Note: This transcript was provided by a third party service.
Mushtaq Gunja: Welcome everybody, and welcome to dotEDU, the public policy podcast from the American Council on Education. Mushtaq Gunja here, along with, as always, my illustrious co-host, Jon Fansmith, Sarah Spreitzer. How are you two?
Jon Fansmith: Doing great. How are you?
Mushtaq Gunja: I'm doing great.
Sarah Spreitzer: Happy St. Patrick's Day.
Jon Fansmith: Oh, happy St. Patrick's Day. Love that. Not one of us is wearing green, by the way.
Mushtaq Gunja: Not a single one of us is wearing green. And the three of us aren't. Nor is our good friend, Emmanual Guillory. Emmanual, friend of the pod, Director of Government Relations here at ACE. Emmanual, welcome to the podcast.
Emmanual Guillory: Thank you, Mushtaq. Glad to be here. I am happily wearing my PENN colors today. I wear my PENN colors on Tuesday.
Mushtaq Gunja: Emmanual, did you watch the Penn-Yale Men's Basketball Championship game yesterday?
Emmanual Guillory: I didn't, but...
Jon Fansmith: Overtime thriller.
Mushtaq Gunja: It's insane.
Emmanual Guillory: Yeah, I heard about it.
Mushtaq Gunja: It was really quite something. And we are immediately alienating Sarah-
Jon Fansmith: Sorry, Mushtaq. We didn't ask Sarah if she watched, either.
Sarah Spreitzer: You know what? I was going to point out, since Emmanual didn't watch it, I don't feel that bad.
Mushtaq Gunja: Madness is upon us. We have brackets that are coming. And in the ACE space, actually, we've got somebody putting up the women's bracket on our chalkboard, so this is very good.
Friends, it was great seeing everybody at ACEx2026. It was especially fun hosting a live podcast. Sarah, I got multiple Teams chats saying, "Sarah, check your Teams," which-
Sarah Spreitzer: Yeah, I love doing the live podcast. I think we should do that again. Let's take it on the road.
Mushtaq Gunja: For those of you who are not, first of all, shame on you and your institution. But if you are not and you're still listening and want to experience that, we've got a way for you to be able to subscribe to those webinars. Please look at that.
Hey, we have Emmanual here with us today because we are talking. We're going to spend a lot of time on O3B implementation, grab bag of additional items. We're going to do a quick pulse check on Congress as well. It's been, I think, five weeks since we've done one of these actually, like a regular podcast. I'm going to have us go through and just do a quick check-in. You three will remind me of where we are with all things.
Before we start, two other just quick housekeeping items. We've never done this before, but we're going to make a little ask. If you haven't already, if you wouldn't mind liking and subscribing to dotEDU wherever you get your podcasts, that would be very helpful to us. That's partially because we were doing a search for higher ed podcasts the other day and a bunch of them showed up. DotEDU didn't show up maybe quite as highly as I thought maybe we would, and so I thought... And with other podcasts that I'm sure are amazing but have way fewer reviewers and listeners than we do, so if you wouldn't mind.
And then second thing, friends, if you wouldn't mind, thank you again for those of you who submitted questions in advance in your registration reports. They really are very helpful for us as we make our outlines. If you wouldn't mind, if you have questions that come up during the show, put it in the Q&A. Put it in the chat, but the Q&A is even better. I see them a little bit more clearly there.
Let's go. Let's do a quick government check-in. What is the government up to, and what has the president been focused on? What's the Department of Education focused on? We're going to talk about implementation of the One Big Beautiful Bill, but what else is happening in Washington right now?
Sarah Spreitzer: I love that word focus. Is there any focus or is it just chaos, chaotic craziness? I mean, I don't know. Congress seems to be doing things. The president announced that he's not going to sign any future bills until they pass the SAVE Act. Mushtaq, I feel like the SAVE Act is something you would follow really closely.
Mushtaq Gunja: I have. It is a mess of a piece of legislation from my perspective that has a whole grab bag of things. Yes, I mean, in general, the SAVE Act, of course, has to do with all things elections and voting. It's got legislative priorities from the last three decades of stuff that all got crammed into one bill. There are not 60 votes to pass it in the Senate, so it is not going to pass unless the Republicans get rid of the filibuster in the Senate.
Even then, I'm not sure there are 50 votes for this. I don't know what good that threat is. I also saw, Sarah, that the president actually walked that back. He said that he wouldn't sign any bills until the SAVE Act was passed, but then he was asked, "Well, but DHS is not funded right now. What about that?" He said, "No, no, no, of course I signed that bill once funding happens there." I guess I don't really believe it.
Sarah Spreitzer: Yeah, well, the DHS approach bill or the shutdown of DHS does not seem to be going any better than it was when we talked five weeks ago. I don't believe there's any update on that except to say that people are complaining about long TSA lines. We have a new acting secretary of Homeland Security, which I think changes things a bit, but I don't think it clears the way for a new DHS funding bill.
Mushtaq Gunja: I'm surprised, Jon, at the lack of chatter about actually getting to a path to funding DHS. What are you seeing here?
