Jon Fansmith: And hello, everyone, and welcome to the March edition of dotEDU Live. Let's go ahead and get started. We have a lot to cover today.
I am Jon Fansmith, ACE senior vice president for Government Relations and National Engagement. And today, I'm joined by not one, but two of my great colleagues, Sarah Spreitzer, my usual colleague for these webinars, and a special guest. Steven, have you done this before?
Steven Bloom: A couple of times.
Jon Fansmith: I thought so. So not a new face, and certainly not a new face to anyone working in higher ed policy. But this is Steven Bloom, associate vice president for Government Relations here at ACE. And we have a lot to cover with you, Steven. We have a whole lot to cover with you. Two big things in particular: student athletics and mental health. And we're going to get to those in just a little bit.
Before we do, we're going to touch on a whole host of other things that are happening here in DC, some late-breaking and pretty impactful. I'll also remind folks just as we go forward, you can submit questions during the session using the chat function, and as always, we'll try to get to as many as we can, and we always get a lot of great questions, and we do appreciate them, so send them in using the chat function.
So Steven, before we get to mental health and college student athletics, some things have been happening here in Washington DC recently. And Sarah, I might actually turn to you for this.
Sarah Spreitzer: Sure.
Jon Fansmith: Appropriations. What's going on?
Sarah Spreitzer: Yeah. I don't know. I thought I was invited on here to talk about cherry blossoms, but since we're going to talk about appropriations...
Jon Fansmith: What's happening with cherry blossoms, then?
Sarah Spreitzer: They're at peak blossom. Come on.
Steven Bloom: Yeah, unheard of.
Sarah Spreitzer: You might've missed that.
Jon Fansmith: I don't get outside a lot.
Sarah Spreitzer: So Congress, when they weren't looking at the cherry blossoms, was actually able to pass the first tranche of FY2024 appropriation bills. And I say FY2024, because those were supposed to pass last year around October, and we've been in a continuing resolution.
And so as part of that package, it included the Commerce-Justice-Science Bill, which included funding for NSF, NASA, NIST, the National Institute for Standards and Technology, a couple other science agencies. And unfortunately, we saw some deep cuts to the research agencies. The National Science Foundation, which had an increase last year, was funded at $9 billion, which is about an $800 million cut, about an 8 percent cut, and NASA Science was actually cut by about 6 percent, so that was disappointing.
And of course, we are waiting to see what's in the second tranche of bills, which includes the Labor-H Bill, Jon, which includes funding for the National Institutes of Health, and then all of our Department of Education programs. And we're supposed to see that at some point this week because the current continuing resolution ends this Friday.
Now, I did see today that they had decided that they're going to put the Department of Homeland Security in a continuing resolution for the rest of the year. That seemed to be the holdup, but what do you think? Are we going to see some text on those bills soon?
Jon Fansmith: Yeah, we should. The House has a rule that's particularly important to conservative Republican members of the House of being given 72 hours to review any legislation before it goes to the floor. And given that conservatives have enough of a block on the Rules Committee to prevent a waiver of that rule, and they're very unhappy about this package of spending bills to begin with, we expect to see that.
So we may see the bill text. They still have to finalize the homeland security language. The other five bills that are set to expire on Friday, it seems like the language has already been resolved. But we're expecting to see the text of those six bills tomorrow at the earliest, with votes maybe going into the weekend. So we'll get the first sense of the actual numbers.
I think we have a pretty good idea of what we might expect. We saw cuts in both chambers to Federal Work Study and the Supplemental Educational Opportunity Grant Program, so it would be a bit of a surprise since the funding levels aren't going up overall if we didn't see some level of cuts in those programs.
I think across the board, just like you talked about with science, there's a lot of downward pressure on program funding, and so it won't be shocking to see. And not necessarily large cuts. I don't want to panic people, but a lot of different programs taking SEOG and Work Study, the Senate proposed $10 million cuts to each of those programs. Things like that across the bills. It's just a very tough fiscal climate for increases. And when you have members of Congress, they'll have a few priorities, who might have ground for increases, then that limits further the pool they can put to other areas. So it probably won't be good news. I think we're a little cautiously optimistic that it won't be very bad news, but we'll find out tomorrow.
