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Updates on TPS Expansion and FAFSA Impact on Community Colleges
Following up on stories about expected ED schedules and forecasted enrollment pain from the FAFSA fiasco
Phil Hill
July 17, 2024
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Morgan and I are finishing up three LMS users conferences and starting work on our notes for D2L, Instructure, and Anthology. In the meantime, I wanted to share quick updates around third-party services (TPS) expansion and forecasts on FAFSA fiasco impacts.
Department of Ed Plans on TPS Expansion
Late last week I shared the updated master plan from the US Department of Education (ED) on expected regulatory activity. Notably, the schedule showed that regulatory efforts targeted at revenue-sharing OPMs, specifically the expansion of TPS definitions and reporting requirements, was not scheduled for to have proposed new rules until July 2025. That would qualify under the if and only if Biden? wins the election category.
Today, Undersecretary of Education James Kvaal released a post on the ED website changing those plans [emphasis added].
Today, the Department is announcing that, after careful consideration of all comments, we have decided to conduct negotiated rulemaking to consider regulations related to third-party servicers broadly. We believe this approach, which was suggested by many commenters, will allow the Department to use the negotiated rulemaking process to collaborate with the affected community on these issues. We will consider clarifying the scope of third-party servicer rules in several areas, including software and computer services, student retention, and instructional content. In addition to considering the definition of third-party servicers, we may also consider audit requirements; an application process; reporting, financial, past performance, and other compliance requirements; and other ideas proposed by the community. The Department will provide further detail on this rulemaking at a later date.
What this means from a schedule perspective is likely negotiated rulemaking for TPS in the August - October time period, followed by a proposed new set of rules via Notice of Proposed RuleMaking (NPRM) near the end of the calendar year. There would then need to be a public comment period before final rules would be issued.