Jon Fansmith: Yeah, so I think today Hakeem Jeffries is going to introduce a discharge petition in the House, which is a way of going around leadership's control of the floor to try and fund everything at DHS outside of immigration agencies, so ICE and customs and border patrol.
I think that's the issue, right? Democrats have said that they want to see major policy changes, especially at ICE. The administration and a lot of Republicans on the Hill have so far been reluctant to make those changes or agree to those changes. And so we're narrowing in on what that funding challenge will look like, but there's really no incentive for Democrats to move on this. It's pretty popular with Democrats to hold up funding for this. It's pretty popular with the public generally after what we saw in Minneapolis. There's very little urgency to move.
Maybe the TSA stuff as somebody who's going to be flying on Friday I have a little bit of a vested interest in seeing what that looks like, but I don't know if that's enough to compel movement here given the state of public anger about the actions of ICE.
Mushtaq Gunja: I want to book them back, I think, to some of the other things that the administration might be focused on, but I want to bring Emmanual in here as we talk about the One Big Beautiful Bill and implementation. Before we dive into detail, I think we can just ground ourselves here.
I want to talk about the RISE committee and where we are with all things for graduate loans. I want to talk about the AHEAD committee, talk a little bit about Workforce Pell and what is happening there, and maybe some Pell shortfall stuff as well. But maybe just start with RISE. We've been talking about this four months. RISE, I think is Re-imagining and Improving Student Education committee. As a reminder, the department reached consensus back in the fall in a negotiated rulemaking session. They opened up a public notice and comment period. I think that period ended earlier this month. The department's feverishly working on finalizing a final rule to try to comply with the master calendar deadline of July 1st. There's some provisions that are about institutional flexibility on some loan limits, some consolidation of some repayment plans. But the biggest flashpoint has been this list of programs that are professional versus graduate. The professional programs have higher loan limits. Currently, only 11 programs count as professional. We've talked a lot about this.
Emmanual, we submitted comments before the deadline earlier this month. What do we say in our comment letter, and where are we in this process?
Emmanual Guillory: Thank you, Mushtaq, for that question. And again, I'm very happy to be with all of you today.
The department did release their proposed rule as it relates to RISE. In RISE, they talked about the student loan changes and all the changes to the student aid, just to student aid in general. I know you're familiar with this, but that includes getting rid of grad plus loans, for example, capping Parent Plus loans in the aggregate and annually, also reducing the loan limits for graduate students and increasing loan limits for professional students while creating a tiered standard repayment plan and a repayment assistance plan also is an income-driven repayment plan. And getting rid of the income-driven repayment plans that we have today and pretty much all the repayment plans that we have, unless you're grandfathered into it because you have taken out a loan before July 1st of 2026.
So where we stand today is proposed rule from RISE is already out. The department is reviewing comments. I believe there were over 80,000 comments that were submitted, so we are awaiting a final rule on that with the department's justification as to any changes they may have made.
Now, let me be clear on one thing. When the negotiating committee gets together and consensus is reached, the department historically has adhered to that consensus language, but it is not mandatory that they do so. They can make changes. If they do make any changes, they have to articulate why they make those changes in the federal register. But history and precedent shares and tells us that when consensus is reached, that is the language that we can expect to become final. But there is still a bit of uncertainty, which yields me to the first thing that we mentioned in our response to the department, which is-
Mushtaq Gunja: Just before you do, can I just say one thing, right? I mean, it is the case that the department has to review each of the 80,000 comments and then take that into account when they come up with the final rule. Is that right?
Emmanual Guillory: That is right. They have to review, and in their ways of reviewing, they can clump like comments together. That's why we don't really encourage form letter responses where everyone's saying the same thing just sending it in from different organizations because they just consider that one entry of a response.
But yes, they do have to consider everything, and-
Mushtaq Gunja: Which is to say consensus has been reached, but there are these comments that are in, including the ACE comment. And so I mean, theoretically, the department's going to have to grapple with each of these very substantive comments, not probably all 80,000, but a lot of them talking about the impacts.
I'm sorry, I just wanted to say that ahead of time because we've put in these comments. I think that although consensus has been reached, I'm not sure that this is a completely moot exercise. I'm sorry, keep going.
Sarah Spreitzer: Wait, can I ask something? So Mushtaq's actually holding out hope that even though they reached consensus, somehow the comments are going to change the final rule. I just want to check on that.
Mushtaq Gunja: Well, correct. And if they don't-
Sarah Spreitzer: Such an optimist.
Mushtaq Gunja: Dude, Sarah, we all wear the hats we wear.
Sarah Spreitzer: You so clearly previously worked at the Department of Education, Mushtaq.
Mushtaq Gunja: So look, I think that the thing about it is if they don't seriously grapple with the comments, then I mean, they set themselves up for possible litigation, right? I mean, we'll see what they end up doing. I think the comments by and large are constructive, many of them. And so they don't seriously grapple, then I guess we're going to have to deal with it.
But Emmanual, what do they have to seriously grapple with? What are the nature of these comments?
Emmanual Guillory: Well, I would say the comments are constructive depending on how you define constructive. Maybe for the department, that definition may look a little bit differently than for the person who's sending in the response.
