ACE joined a coalition of more than 30 higher education groups in a letter to congressional leaders July 15, urging them to make graduate students a priority in the upcoming reauthorization of the Higher Education Act (HEA).
Recent decisions by Congress have made graduate education more expensive, including the elimination of in-school interest subsidies for grad students and higher origination fees on Graduate PLUS loans. Lawmakers also removed graduate eligibility for the Perkins Loan program before its expiration in 2017.
On a related note, House lawmakers last week introduced the bipartisan Expanding Access to Graduate Education Act (H.R. 3334), which would allow income-eligible graduate students who received Pell Grant support as undergraduates to roll over unused Pell funds to their first graduate degree. A similar provision was included in the Aim Higher Act (H.R. 6534), the House Democratic HEA bill introduced in the last Congress.
For more on HEA reauthorization, see the Renewing the Higher Education Act resource page.