Sarah Spreitzer: Yeah. And I think I've gotten a couple questions today from folks that are watching FY2024, but I think it's confusing because President Biden released his FY2025 budget request right around the time we got the text of the first tranche of bills, and we're still waiting for the second tranche. And so I think the president's budget was a little more hopeful for some of these programs, but what did you see in there for the Department of Ed?
Jon Fansmith: Yeah. There are a few things in there. I think probably the things that got the most attention there was a proposed $750 increase to the Pell Grant maximum award, which I think normally would be great news. The structure of this one's a little bit tricky, and I don't want to go into too many of the details around mandatory and discretionary funding, but essentially, the budget would propose a $100 discretionary increase, which would go to all institutions, and then an additional $650 increase, that would come from mandatory funding and would only go to nonprofit institutions. So proprietary institutions, students enrolling at those institutions would not be able to receive the full award that students at nonprofit institutions do.
It's not a new concept. This administration had proposed it in one of their earlier iterations of the Build Back Better. Some of the, I'm blanking on the term, but infrastructure funding and other proposals, so they've done it before. It would be new in federal policy. We don't generally differentiate the aid available by the type of institution, so that's gotten a lot of attention.
The other thing is the administration proposed $12 billion in new mandatory funding for some other areas, including especially an emphasis on dual enrollment programs, programs that bridge the gap between secondary education and post-secondary education. Those are growing in popularity. We know especially in the community college sector, there's a lot of students taking dual enrollment courses. And it's a big marker by the administration that this is what they see as a promising practice. They want to put some money behind it.
I think in general, most of these things were proposed as mandatory funding, and so it's worth noting the President's budget isn't really a part of the budget process. It's more a statement of policies and priorities by the administration. It's the things they'd like to see. It's putting a marker for what their priorities are. The fact that they're leaning heavily into funding Pell, I think is a great place to put a marker down to say, "We know that the program is getting more expensive, but we see the need to not only invest, but carry forward." In fact, they reiterated that they would love to double the Pell Grant by fiscal year '29, so it's a great statement of prioritization by the administration.
Obviously, Congress does whatever they want with these requests. These final bills will look nothing like the President's last budget proposal. But again, in terms of emphasis and attention, I think the administration has put the money in the right places or at least asked for the money to go to the right places.
Sarah Spreitzer: Yeah. And Jon, I'll quickly say on the research agencies, we did see some nice bump-ups for the National Institutes of Health and the National Science Foundation, but there are new programs in both of those agencies.
At NSF, we have the technology, the Tech Innovation and Partnerships Directorate, which was created by CHIPS and Science. And then in NIH, we have ARPA-H, which is the Advanced Research Projects Agency. Those are both programs that have a lot of support from Congress, but there wasn't additional funding included for those new programs, so a lot of the funding increases that the President requested would actually go to those new programs. So advocates are talking about when Congress is making funding decisions, that they fund the core programs, and that they supplement, not supplant, so we are hopeful for that in FY25. But who knows what's going to happen with FY25 since we're in an election year?
But that reminds me, Pell has been in the news. You talked about how Pell is funded. There was some discussion about a Pell shortfall, which is something I haven't heard for a while. So why would we suddenly be in a Pell shortfall?
Jon Fansmith: Yeah. It's a great question, and I'll say we don't know for a fact that we are in a Pell shortfall. The way we determine these things is the Congressional Budget Office, Congress's accounting arm basically, does things called baselines. They essentially say, "This is where the funding is for programs, and this is where we think it'll go."
Pell's kind of a weird hybrid of a program, in that it has funding from a couple of different sources, and it funds a maximum award, so what it costs is what it costs to fund that maximum award each year. It's not the same thing as work study, where a certain amount of money is put in each year and then distributed. So this calculation about is there more money? It's basically impossible to exactly fund year-by-year what you will need for the Pell Grant program.
And so as a result, some years, there's more money that's appropriated by Congress than is needed, some years there's less money appropriated by Congress than is needed. And you have a shortfall, which is you have insufficient funding to meet the needs or a surplus, more than you need. Pretty straightforward, I think, even as Pell's really complicated.
For years and years, the Pell Program has been running a shortfall. In fact, last year, as of October, the Congressional Budget Office said there was over $12 billion surplus in the Pell Program, very financially healthy.