But there's politics within politics, and I talk about this often. And so we are in the second layer of politics when we're dealing with the administration and what the department wants to do. They have their ideals of how they want to manage things, how they want to implement things, and their mind is made up. They articulate and justify their actions, right? Now, we may not agree with the justifications, but yet they provide a justification for and why they're doing what they are going to do. I am not quite sure if the comment is really going to change their minds. Definitely won't change their politics and thinking of things, but who knows? I mean, the department historically has taken comments and has made some tweaks and changes based on those comments. We'll have to just see what happens with this administration.
But what I was going to share was our two main things that we responded to the department to. First is abiding by the master calendar. The reason why I talked about the importance of there still being some uncertainty is because here we are to March and the One Big Beautiful Bill, which is the name of the bill that was literally signed in a statute, goes into effect July 1st of 2026. That's not much time. And even if consensus has been reached, which consensus has been reached on everything as it relates to the implementation of OB3, which can be a great accomplishment for the department, it still leaves room for uncertainty with such a crunch in the implementation window. Because the final rule won't come out until, what, the earliest will be next mid-April, mid to late April, maybe we'll get a final rule?
Sarah Spreitzer: For July implementation, then?
Emmanual Guillory: And that's only for RISE. That's only for RISE. We still have two other proposed rules. One did come out regarding Workforce Pell. Then we have another one coming around accountability, and yet we still have July 1st, 2026 as the implementation date.
One thing that's important to note in legislative language is if a bill says beginning on, that's key. OB3 says beginning on July 1st, 2026. The beginning on means that the department does not have to ensure that everything is operable by July 1st of 2026, but that they can abide by the process of implementing a statute, which is identified in the Higher Education Act.
What I'm talking about is the master calendar. That's the first thing that we talk about in our letter and our response, because if the department was to abide by the master calendar, then the regulations would not go into effect until July 1st of 2027. There's a reason why Congress intentionally put that language into the law, and I will say that it was Republicans that were champions... It was a bipartisan effort, but championed by Republicans and signed by Republican president to ensure that the master calendar was in statute so that all parties involved, that means stakeholders who are beholden to whatever the regulations are and the department themselves, have ample amount of time to ensure a smooth transition.
That's the first thing that we talk about. The second thing is professional student, the definition of that. I know we've had this conversation many a times, I don't have to go into depth on that, but we're still trying to make sure that we educate members of Congress on the potential negative impacts of only considering 11 programs to be professional degree programs. I will say we do understand the rationale of the department and what they're trying to do by creating downward pressure on institutions to lower their price. But however, on the other side of the coin, you're arguably increasing the cost of college for students who can access federal loans in order to subsidize their post-secondary education.
Sarah Spreitzer: Emmanual, even though Mushtaq is super optimistic that somehow we're going to have all these changes, is Congress taking any actions... Even though they passed the One Big Beautiful Bill, is there any legislation out there that could stop this from taking effect on July 1st?
Emmanual Guillory: Okay, so I do want to note that you have a microphone in front of you. You look very...
Sarah Spreitzer: Yeah?
Emmanual Guillory: Yeah. Wow, look at you.
Sarah Spreitzer: You just have to ask Jon for one.
Emmanual Guillory: You're podcasting.
Sarah Spreitzer: You need to ask Jon for one.
Emmanual Guillory: Yeah. Wow, I'm missing out on my microphone. Come on, guys.
Mushtaq Gunja: We can get you one.
Emmanual Guillory: All right, great.
Can Congress do something? Of course. They are the legislative branch. They are the ones that wrote OB3, the president signed it into law, so they can make all the changes that they want to make. They could require the department to delay this, to abide by the master calendar to do whatever.
But I will say there are three branches of government, and those three branches are supposed to be equal. I think it's safe to say that the executive branch is trying to have a bigger piece of the pie maybe, and so the other branches are fighting to keep that balance. And so as it relates to the legislative branch being able to tell the department, "Hey, you need to ensure that you abide by the master calendar. Hey, professional degree programs, it was not our intent that there are only 11 programs, you need to do this a different way," the executive branch still needs to adhere to that and actually follow that.
I think we've seen, and I won't say I think, I know that we've seen some challenges there with the legislative branch indicating to the executive branch what to do and that not necessarily carrying out in the way that it should have.
Mushtaq Gunja: It's been a common theme over the last really, I mean, couple of decades, honestly, of Congress taking a little bit of a step back and letting the executives run a little bit rough shot over Capitol Hill.
But Emmanual, I know that you, Jon, the whole team over at ACE along with the whole community has really been lobbying to try to expand the number of programs that are in those set of 11. Any progress there? I mean, are there bills out in Congress, or is there interest among representatives in expanding that list?
Emmanual Guillory: So great question, and we do have a bill. The reason why I'm going to talk about the bill by Representative Mike Lawler is because it is the Republican bill right now to address this issue. As I said earlier, there's politics within politics. There's also politics within politics within politics, so that gets us to Capitol Hill, and there's a whole different political game on Capitol Hill. And so when it comes to a trifecta where you have the Republicans that have the House, the Senate, and the White House, the entire executive branch, they're going to listen to each other more often than not, definitely to each other over Democrats.
