Multiple Caucuses To Try And Find Compromise Seems To Suggest That Consensus May Be Within Reach Heading Into Today’s Final Institutional and Programmatic Accountability Discussions
Overview
As we head into today’s fifth and final day of the second session of the Accountability in Higher Education and Access through Demand-driven Workforce Pell (AHEAD) Committee’s deliberations on proposed regulations to implement the Low-earnings Outcomes (a.k.a., Do No Harm) portions of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act (OBBB), the Department’s ability to find common ground on key issues seems tenuous.
The reality is that there is no middle ground or compromise to be had given the positions on negotiators on several key issues. For example, perhaps the single biggest issue for some negotiators is whether or not the Department will or won’t expand the proposed regulations to include the loss of all Title IV funds, including most notably Federal Pell Grants, for any program that fails the new accountability requirements for two out of the three most recent years. There is no room for compromise – either the Department decides to keep the regulations as proposed, with loss of eligibility limited to only Federal Direct Student Loan program eligibility or they don’t.
As we head into this morning’s session, it appears that the Department has been swayed and is likely to accept a proposal to include grants and loan in the proposal. Will the other negotiators accept this significant revision? Possibly, as many have noted that any program that loses the ability for the students to have access to loans is unlikely to be able to cover the full cost of tuition and fees on just Pell.
This will be the major discussion that takes place first thing this morning and there are others as well.
What’s Next
While the Federal Pell Grant issue is perhaps the biggest one on the negotiating table that is unresolved, there are at least a half dozen others that also need to be determined – any one of which could result in a negotiator opposing the draft. CSPEN will be monitoring the final day and will provide a summary of the outcome this afternoon – either at 4 PM ET or whenever the negotiations conclude. (Note: Session one concluded early with consensus reached prior to the end of the scheduled time. While yesterday, as part of session two they added an additional hour and concluded later than scheduled in an effort to try and hold caucuses and provide more time for discussions on various issues.)