What we have heard now, and again, we have not seen numbers from CBO, they have not released these numbers, but I will say in conversations with congressional staff, the administration's budget projected a shortfall in the program. It seems to be consensus that we are heading into shortfall. Part of this is because FAFSA simplification has gone into effect. It makes more students eligible for aid and more students eligible for more aid. So that was always going to increase program costs.
There's some other things that happened recently, and if people want to get into it in the questions we can talk about if it happens. There were some calculations around the new formula that would've actually dramatically expanded the number of people receiving Pell Grants and added huge costs to the program. Congress actually fixed that in a relatively quick manner, but the underlying concern was there may not be enough money for Pell in future years.
Congress in terms of what they're doing about it, well, I think this is where the problem comes in and one of the reasons why I talked about how I appreciate the administration putting a marker down and saying, "Look, we have made a commitment. Congress did when they passed the legislation. The administration did when they implemented it, to fund this program, so let's put the money into it to sufficiently fund it."
We have seen in the past that when we've run up against the shortfall, some of the solutions that get proposed are not to fully fund the program, but instead to cut the program, to limit the eligibility of certain students to get a Pell Grant, limit how much of a grant or for how long they can get it. Obviously, we tend to think those are very counterproductive discussions. We've just gone through a period where bipartisan legislation passed Congress to expand eligibility. That was intentional. Everybody was moving with the same goal of making this work better for more low-income students to say now, right as we're getting that into effect, we're going to start looking at ways to cut it. It's really contrary to I think what good policy is and certainly what Congress's and the administration's intent was.
Sarah Spreitzer: In other...
Jon Fansmith: I don't have lots of happy stuff. I'm sorry.
Sarah Spreitzer: In other good news though, any good news on the FAFSA front? I know institutions are very nervous and I know the department is working to roll some stuff out. Any updates there?
Jon Fansmith: Yeah, good news when it comes to FAFSA is sort of measured by the greater context, right? When The New York Times is calling your program a fiasco, I think you've sort of set the bar for what the public perception is at this time.
That said, the Department of Education had promised to start getting the individual student records out to institutions by the first half of March, and we've seen that. We have seen ISIRs are now going out to institutions that will allow institutions to begin packaging financial aid offers to students. That's positive. That's the good news.
The problem is that very few of these ISIRs are going out right now. The department said in advance they knew that there would be a trickle at the start, that it would take them a few weeks to ramp up how they would release these. But the early numbers we've seen, there are institutions that have gotten three ISIRs at this point. So essentially the information on three students or six students, and these are large public institutions that we've heard about. So, the volume is way below what they normally have seen at this point. It's way below certainly what you expect to see on a daily basis, given that there's almost 6 million applicants, the department has said.
So, it's a ramp up period. I think realistically, you talk to the department, you hear from campuses, we're probably looking more at the end of March, beginning of April before we start to see the volume of student information getting to campuses in a way that we would've hoped to see frankly back in January.
So good news moving forward, a little bit qualified because not at the level, at the volume we would've liked to see that frankly would be, is necessary for institutions to properly process and get information back to students in time for them to make informed decisions.
Sarah Spreitzer: Thanks, Jon. We just got a question, and I know we were going to chat about this. Molly Connors has asked, any thoughts on the Respecting the First Amendment on Campus Act, especially because we just learned earlier today that it's scheduled for markup on Thursday. Can you say anything about that bill and how ACE is planning to engage on it?
Jon Fansmith: Yeah, and I'll say you mentioned it's being marked up on Thursday. People should probably know it was introduced last Friday, essentially three business days before the markup for the public to review and comment and engage with the committee. I will not speculate as to the motives of the committee. I will simply say that moving something as substantive as this legislation that quickly definitely seems to indicate a desire not to engage with the public about the content or the merits of the bill. Three days is not a lot of time to talk about what are the institutional obligations around free speech and free expression and how those balance with our obligations under Title VI to protect the civil rights of students on our campuses.
This is... I think I will safely say in terms of ACE engaging, we are opposed to this legislation. We will engage. We're still working through the ways to directly communicate that to the staff and other members of Congress, but we are sharing that with folks. We are opposed to this bill. It really does impose a lot of limitations on campuses that we think are going to be counterproductive. And I will say I was struck by the fact that the Education Workforce Committee has spent a lot of time over the last six months talking about how campuses are handling incidents of antisemitism on their campuses. And this is the kind of bill that if you are worried about institution's ability to control those dialogues, to engage and to ensure that there is civil discourse but not hate speech, this bill is counterproductive to those goals. It really stands in pretty stark contrast to what the committee seems to be asking institutions to do.
