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Great Lakes. With ScholarNet and CDS, your day-to-day private loan processing tasks are straightforward and simplified, so you’ll have more time to spend with students. The set-up process is quick and easy. Your dedicated Great Lakes representative will manage all the details, including ongoing, personalized support. Visit schools.mygreatlakes.org, or contact your Great Lakes representative.

In a tense and wide-ranging hearing that lasted more than three hours Tuesday evening, members of the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions (HELP) Committee grilled Education Secretary nominee Betsy DeVos on a number of issues, including her views on public education, her potential conflicts of interest stemming from family investments, her experience with education policy, and her willingness to enforce regulations currently in place.

A law, passed by Congress and signed by the president in December, included several minor changes to the Post-9/11 GI Bill and other veterans' education programs. Among its provisions, the Veterans Health Care and Benefits Improvement Act of 2016 requires educational institutions to submit an annual report on the academic progress of students attending under the Post-9/11 GI Bill, requires the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) to contract with a non-government entity to conduct a survey of individuals who are using or have used VA educational benefits, and requires VA to disapprove courses in which covered individuals are charged more than the in-state tuition rate. Read more on the bill from the National Association of College and Business Officers (NACUBO).

Funded by a grant from Lumina Foundation, NASFAA will continue its effort to assist students whose college or career school closed while they were enrolled, or shortly after they withdrew. The Assisting Displaced Students Working Group will be tasked with responding to financial aid-related questions submitted by students via the online ticketing portal. Working group members will provide NASFAA staff liaisons with ongoing feedback from student tickets for additional counseling areas needed or questions to be shared with the Office of Federal Student Aid. Review the working group charter for more details, and, if interested, complete the volunteer form by COB today.

You don’t have to use papers, folders, and binders to manage your compliance efforts anymore. NASFAA’s suite of compliance tools can help you be organized—and easily stay updated—with all things compliance. Join us on January 25 at 2:00 pm ET to learn about the NASFAA tools available, including a look at our new collaborative, online P&P Builder.

Learn the answer to this question and learn how to instantly find credible and reliable solutions to your most pressing regulatory and compliance questions with NASFAA's AskRegs Knowledgebase. The Knowledgebase guide and video tutorials highlight the many features of this tool.

NASFAA is looking for a student to fill a 12-week paid internship with NASFAA's Policy and Federal Relations staff. The intern will help develop advocacy materials; attend and report on hearings, events, and meetings; analyze and summarize legislation and regulations; and much more. Those students studying in fields related to higher education, public policy, political science, and history may benefit most from this internship. If you know graduate or undergraduate students who may be interested, please encourage them to apply. This internship is supported by the Dallas Martin Endowment for Public Policy and Student Aid. Applications must be received by 5:00 p.m. ET on Friday, March 1, 2019, to be considered.

As described in the Electronic Announcement dated September 2, 2011, the Office of Postsecondary Education maintains a website containing Q&As that pertain to the Program Integrity final regulations that were published on October 29, 2010.

The National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) seeks authorization from OMB to make a change to the Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System (IPEDS) data collection. Current authorization expires 08/31/2019. NCES is requesting a new clearance for the 2017-18, 2018-19, and 2019-20 data collections to enable us to make a change to two of the IPEDS data collection components and to continue the IPEDS collection of postsecondary data over the next 3 years.

"Education Secretary nominee Betsy DeVos and her husband have extensive financial holdings through their private investment and management firm, RDV Corporation. The firm, where DeVos once served as director, has financed real estate acquisitions, telecom companies and online charter schools, among other things. But one particular deal is creating concern on Capitol Hill," The Washington Post reports.

"Betsy DeVos, President-elect Donald Trump's pick to lead the U.S. Education Department, is scheduled to face senators' questions Tuesday evening in what is expected to be an unusually contentious confirmation hearing for a prospective education secretary," according to The Washington Post.

"The fiercest critics and most ardent supporters of President Obama's Education Department –– which has arguably wielded more influence and sparked more controversy than any of its recent predecessors –– generally agree that the agency's efforts were rooted in the faith that government has a critical role to play in improving people's lives," The Washington Post reports.

The Associated Press compiled a list of summaries for states that are experiencing budget challenges, some of which may impact funding for education.

"In Seattle, University of Washington senior Taylor Herring combines grants and part-time work to cover tuition and necessities. But toward the end of the quarter, his account gets pretty low," Marketplace reports.

"All Rhode Island students in good academic standing would qualify for two years of free tuition at any of the state's public colleges under a plan Gov. Gina Raimondo will present this week to the General Assembly as part of her fiscal 2018 budget," the Providence Journal reports.

"The price of attending the University of California wasn't going to stay the same forever. After keeping a lid on tuition and fees for six years, UC leaders are now seeking to raise tuition by 2.5%, or $282, and the student service fee by 5%, or $54," writes the Los Angeles Times editorial board.

"The Republican Party's stance on for-profit higher education is similar to the one it has taken on climate change. Despite voluminous evidence that a significant share of for-profit colleges have defrauded students and taxpayers, Republican lawmakers refuse to acknowledge that there have been any problems. The G.O.P. has become, over the past two decades, a party of for-profit-college-abuse deniers," Stephen Burd writes for New America.

"Mistakes happen. I should know––I make more than my fair share of them (including on this blog). But some mistakes are a little more noticeable than others, such as when your mistake has been viewed more than a million times. That is what happened to the U.S. Department of Education recently, when they found a coding error in the popular College Scorecard website and dataset," Robert Kelchen writes on his blog Kelchen on Education.

"After graduating from college, I was ready to take on the world. I had my degree in hand, a big accomplishment checked off my bucket list, and, accompanying my newly enriched education, a newfound self-confidence that I hoped would make me appealing to employers as I applied for open positions. This satisfaction, however, came with a price: the cost of my many student loans," Paul Haakenson writes for Generation Progress.

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