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The federal government may be on the hook for billions more than anticipated for its income-driven student loan repayment plans, according to a new report from the Government Accountability Office (GAO).

Resolving the 399 code indicating conflicting information between award years 2016-17 and 2017-18 can be confusing. However, per an October 21 Electronic Announcement, you only need to resolve conflicting cross-year information for ISIRs flagged with the 399 comment code if your school received an ISIR for the student in both 2016-17 and 2017-18, you have disbursed or will disburse federal aid in either of those award years, and the student is or will be an undergraduate in EITHER of the years. Read on for a list of fields that must be resolved, as well as hints and tips from the PPY Implementation Task Force to help resolve 399 codes.

Published today, Volume 48, Issue 1 of the Journal of Student Financial Aid (JSFA) "presents three articles that make important contributions to our understanding of how understudied populations of low-income, rural, and urban students pay for school," JSFA Editor Jacob P. Gross writes in the editor's column. The first article looks at debt burden and borrowing behaviors among low-income and minority students at an urban community colleges, the second highlights a place-based, last-dollar scholarship program and discusses implications for similar programs, and the final piece examines how financial aid policies, prices, selectivity, and location affect the proportion of enrolled Pell Grant recipients at four-year, nonprofit institutions.

In this afternoon's hour-long Policy Update webinar, NASFAA staff will discuss the impact of the midterm elections on higher education, the reauthorization progress, and the latest Department of Education updates from last week's Federal Student Aid (FSA) conference. This webinar is offered at no additional charge for NASFAA members and webinar package purchasers, but all must register in advance of the 2:00 p.m. ET event.

"Until the early hours of Nov. 9, Sylvia Gomez felt like she was finally getting ahead. Now a junior at John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York City, Ms. Gomez, an undocumented student from Lima, Peru, who was brought to the United States by her parents at age 11, recalls how she spent years juggling multiple under-the-table jobs to pay for college while struggling to keep her grades up. Overwhelmed, she dropped out in 2012," The Christian Science Monitor reports. "But that year, President Obama signed an executive action, Deferred Action on Child Arrivals (DACA), which has since brought more than 700,000 eligible students like Gomez out of the shadows. In addition to offering temporary deportation relief, DACA allocates them a Social Security number, issues a work permit, and grants eligibility for a driver's license."

"To help low-income and first-generation students succeed, build them a network, says Carl Strikwerda, president of Elizabethtown College, in Pennsylvania. Students from homes or high schools where few others have gone on to college don’t have peers they can turn to for advice when times get tough," according to The Chronicle of Higher Education.

"The percentage of graduating high school seniors who completed the Free Application for Federal Student Aid in 2015 varied widely by city, according to a new analysis from the National College Access Network," Inside Higher Ed reports.

"The Defense Department said Tuesday that communication failures played a part in its decision to put the University of Phoenix on probation in 2015 for violations related to base access and challenge coins," Stars And Stripes reports.

"A program that provides two years of free college tuition for Detroit residents has been expanded to cover four years of education for students with good grades," the Detroit Free Press reports.

"With the election just over, speculation about winners and losers has been replaced by speculation about what the winners will do with governing the country. When it comes to accreditation, we don’t know much, but we do have some starting points," Judith Eaton, president of the Council for Higher Education Accreditation, writes for The Hill.

"For accreditation, 2016 will be remembered as an inflection point, a pivotal moment, a culmination of a multiyear revamping, which means this space is now dominated by two features," Judith S. Eaton, president of the Council for Higher Education Accreditation, writes in an opinion piece for Inside Higher Ed.

"Graduate education is far from the first thing that comes to mind when one thinks of for-profit education," according to the Center for American Progress. "This sector and the schools in it have largely built their reputations on short training programs tied to entry-level occupations in fields such as allied health or criminal justice. But make no mistake: Advanced degrees add up to a $5 billion business for the for-profit industry, which enrolls nearly half a million students per year. And unlike the rest of the industry—which has been shrinking and reeling from scandal—the graduate for-profit sector is doing just fine."

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