So yeah, we're aware, we're concerned, and we're going to be very engaged and make sure that hopefully our members are engaged as well in sharing with their representatives their concerns with this legislation.
Sarah Spreitzer: So Steven, also in your portfolio, we're waiting to hear about some Department of Labor regulations, which I think are getting close to being finalized.
Steven Bloom: Right. We'll back up a little bit. You all may remember that in September of 2023, the Department of Labor proposed some new regulations related to the Fair Labor Standards Act. That's the old federal law that establishes the minimum wage and whether you as an employee are exempt or non-exempt for purposes of overtime, whether you're entitled to it or not.
And the proposed regulations would make one change to one piece of the current regulations, which is that in order to be exempt for overtime under the FLSA, it's a three-part test. You're paid on a salary; you earn a certain amount annually, and currently that's about $35,500; and the nature of your duties involve independent judgment and discretion. The proposed regulations would change that second test, taking the overtime threshold from the $35,500 and change all the way up to potentially up to $60,000. So anyone earning under that threshold, under the $60,000 threshold would no longer be exempt, and they would be entitled to overtime and it could have profound impact on the way campuses manage their employees. And that rule has gone to OMB and we're doing stakeholder meetings now. We think… probably the final rule would be issued maybe in April or potentially as late as May.
Sarah Spreitzer: And so if the final rule gets issued in May, Steven, how is that going to impact our campuses or how should they be preparing for this possible change?
Steven Bloom: Well, hopefully they've already begun to prepare. You may remember if you were in higher ed back in the Obama administration, the late stages of the Obama administration, 2015, they tried to do something very similar. Ultimately their effort was blocked and then withdrawn by the Trump administration. It's going to involve really a look at on your campus, lots of different kinds of employees. It doesn't involve faculty, it doesn't involve students, because they're all exempt and many coaches do, but lots of employees on campus could potentially be impacted by this new rule and what it's going to mean in terms of how institutions are going to have to manage their time, manage their work, and how much they're being paid.
Jon Fansmith: Yeah, I would just second Steven. I think we sometimes hear from institutions that they're not aware of this coming and can't underscore how important this will be across your campus in terms of costs and staffing and training and every other aspect. So very much encourage you, even if these aren't your areas of responsibility, maybe check in and make sure that the right people on your campus know this is coming, because it will have a huge impact on our institutions. And you should definitely, if you haven't already started, start preparing for that.
So, sticking with the theme of huge impactful things for campuses, we're going to turn to the two big topics we brought you on to talk about, Steven. But the first one, I think that's been covered a lot in the media and has gotten certainly a fair amount of attention over the last couple of weeks, the National Labor Relations Board ruled, the regional administrator ruled, that Dartmouth men's basketball team can form a union. You want to talk to us a little bit about what's happening there and what that looks like?
Steven Bloom: Sure. First thing I would say to people is, yeah, this is an important decision, but take a deep breath. It's a long process. This was a regional office. The Boston office ruled that under the National Labor Relations Act, which the National Labor Relations Board has oversight and implementation of authority over, they implemented, remember that the National Labor Relations Act that applies to private employers, this does not apply to public employers, that includes public institutions.
And so this decision, which the regional office held that the Dartmouth basketball team was eligible to organize in a union because they are employees and covered by the National Labor Relations Act. It's kind of a novel interpretation, although not that novel because a number of years ago in a decision involving Columbia University, the NLRB decided that they were talking about students in general, but in particular in that case graduate students and whether graduate students had the right to organize under the National Labor Relations Act, and they found and held that they do.
And so this is sort of an application of the Columbia decision to college athletics. As you can imagine, we would find it really deeply troubling, but it's really a long way to go. What's likely to happen is the election already took place among the athletes on the team. They voted to organize. Now, Dartmouth has said they're going to appeal. That will then go to the National Labor Relations Board here in DC, and there will be a hearing and a process there, and then they'll issue a decision.