And so there are five bills, five different solutions of ways to increase the loan limits, or delay until July 1st of 2030, or make other changes to the loan limits. But there's one Republican bill that addresses the definition of professional degree. And then there's one Democrat bill that actually addresses the definition of professional degree that was offered by Representative Debbie Dingell.
But the Republican bill is the one that we have endorsed because from a strategy standpoint, we are trying to work with the department to expand this list to more programs. The framework that we've been given is unfortunately a list of programs. Is that our ideal answer and solution? No, but that's what we're working with. And in working on the Hill with a Republican member who's willing to stick their neck out, be an independent thinker, and do what they believe is right, this was the lane that we were also given.
And so the Professional Student Degree Act is the bill that we've endorsed. It does expand the list from 11 programs to about 24 programs. We are hoping that that is a step in the right direction as it relates to getting it to where we ideally would like it to be, which is every program that's identified as a professional degree program in the integrated post-secondary education data systems, IPEDS, should ideally be considered a professional degree program.
Sarah Spreitzer: And Emmanual, we have a contact Congress page up if folks want to write in support of Congressman Lawler's bill or other legislation that would increase these loan limits.
Jon Fansmith: Just because I saw some questions in the chat, it's the difference in the loan limits, we haven't actually touched on that. Professional, the 11 professional programs, students can borrow up to $50,000 a year and up to $200,000 in the aggregate. The graduate programs, which is everyone but those 11, is $20,500 a year up to an aggregate of 100,000. A very big difference in what those borrowings are.
Sorry for interrupting, Emmanual.
Mushtaq Gunja: No. And then Jon, two questions for you and a couple folks have asked in the chat, what's that delta between the 11 and the 24? What are the other 13 programs that the Lawler bill adds to the definition of graduate? Emmanual, that might be a question for you. And then Jon, what are the prospects of this bill? So Lawler's introduced, we have endorsed.
I assume that many Democrats, most Democrats would probably eventually go along with such a bill to expand the number of programs that are considered graduate. Where are we?
Jon Fansmith: Yeah, I mean, in terms of path forward, and I think Emmanual touched on this, this is a bill that I think as of now, correct me if I'm wrong, Emmanual, has six Republican co-sponsors in the House. The Republican majority house right now is a one vote majority, so having six Republicans on board is really important.
It's a little bit, your point about Democrats supporting it, we do believe this is something Democrats could support, but right now there's a variety of approaches out there. As Emmanual indicated, this is the only Republican endorsed sponsored bill that is in play on this issue. There's a number of Democratic ones, so I think there's a little bit of a hesitancy at this point for Democrats to support a Republican bill rather than a Democratic bill. We do think, especially given how much the Hill is hearing from nurses and educators and architects and all these impacted professions about what this will mean for those fields, that you're going to start to see coalescing around the bill that has the best path forward, which is the Lawler bill.
But Emmanual's really been closest to this, so I'll defer to him here.
Sarah Spreitzer: I would also say, I think Emmanual, I had asked about the July 1st deadline. I think I don't see anything passing before the July 1st deadline. But I do think once that July 1st deadline happens, we may start to see movement because constituents of Congress will start seeing the actual impacts.
Emmanual Guillory: With the Professional Student Degree Act, there's actually eight co-sponsors, so we are up two from six.
Jon Fansmith: Happy to be wrong in this case.
Emmanual Guillory: Yeah. We're still working on those Republican members, of course, and we're still working on those members who are actually on the committee. We're happy that we at least have one member on the committee that's Mr. Ryan Mackenzie, who's from Pennsylvania, but we're still working on the others.
As to the question about the additional programs, I want to make sure I address that. Out of the 10 programs in the Code of Federal Regulations, the department added clinical psychology as an 11th. But then the list that the bill also of programs that the bill also includes is ministry, social work, audiology, physician associate, associate, occupational therapy, physical therapy, nursing, public health, business administration and management, accounting, architecture, education and special education, and any other degree that meets the requirements of professional licensure that would be approved by the secretary. That's the language right now.
And Sarah, as you mentioned, it's unlikely that something will happen before July 1st of 2026. But at the same time, as you also shared, when that time passes and then the impacts of this bill, we begin to see those realized, I think that Republicans in hearing from their constituents will be a bit more pressured to actually make some corrections and some modifications.
Sarah Spreitzer: I mean, sadly, I think that will do more to move the legislation than our endorsement. Not that our endorsement isn't important.
Jon Fansmith: Well, and one other aspect, just Emmanual touched on three branches of government. The legislative language that the department was supposed to implement didn't say these are the 10 programs that are professional programs. It created a three-part test for determining a professional program. The department's interpretation, I think, could be pretty easily argued as to be inconsistent with what Congress's intent was.
There is the third branch of government, the judiciary. I wouldn't be shocked if the quickest remedy was somebody going to the courts and saying, "Look, there is a real harm to students and to programs and institutions of this deliberate misinterpretation of the law by the department," and getting a pretty receptive hearing in a courtroom. That might be the first step as legislative fixes work through.
Sarah Spreitzer: Yeah.
Mushtaq Gunja: As always, question, what should folks that are concerned about this do? What are we asking listeners on this call, campuses, to do to either support the Lawler bill or to help remedy this problem?
