"While this legislation is an improvement from where the Senate started, the amount of money it provides to students and higher education institutions remains woefully inadequate.
The Senate bill does recognize that all colleges and universities face an unprecedented cash flow crisis after absorbing enormous expenses associated with responding to COVID-19. The bill also provides regulatory relief and flexibility to enable institutions to better serve the millions of students receiving federal financial aid. And it also appropriately gives some relief to student loan borrowers, though in this area too there is more that could be done. But we cannot stress enough that overall, the assistance included in the measure for students and institutions is far below what is required to respond to the financial disaster confronting them.
It is critical that students receive support for needs such as finding housing, technology assistance for online learning, or to travel home. Campuses are losing staggering sums after closing for safety reasons and refunding tuition, room and board, and other auxiliary revenues. If these needs are not met, students are going to suffer financially and may drop out.
We believe that additional broad-based funding measures will be forthcoming, and we will do everything possible to ensure that federal officials understand the full range of costly and complex challenges that students and their colleges and universities are facing."