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The importance of financial aid for college students, and the need to maintain funding levels for the student aid programs in the upcoming fiscal year (FY) 2018 budget, was the focus of several conversations on Capitol Hill throughout yesterday’s Advocacy Pipeline event, during which NASFAA members reiterated their concerns to congressional staff members.

Recent changes to cash management regulations stress the importance of students having convenient and timely access to their Title IV funds, including payment of their Title IV credit balances. Join us tomorrow, May 10 at 2:00 pm ET for our Cash Management: Moving Beyond the Tiers webinar where you’ll learn how these changes affect the manner in which your school provides students with a means to obtain required books and supplies, determines current-year versus prior-year charges, and prorates institutional charges, as well as the effect of Tier One (T1) and Tier Two (T2) arrangements for your school. Register now.

Based on feedback from users and financial aid professionals, on May 14, 2017 the Department will implement several enhancements to improve the FSA ID experience.

"Federal agents ignored President Trump's pledge to protect from deportation undocumented immigrants brought to the United States as children by sending a young man back to his native Mexico, the first such documented case, a USA TODAY examination of the new administration's immigration policies shows," USA Today reports.

"Some of the richest U.S. colleges are pushing back against scrutiny by Congress over the tax-exempt status of their endowments," Bloomberg reports. "Lobbying disclosure forms show almost two dozen schools such as Princeton University, University of Notre Dame and Cornell University are including endowment tax issues in their federal agenda, along with perennial topics such as student loans and funding for scientific research."

"When President Trump was on the campaign trail last year, he was not overly forthcoming about his plans for higher education policy. There were some hints that he would decrease financial aid and perhaps privatize student loans to a greater degree but little in the way of concrete statements," GoodCall reports.

"State treasurer and gubernatorial hopeful John Chiang is wading into the increasingly high-profile debate over college affordability with a new push for California to play a role in alleviating the burden of high-interest private student loans," the Los Angeles Times reports.

"Passing the Higher Education Act in 1965 was a great national blunder — as was just about everything that came out of LBJ’s 'Great Society.' The federal government has no useful (or constitutional) role in higher education, but it seems that we are stuck with federal meddling for a long time to come. Thus, we ought to look for ways of using federal authority to make higher education less bad," George Leef writes in the National Review's The Corner.

Register today to attend the 2017 WASFAA Sister Dale Brown Summer Institute, being held in Reno, Nevada, from June 5-9. Summer Institute is a five day training on financial aid administration. Beginner, Intermediate, and Advanced tracks are available. The Advanced track is new this year and is geared towards Financial Aid Directors and Associate Directors or for professionals with five or more years’ experience that are interested in becoming a director. Registrants in all tracks will have access to NASFAA module materials and credentials at no additional charge. Find out more by visiting the 2017 Sister Dale Brown Summer Institute Mini Site.

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