Emmanual Guillory: Well, I wanted to share that when we responded to the department, we talked about two primary things,: master calendar and the definition of professional degree, or professional student technically. The reason why we talked about those two things is because those are the two areas where the department exercise their discretion. What Jon had shared earlier, there's difference between what's in the actual statute and what they have to do. The loan limits and the changes that Jon had mentioned and the differences in what professional students can borrow and graduate students can borrow, that's in statute. The department has no ability to change that and say that graduate students can now borrow the same thing as professional students. While we would love that, they can't do that. But where they exercise their discretion is where we tapped in because that's where we can challenge them.
Now, I say that intentionally because when it comes to what you can do, it's a two-pronged approach. If you are reaching out to the legislative branch, then I think it's very important, ACE has endorsed the Lawler bill, we need everyone rallying around this bill because it's the only Republican solution that expands the current list. It's not the end all be all solution that we hope that we want, but it is a step in the right direction. It's the best that we have for now.
And so any and every support that you can give for that bill and reaching out to your own members of Congress to encourage them to sign onto the bill, we want it to be bipartisan too as well, that would be very, very helpful. In reaching out to the department, when it comes to noticing comment, we encourage you to send in comments too as well. But you still, even though it's not an official way of talking to the department, if you have any contacts at the department and you want to reach out and uplift your concerns around the definition of professional student, their formal process for doing that, that window has closed. That was the RISE comments.
But if you have any personal relationships or whatnot, we want to try to beat the drum as much as we possibly can because... I mean, the nurses have done a really good job, and their campaign and their marketing has definitely gotten the attention of a lot of members of Congress. But one thing I can share with all of you is that we have met with every single member on the committee, every single Republican. In talking to them, while some of them are in agreement with what the department has done with the definition, a lot of them are questioning that. They are definitely questioning the master calendar and not adhering to that for sure, so we know that we have traction there.
Mushtaq Gunja: Well, let's keep the pressure up and please do make your voices heard. I know that Laurie has dropped in the chat, one of our producers dropped in the chat, an easy link to click on that can help make your voice heard.
I want to move us over to Workforce Pell and some Pell Grant changes. It's been a busy month at the Department of Ed. The department released some draft rules on changes to the Pell Grant and then implementation of the new Workforce Pell Grant, so what are the changes? Walk us through those regulations.
Emmanual Guillory: One thing I want to share is that we've had over 250 letters sent to Congress through our contact Congress, by the way. We want to increase that number, so if you can please click that link and send that letter, that would be amazing so we can get that number up higher.
Jon Fansmith: It's quick and easy, by the way.
Emmanual Guillory: Yep.
Jon Fansmith: Yeah.
Emmanual Guillory: So on March 9th, the department did put out their notice of proposal rulemaking around the Workforce Pell program and changes to the federal Pell Grant. And so when I talk about changes to the Federal Pell Grant, what I'm talking about is they're in statute. There's language saying that institutions, financial aid administrators on campuses, have to consider the non-federal grant and scholarship aid of every student that comes in first. Because when they look at that aid, if that aid meets or exceeds the cost of attendance, then that student will not have access to the Pell Grant.
Now, on one side of the coin, we can say, "Oh no, why are they doing that? The Pell Grant's the cornerstone of federal financial aid," which technically it still is the cornerstone of federal financial aid because we're looking at non-federal versus federal. But on the other side of the coin, it does extend their Pell eligibility for future years should they not have non-federal grant of scholarship aid to even cover the cost of attendance.
But either way, in looking at this statutory change, the department did use discretion within this. The discretion the department used was looking at grants or scholarships that would not be considered non-federal sources. And so those sources includes things such as Section 529 plans and the Internal Revenue Code or any tax credit that you would receive under Section 25A of the Internal Revenue Code. It also would include assistance provided by a state and is designated by the state to offset a component of the cost of attendance. And two more things. Any payments made or services and services provided under Title IV of the Social Security Act would not be included on the behalf of any child or youth. And also lastly, emergency financial assistance provided to the student for unexpected expenses. I just said that at a very high level. We do have a detailed summary that goes into this more detail, but keep it at high level for the sake of time.
In moving to the recalculation of the federal Pell Grant, the department used discretion here as to how they would consider recalculating if for some reason during an award year, a student actually did receive non-federal grant aid that met or exceeded cost of attendance for the first half or the first semester, but for the second semester, they did not. And so in that instance, an institution would then have to either do two things. They either are required to reduce the non-federal grant or scholarship aid that student received, or they are required to actually return all Pell Grant funds that the student received for that award year and cancel any future disbursements for that award year. And so I wanted to make sure I highlighted that.
Now-
Sarah Spreitzer: Oh, I was going to say Emmanual, that's all in the AHEAD final rule, correct?
Emmanual Guillory: So proposed rule.
Sarah Spreitzer: Published. The proposed rule, so I'm going to ask our producers to drop the link to that so people can see the details in the very good summary that you did.
But AHEAD also included Workforce Pell, right?
Emmanual Guillory: Right, and that's where I was about to go next.
Sarah Spreitzer: Oh, thank you.
Emmanual Guillory: AHEAD also included accountability, but we're still waiting on a proposed rule for accountability.