We are likely to file an amicus brief on behalf of higher education in opposition to the NLRB decision in Boston. Our view, and we can talk about it in a minute about why we think that student athletes are not employees, and the potential profound impact that reaching that conclusion would have on college athletics, not just at the D I level and not really just at the biggest football and basketball programs, but all the way down to D III and potentially other places on campus.
Sarah Spreitzer: So Steven, that's the NLRB on the administration side, but Congress has been talking a lot about student athletes. Can you talk a bit about what Congress has been doing on some of these issues?
Steven Bloom: Right. Well, this decision, just like we're paying attention to it, Congress is paying attention too, and last week... two subcommittees of the House Education and Workforce Committee held a hearing on the decision. And it was an interesting dynamic. Not surprisingly, most of the Republicans came out in opposition to the idea that student athletes should be unionized, but Democrats actually recognized the challenges associated with it and the potential implications for college athletics writ large. And that was last Wednesday, I think, or last Tuesday. I can't remember the specific day.
And on the same day, Senator Ted Cruz, who has been really focused on an aspect of student athletics, name, image, and likeness, but he held a round table looking at student athletics and really focused on the NLRB decision. Also, the retired coach from Alabama, the football coach from Alabama. And I know my colleague Laurie Arnston, who's a proud Alabamian, is going to be mad at me, because his name is escaping me, but I'm not much of a college football fan. So I think that Alabama has a good football program. Anyway, Nick Saban. Thank you in the chat. Thank you. Yes, Nick Saban was there. Anyway that were the two ways last week that Congress was engaged in a very direct way looking at the issues that are swirling around in college athletics, and in particular this decision by the Boston Regional Office of the National Labor Relations Board.
Jon Fansmith: And so Steven, you talked about the serious consequences and the concerns we have for that. And I know some of this came up in the hearing, but some people might say, "Look, these athletes are performing at the institution. They might generate revenue. Maybe this is a reasonable thing that they're allowed to unionize." Can you talk a little bit about why we are actually concerned about that? What the impact would be on colleges if college athletes are treated as employees?
Steven Bloom: Sure. I think our view is that, at its heart, the notion that college athletes should be treated as employees is really based on a sort of a false narrative and false premise. There's a belief, I think probably rooted in the big football and basketball programs. And here we are on the verge of March Madness, right? When college basketball gets lots of warranted attention that, the revenue that's generated by those sports and that level of competition really is the story about college athletics, generally. It's not.
Most college athletic programs, the vast majority of athletic programs, their costs exceed their revenues by a lot. And of the 500,000 plus student athletes participating in intercollegiate athletics, they don't bring in very much, or any, revenue.
And I think the real worry that we have is if you decide that, say Dartmouth, and Dartmouth is sort of an interesting case because if you look a picture of their gym, and this isn't a criticism of Dartmouth, but it looks like almost like a big high school gym for their basketball team, and I think they average somewhere around 600 plus fans per their home game. We're not talking about a big college basketball program. They don't get college athletic scholarships. None of the Ivy Leagues offer that to their athletes in contrast to say the big football programs and basketball programs.
And I think our worry is that if you render this decision, you make student athletes treated as employees under the Union Act, then National Labor Relations Act, that that's going to trickle down from D I, to D II, to D III, and the consequences on campuses across the country will be profound, and its potential to be devastating to what schools can do in terms of offering intercollegiate athletics would be really… It's hard to know if we think it would not be good. You'd have to pay athletes wages. You'd have other obligations, administrative and cost burdens, tax issues, overtime, labor law compliance, workers' comp premiums. There's a whole way that this could be really costly.
And then you bring about the whole question of if a student athlete isn't playing, or let's say the coach decides to impose some sort of a sanction on the athlete maybe because they were late for a practice, does that mean that a union is suddenly, under typical union employee relationships, they're going to be in the middle of negotiating and representing that athlete with the coach over that issue of whether the coach was entitled to discipline that athlete? It just makes things really complicated and potentially profound. And some sports in particular like the Olympic sports that college is really... Really, we produce our great Olympic athletes in swimming track and field and gymnastics. Those are going to be potentially profoundly impacted in ways that none of us would like to see.
