decisions in Education Net Terms (STUDENT) Act [Sen. Joni Ernst (R-IA)] would require disclosure of the total amount of interest that would be paid over the life of a loan for certain federal student loans.