As we move to the Workforce Pell program, this is a bipartisan program. There was a Bipartisan Workforce Pell Act that was introduced by Rep. Elise Stefanik, and it's been bipartisan for quite some time. Full support for this program, and this program does allow for students who are actually enrolled in... The program has to be a minimum of eight weeks but less than 15 weeks of instruction, and the program has to be at least 1,150 clock hours but less than 600 clock hours. And then four semesters, but less than 16 semester or tri-semester hours, or six, but less than 24 quarter hours. If those programs exist on your campus, they're able to access the Pell Grant.
That sounds great, right? There's a lot of hoops you have to jump through in order to get that approved. In order to get that approved, there is a process that the governor actually has in the state. It has to be approved by your governor. If you are in a tribal land, then it's the tribal government that would do that approving.
There's also a process through the Secretary of Education, that that program has to be approved by the secretary. The secretary actually has their thumb as well on the state process because the secretary has to approve the termination by the governor too as well.
And then there is a value added earnings metric that every program has to meet. With that value added earnings, we are looking at earnings that are 150% over the poverty level. And so that's a little bit different than the earnings and the accountability metric that was also a part of the One Big Beautiful Bill, but that's also an important piece. And included in the government's approval of that is this 70% completion rate and 70% job placement rate that these programs have to also have as well. And so institutions can appeal this through the governor's process. There's an appeals process, and each state has the ability to determine what that appeals process looks like. There's not a standard set process that's actually indicated in the regulatory text.
That could be a challenge, right? Some states may be more lenient than other states. You're definitely allowing politics, the first layer, to get in the way of that.
Now, when it comes to these programs losing eligibility, so if these programs are not approved by the governor, not approved by the secretary, or they don't meet the completion rate, job placement rate, and the value added earnings, then they can lose eligibility.
Now, something that I want to make sure that I'm clear because the way I-
Mushtaq Gunja: I'm sorry, can I just interrupt? They would lose eligibility, or they would not be eligible?
Jon Fansmith: Wouldn't meet the requirements for eligibility.
Mushtaq Gunja: So they wouldn't be eligible in the first place for the workforce?
Emmanual Guillory: Yes, they wouldn't be eligible. Thank you, that's a very important distinction. Since there are no workforce programs that exist today, then yes, they would not be eligible. But when they do become eligible, they could be ineligible if they still don't meet these things.
Jon Fansmith: You have to meet them to be eligible and maintain them to stay eligible.
Emmanual Guillory: That's right.
Jon Fansmith: And as Emmanual's pointing out, these are very stringent requirements. A 70% job placement rate within six months, a 70% completion rate. This is very stringent requirements Congress put in place around these programs.
Mushtaq Gunja: Jon, what are you hearing from our campuses? So very stringent. They need to go through several layers to be eligible. There was a lot of fanfare made about Workforce Pell, short-term credentials. This is going to be great.
And so I guess two layers of the question. First Jon, then maybe Emmanual, what are we hearing from campuses? Is this going to be as big a thing? And then where can we advocate? What can the community do here?
Jon Fansmith: Yeah, I think the broad understanding among institutions, and I think this was also reflected by the estimates of what this would cost in Congress, is that there'll probably be a pretty small take-up of this program.
For a lot of reasons, there are enormous hoops to jump through just to get the programs eligible. And these are generally short-term programs. Not all institutions offer them. Given the criteria, I think a lot of schools just will struggle, especially if you're thinking about community colleges, where resources are often stretched thin to begin with, of trying to navigate this process. It'll be interesting. I don't think next year is going to be the test. I think probably two or three years we'll see the likelihood of this being sustainable and growing as an area of education.
I really hope it is because I do think the premise here is really good. What we want is people to leave high school and have an educational path forward, whether that's a degree program or otherwise. Certainly I think there's a role for the federal government incentivizing that, which is what this would do. These criteria, a lot of them insisted on by Democrats who are worried about fraud and abuse. You get the logical argument for it, but to the extent they're a barrier to actually letting students access them, to letting institutions provide that program to the students, we might see some variations of what the statutory requirements are going forward. I think this is one that's probably going to be revisited a few times in the next few years.
Mushtaq Gunja: There is a balance here of wanting to preserve taxpayer dollars, ensure that they don't go to programs that don't have good placement rates, while still wanting to make sure that we have enough ability to be able to have programs demonstrate that they can meet these requirements in a fast moving... God knows what's going to happen to all these entry-level sorts of jobs in a new AI-infused world.
No, very interesting, very tricky. What can our campuses, what should they be paying attention to? What data should they be collecting? How should they think about all of this?
Jon Fansmith: Yeah, well, I think first of all, it's looking at the existing programs that you have on campus, which ones might meet eligibility criteria, and then thinking, especially if you have not been talking to your legislature, talking to your governor's office, working with local workforce boards, thinking about the parameters of what's required of these high demand skills in your area.
Thinking about the probability of going forward, what level of soon interest you have. I mean, it looks very different if you have 100 students enrolled at a time versus you have eight students enrolled at a time, whether the logistical and administrative hurdles are going to make sense for you to pursue it.
But that said, again, this is meant really very truly as an access vehicle for people who are already taking these courses and often don't have the resources of many traditional college students. Balance that out what you are trying to provide to the students coming to your campus, what they're looking for and how you can best assist them with what are likely to be some pretty significant challenges to get them in place.