Sarah Spreitzer: So Steven, we did have one question that we received from an audience member about the impact on international students, and we've talked about this before. You're kind of talking about the far-ranging impact of student athletes being treated as employees. Student visas do not allow you to work. And so that is a big question, and I know that there have been conversations about that, but there are other visas if you're coming over to work, it's an H-1B, it's another type of visa. So I think that that's a good example of these far-reaching things. But do you want to say anything about some of the other pending things around student athletes, beyond the question of unions and NIL? What are some of the other issues that policy makers are grappling with?
Steven Bloom: Sure. That's a great point, Sarah, about international students and their visas being impacted by this.
This is sort of all part of a huge kind of tumult in college athletics and NIL, name, image, and likeness, is really ripping through college athletics and transforming the way in which teams function and individual athletes function. Nick Saban at the round table said that one of the reasons he decided to retire from Alabama was it's all about the money now. And he said that the student athletes, that's all they're focused on. Well, that really comes down to name, image, and likeness. It's sort of a little ironic since he was, I think, the highest paid college coach, and we certainly haven't taken a position on NIL. I think the challenge is that it's a bit like the Wild West out there, and it's creating a lot of turmoil and tumult, and this is adding to it.
There are two other cases involving student athletes. USC was sued a couple of years ago in February of 2022, along with the PAC-12 and the NCAA by the USC football team and the men's and women's basketball team there. And they're making a similar kind of argument that they… should be classified as employees. That case is, I think, is now in a hearing, a fact-finding hearing, out in California.
And then there's a case involving a similar kind of potential impact, different federal statute, which hearkens back to earlier our discussion today on the Fair Labor Standards Act. There's a case that's pending in the third circuit in the Philadelphia area where 25 institutions were sued by a number of athletes arguing that they should be considered employees under the Fair Labor Standards Act. And that one would really be profound because in contrast to the National Labor Relations Act there in the Union Act, you have to have individual teams. They'd have to organize or seek to organize, have a vote, and there's a whole process that goes through, an appellate process. With a Fair Labor Standards Act, remember, that's a law that applies to both public and private employers. So all employers, in contrast to the NLRA, which is only private employers, and it applies to all employees. We are all subject to the Fair Labor Standards Act, and it would be like a light switch if suddenly you said that student athletes were employees under the FLSA, you'd flip that switch, and that would be almost immediate and profound, even more profound probably than the unionization of employees, although both of them, as we've discussed, present serious implications for higher education.
Jon Fansmith: Steven, I know we could talk more, and there's a lot of detailed nuance here that I'm sure, and certainly based on the questions we're getting people are interested in. But I do want to make sure we have enough time to talk about mental health because that is an area where you have been doing a lot of work. It's also an area where I feel like we've been talking about this for years. Campuses are facing a crisis, and it's very clear that this is a situation that despite the best efforts on campuses, it's still a huge challenge. So can you talk a little bit about what we're hearing from institutions, what we're seeing with students and with staff too? I don't want to combine this just to students, but what it looks like nationally.
Steven Bloom: Sure. Thanks, Jon. Yeah, I think it won't come as a surprise to many of the attendees here that student mental health is a huge challenge on campus. We have seen this for a number of years, and it was really exacerbated by the pandemic. We have seen that since 2021, the Surgeon General has really been sounding the alarm. After the tragic school shooting in Uvalde, Texas, Congress in June of 2022, they passed a bill, the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act, which was really intended to respond to what they saw as the mental health challenges of young people, and provided some funding there to address mental health in K-12 settings and to hire school-based mental health professionals across the US.
I think that the thing that we've seen in all of the, most of the congressional and federal policy makers, is that they've really focused on K-12. Now, it's really important, this population, and if we've had children, it has been a terribly challenging time the last few years. And COVID, the pandemic, had a profound impact and exacerbated these longstanding mental health challenges, but they haven't really focused on higher ed. And we are trying, and we'll talk in a minute about the kind of advocacy we're trying to do to educate policymakers about the challenges that students on campus are having.
Just to give you one data point that sort of drives this home is that in 2022 to 2023, I think that academic year, close to 50 percent of students were screened positive for symptoms of anxiety or depression, but only 46 percent of these students had received therapy or counseling during that time period. So it's an enormous challenge. It has implications not just for their health, their mental health, but their success as they proceed through their academic journey and their ability to actually complete their degree. So it's something that we are trying to, we're working on, and I think we're going to talk a little bit about the ways in which we're trying to engage on this issue.
