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Wednesday Follow Up
Confirmation on no debt relief December submission, webinar video & slides, CCRA prospects, India investments
Phil Hill
December 18, 2024
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I said recently that there would be no scheduled Friday Follow Up and Interesting Reads This Week posts until the week of January 6th. But I didn’t say I couldn’t add a Wednesday Follow Up.
Confirmation on No Debt Relief Submission
I had a very good call with Tom Netting from CSPEN about the incorrect reporting that the Biden Administration submitted final rules to advance student debt relief this week. See this post for details.
Netting contacted his sources within the Department of Education and has written a clarification on that report [misspelling corrected and emphasis added].
“Lucy, you got some splainin to do!” Last week, CSPEN shared updates both in emails and our weekly CSPEN Federal Legislative & Regulatory Update webinar regarding the status of three separate regulatory packages that are all currently over with White House’s Office of Management and Budget, Office of Information & Regulatory Affairs (OMB/OIRA) awaiting final review by the Administration. In our reporting we stated that all three packages were newly submitted to OMB/OIRA. This was incorrect.
The two bills on Student Debt Relief were actually sent over to the White House OMB/OIRA prior to last week, and it was only the third package on Program Integrity and Institutional Quality that were send from the Department of Education over to OMB/OIRA for final review and approval last week. This mistake was pointed out to last week in reporting by Phil Hill on EdTech+ last Friday and immediately resulted in outreach to Department of Education seeking additional clarification from them.
What had confused us were the Status Reports on the regulatory proposal for the Student Debt Relief 2 (Hardship) along with the fact that we hadn’t seen the regulations posted previously. We were informed directly by senior Department Officials that the two Student Debt Relief proposals had been submitted to the White House earlier and that it was only the Program Integrity and Institutional Quality: Distance Education [1840-AD92], Return to Title IV, HEA Funds [1840-AD85], and Federal TRIO Programs [184-AD68] that were added last week.
Long story short, we were inaccurate in reporting the timing or receipt of the proposals to OMB/OIRA for final review, but accurate in sharing with the community that the reports are all pending final review – including the Hardship proposal that gives the Secretary the authority to make decisions on student loan debt relief for reasons up to and including the program and institution she/he chooses to attend and the proposals which focuses on key Distance Education revisions, R2T4 calculation revisions, and increased access for students under the TRIO program.
Kudos to Tom and CSPEN for getting additional information and updating the record.
Webinar Video and Slides
Yesterday we held our second live webinar for premium subscribers on “Reading the Tea Leaves: Online and EdTech Growth and Investments.” Despite our discomfort at the tough questions submitted, I’m sharing the webinar video and slides below. Thank you for everyone who attended. It was a good discussion with 62% of attendees staying for at least 50 minutes and 86% staying for at least 40 minutes.