Sarah Spreitzer: Is it fair to think about it right now as almost a pilot program because it's not going to be as widely used?
Jon Fansmith: Yeah, it's interesting, actually. I mean, I wouldn't have said it that way, Sarah, but I think that's probably pretty accurate. I think given the one-year prior operational requirement, you can't even have new programs created to meet the criteria for another year or so before they'd be eligible.
Given this is brand new, I think you're right for at least the next year or two, I think we're in the test pilot stage rather than saying... In a lot of ways when we've made changes to the Pell Grant program before, it's immediate. The impact goes into the space. That's not the case here. It really requires a lot of intentionality and rethinking from institutions as to how they participate.
Mushtaq Gunja: Emmanual, quick question, just one last one on this, and I want to move us on to, just looking at the clock, maybe admissions and the consumer transparency supplement.
But just on the earnings for short-term pile, if a student graduates high school, let's say, in Arizona, goes to school in Texas, gets a job in Wisconsin, what's the earnings level that's being evaluated? What state are we using? What's the poverty level? How are they going to determine that?
Emmanual Guillory: Well, that's a really good question, and I don't want to answer that incorrectly. I believe it's where the student resides, but I would want to double check. But I believe it's where the student resides.
Mushtaq Gunja: I think that's my understanding as well, or where the job is, I think, which I think that attracts the two, but I don't think it's where... It's certainly not where you graduated high school.
Emmanual Guillory: No.
Mushtaq Gunja: But yes, we'll have to see how this all gets implemented. As somebody who spent a lot of time helping put together this earnings metric on the Carnegie classifications, I mean, there's a lot of complications on which data are available and when they become available and then what the right matching is.
Okay, so keeping an eye on the clock, just wanted to move us to admissions. Big news this week on the admissions and consumer transparency supplement side, right? The date by which new admissions data was due to be collected by the department or submitted to the department was supposed to be March 18th, I guess that's tomorrow. In response, I think 17 states attorneys general sued the Trump administration for declaratory and injunctive relief. District court judge issued a temporary restraining order on Friday, has asked for a further hearing on March 25th, which means that March 18th deadline is at least temporarily paused.
The states attorneys general and their lawsuit, I'm just going to read from the lawsuit, summarize, I think, some of the problem really well. "IHEs face an untenable dilemma quickly compiling data they typically would have years to collect and submit, all the while knowing that the data may suffer from inconsistencies given the haste with which it has been prepared and the lack of guidance from the Department of Education on what key definitions and data elements mean. As the presidential memorandum and agency guidance make clear, the defendants plan to rely on this data to assess compliance with SFFA and drive enforcement actions. The consequences from the defendant's sloppy implementation of the IPEDS Act survey are therefore severe. IHEs will face costly investigations based on unreliable data."
Okay, let me take a quick step back. Remind us, what is this thing? What is the admissions and consumer transparency supplement? Why is this data request? Who's getting this data request? Why is it so different than what IPEDS has typically collected in this regard?
Jon Fansmith: Yeah, I'll jump in Emmanual, sorry. This is something the Trump administration put into place at the end of last year. It is essentially an enormous request for data around primarily the admissions process and with a strong focus on the consideration of race or gender or ethnicity in the admissions process. It expands IPEDS reporting to include information on an enormous range of information on all applicants to institutions, all applicants who were accepted or denied at the institution, and all students who enrolled at the institution. It only applies to what are defined as selective institutions, so it doesn't cover open-enrollment institutions. But I think, and Emmanual might correct me, it's still about 2,800 or so schools fall under the very broad term of selective institutions.
Look, it's not a secret this administration through executive orders and public statements has said time and time again they don't believe institutions are following the dictates of Students for Fair Admissions versus Harvard and UNC, that you cannot consider race as part of a holistic admissions process. I think they believe that they will get data that will support that belief. We could go through this and talk for a while. The process they used to put this forward was deeply flawed. It didn't follow either common sense or the standard requirements of the Administrative Procedures Act. They're asking for data that in many cases they would have told institutions a few years ago you shouldn't be collecting in the first place around race and other things.
It's a mess. It's a giant burdensome mess that's going to produce unreliable, invalid data, and it's going to be used as a cudgel by the administration to support a preexisting belief about how schools are treating race and admissions. It is a real problem.
Certainly, I think we're very happy with the TRO. I will say there is a lot of discussion right now about who and what that TRO covers, and I've seen some comments about it in the chat. There's some belief, and it seems like this might be true at the department, that the temporary restraining order only covers institutions in the 17 states where the attorneys general had filed suit. I don't think that was the intent of the attorneys general. I don't know whether that was the intent of the court. You might have a better read than I do, Mushtaq. It still seems very unclear.
Certainly, hopefully you would believe that the court will intervene to make it clear to everyone and allow time for a discussion of the merits of the suits before forcing people to compel. But the department has shown tremendous reluctance to do the right thing here and allow institutions sufficient time and provide clarity as to what they're actually asking for and what's reasonable to ask for. You can see that there might be conflicting interpretations of what the judge has actually said, which doesn't help us when we're trying to parse out whether to file tomorrow or not.