Sarah Spreitzer: So Steven, looking at the time, we are getting to the end of the pop up, and so can we talk a bit about what ACE is doing to support this type of work and advocating with policy makers about the work that our institutions need to do?
Steven Bloom: Sure. Well, really two things. One is funding. As I mentioned that most of the attention so far has been on K-12. There's really very little federal funding right now. There's a very small program, the Garrett Lee Smith's Campus Suicide Prevention Grant program. It only is funded at $2.3 million a year, which isn't very much as you can imagine. So we put together a proposal that really, that we're proposing. It would be #13.8 billion over 10 years, and it would really seek to fund campuses in three buckets: Research, training and services. Provide grants to support campuses across the country, the kind of resources we think they're going to need to implement, training of faculty and staff, and services, expansion of their counseling center services that faculty staff and residents assistance, et cetera. And it's really, the model is sort of a public health model. It's a whole-of campus model. We know that the issue of student mental health can't really be solved just by increasing the campus health center, that it takes a village to address this really challenging issue. And so that's one way that we're trying to work on getting Congress to support funding in this important area.
And the second way is that during the pandemic, the beginning of the pandemic, as we emptied our campuses out, we got relief from all states, most states, to use telehealth as a tool to continue to provide behavioral health services to our students. Well, those temporary suspensions of their restrictions on licensing, remember that most state health providers are licensed in their states and they can't practice across the state line unless they're subject to or a part of an interstate compact. So what we're proposing is that Congress authorize our institutions to provide interstate behavioral health services using telehealth to students that are enrolled at our institutions.
Telehealth is still a big part of what institutions use to provide behavioral health services, and we think it still continues to be a challenge with these restrictions. And we're hoping that Congress would authorize this, and it would just be one tool that schools would be able to use to try to meet the challenge of student mental health.
As part of this effort of trying to move the dial and to try and get these two different kind of approaches to getting the federal government to help campuses address student mental health, we need to educate them about the problem. And so, one of the ways that we're educating them, not just individual meetings, and it's a little hard to do 635 meetings with all of the members of Congress. We hosted a briefing on Capitol Hill on March 6. Senator Murphy of Connecticut was gracious enough to provide welcoming remarks. He's been very active on these issues. And then we had a panel of experts and our own Hollie Chessman served as the moderator. She's our in-house expert on student mental health issues. And she and I have been partners working on this. And so we had this briefing. It was very well attended. It was really for congressional staff. Again, part of an effort to educate them about the challenge that we're confronting and why we need federal relief.
Jon Fansmith: This is a huge issue. A lot of kudos, Steven, to you also to Hollie Chessman, who's amazing and a really important area, and one that I think we're going to keep putting a lot of emphasis and attention on going forward.
Before I sign off, we did get a lot of questions and we didn't get as much time to touch on those because we had some pretty substantive things to discuss, but Tom Vu asked about CCRA, the College Cost Reduction Act and the Bipartisan Workforce Pell Act. Where do those stand? You may know if you're tracking these, that the Bipartisan Workforce Pell Act was scheduled for a vote under suspension a couple of weeks ago. It was pulled back at the last minute. It was pretty clear that that vote would fail. Where it stands going forward, it is very clear both Chairwoman Foxx and Ranking Member Scott of the Education Workforce Committee have talked since the vote was pulled back about their intention to move forward, their intention to push that bill forward. So we do expect that to come back to the floor at some point, maybe looking different. The offset issue remains. That was ACE's primary concern with that proposal. So unless there's changes there, we'd still have the same concerns.
But CCRA, it's a little bit different. There hasn't been quite the momentum to bring it to the floor yet. Certainly, it's a partisan bill. There was not Democratic support for that. But Chairwoman Foxx, one of the original sponsors of this, clearly an important priority to her. You have to expect she'll keep working to try to get that to the floor. Doesn't look imminent, but you never know. Sometimes things break in a different way. But we will keep you all updated, encourage you to check your different ACE communications channels, and we'll keep on top of that.
We are over time now, so Steven has implications, right? We're over time. Get it?
Sarah Spreitzer: That was pretty bad.
Jon Fansmith: Thank you. That was awful. But I do appreciate all of you staying on with us for as long as you have, joining us here today, the questions you put in, and listening to my terrible jokes. We will see you next month for the April edition of dotEDU Live. And again, thanks for joining us.