Mushtaq Gunja: Yeah, I tell my students all the time don't give legal advice when you don't know for sure and you're not their client. I would just ask institutions that aren't sure whether they're covered under the temporary restraining order of the 17 states just ask your general counsel to review the TRO. We can drop a link to that in the chat, or I can find it and put it in hopefully quickly. Just make sure because you don't want to miss a deadline if you're feverishly trying to comply and you're unsure about whether or not the TRO applies to you.
Sarah Spreitzer: I think this is very similar to other things that this Department of Education has done where it's rush, rush, rush, a lot of questions. People are going to try and comply whether or not they're able to comply, right? I mean, it's really, really difficult, I think, for our institutions. I think your advice of talking to your general counsel is a good one.
Jon Fansmith: Yeah, and it's worth, I mean, reiterating, I think I banged this drum a little hard, but institutions are rightfully trying to meet their compliance obligation. The problem here is not the deadline. The problem here is the request in and of itself. It is functionally an impossible request to meet in any way that is going to be reliable and valid. A lot of schools simply don't have the data they're being asked to produce. They haven't been collecting it over the five-year lookback period that's required for submission.
And then you think about the burden on institutions, institutional researchers, the department itself estimated it would be 200 hours of work for an institution, I think. Emmanual and I probably laughed when we saw that estimate. It is so ridiculously low given what they are talking about. You think a school with 10,000 students, how much data that is. School of 200 students doesn't have the resources to pick up 200 additional hours even if that was all it took.
It is a bad idea at any level. It is an impossible deadline at any level. The deadline, of course, is meaningful. Your advice is well-taken, talk to your general counsels, but this should not be going forward in the first place. Hopefully the attorneys general will be the start of getting some action, either the department withdrawing this or court's instituting common sense.
Mushtaq Gunja: What's so frustrating about this is to the extent that this is about compliance with the SFFA, I mean, all the years worth of data pre-SFFA are irrelevant. I mean, I guess you can say there's some sort of baseline, but I mean the amount of work that needs to be done at our college's AIR offices for what is essentially maybe a fishing expedition on the other side to try to find some institution that's not complying now with the law by using data that's pre the law changing, very, very frustrating.
Speaking of which, what traction have these arguments gotten, Jon, Emmanual, and what are we hoping institutions are... What are we asking the department to do at this point?
Jon Fansmith: Well, Emmanual has been asking for a while for, A, for them to pull this back entirely and then to try to give us at least a reasonable amount of time. I think we've, and I say we, because I'm taking credit for Emmanual's work here, have had a little bit of success in shaping, getting some greater clarity on some of the data fields we're required to do. I'll let Emmanual chime in.
But by and large, and this is me talking, the administration has predetermined an outcome here, and they have a viewpoint that's not supported by the facts as to what schools are doing. This is not a process that is driven by a rational examination of institutional policies or the ability to get really meaningful data in. This is a very politicized process, and that's what's driving the boat here. They have not, to my mind, and Emmanual, correct me, been especially receptive to the concerns that have been raised by the community because, again, they're not moving forward on a good policy foundation for making these changes.
Emmanual Guillory: And one thing that I'll say to be devil's advocate is that the administration behind the scenes has at least been having conversations with key stakeholders. They've been taking meetings, and they did actually allow for institutions to request an extension up till April 8th, as long as they met two thresholds with completing the surveys and answering the questions. There has to be actions already done by the institution, but assuming those actions have taken place, they can request an extension if they need it. We at least appreciate an acknowledgement of that.
As Jon had mentioned, yes, I have been pushing and fighting for this to not even happen ideally, but for at least an extension until June 18th based on a survey that was conducted by the Association of Institutional Research in order to gather feedback from the institutional research officers about data quality and integrity. Really feeling like 90 more days could help strengthen the data quality, which would then strengthen the integrity of that data too as well.
But here we are in a new world where there's a temporary restraining order. Maybe there might be a preliminary injunction. Who knows what's going to happen on the judicial side of things that we cannot have predicted, so we're just in a wait-and-see mode as to how this is all going to unfold.
Mushtaq Gunja: Well, shout out to our friends at AIR for helping on all of this. That survey was enormously helpful.
Well, friends, we are at time. I think given that there's five other things I wanted to ask about on this outline, seems like maybe we shouldn't wait five weeks for us to do one of these regular ones again.
Sarah Spreitzer: Let's do it tomorrow.
Mushtaq Gunja: Let's do it in two weeks, Sarah.
Sarah Spreitzer: Oh, really? Okay.
Mushtaq Gunja: And Emmanual, thank you so much for coming, for all of your help unpacking some of these very complicated issues. We're going to have to have you back sometime soon.
Jon, Sarah Emmanual, any last words?
Emmanual Guillory: Thanks for having me.
Jon Fansmith: Thanks for joining us, Emmanual.
Emmanual Guillory: Yeah, Happy St. Patrick's Day.
Sarah Spreitzer: Thanks, Emmanual.
Emmanual Guillory: Wear your green, even though none of us are.
Mushtaq Gunja: Thanks, everybody. We'll see you all in a couple weeks.
Jon Fansmith: See ya. Bye, everybody.
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