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Great Lakes. As a company marking 50 years in higher education, Great Lakes has a lot to celebrate this holiday season—and you to thank. We wish you Happy Holidays, and look forward to helping families flourish and support each other through the power of education in the new year to come.

NASFAA’s Training and Regulatory Assistance team is excited to welcome its newest team member, Cheryl Hunt. Cheryl lives and telecommutes from Eugene, Oregon. Her previous experience as a financial aid administrator, as well as her background in developing and presenting financial aid training, will be a great asset to NASFAA. In her role, Cheryl will serve as a NASFAA U Instructor where she will share her expertise as she leads NASFAA U course participants through their online course experience. Please join us in welcoming Cheryl to the team.

Today we celebrate the 52nd anniversary of the Higher Education Act of 1965 (HEA), which established financial assistance programs for post-secondary students. "The higher education act of 1965 was one of the most significant things... for the progress of this country," Past NASFAA National Chair Eileen O'Leary explained in NASFAA's 50th Anniversary tribute video. "When President Johnson pushed to have that passed in '65 what he did was open the doorways of education to the multitudes who could never afford it before," she said. Watch the video for more on the history of the HEA and its legacy that forever defined the financial aid industry.

In the newest issue of the Journal of Student Financial Aid (JSFA), Jafeth E. Sanchez and Jeannette Smith conduct a quantitative analysis of 535 non-U.S. citizens attending Truckee Meadows Community College in Northern Nevada. The authors find differences between financial aid-eligible students and ineligible students regarding credit enrollment, attainment, and persistence rates. Non-U.S. citizen students who were eligible federal student aid were 6.4 times more likely to persist than those who were ineligible, the study found. Read the full article, which includes conclusions and implications based on these findings, and others in the latest issue of JSFA.

Our podcast, "Off The Cuff," will be taking a one-week hiatus, while members of the policy and communications teams attend meetings around D.C. and conferences out of town. Check back next Friday for a new edition. In the meantime, catch up on past episodes, check out our in-depth analysis of the budget proposal President Trump released earlier this week for more on how it would affect specific student aid programs and benefits, and head to our Negotiated Rulemaking page for highlights from each day of the third and final session on borrower defense to repayment.

The Department of Education's federal offices as well as its Title IV processors and contact centers will be closed on Thursday, November 23, 2017 to observe the Thanksgiving Day federal holiday. In addition, some of the Title IV processors and contact centers will have additional closures on the days surrounding the holiday. See the attachment for the various centers' operation status on the holiday.

"Major education publishers -- including Pearson, Cengage and McGraw-Hill Education -- report that the number of colleges offering 'inclusive-access' programs has grown rapidly in recent years. Where previously students might have been assigned textbooks individually, now many institutions are signing up whole classes of students to automatically receive digital course materials at a discounted rate, rather than purchasing individually," Inside Higher Ed reports.

"More than 2 million people are in prison or jail in the United States. Almost every one of them will come out. So when prison populations boom, so do the eventual populations of former prisoners," according to APM Reports. "'We have that naive perception, OK, we solved this crime, we caught this guy, we sent him to prison, we can forget it,' said John Linton, the former director of correctional education programs at the U.S. Department of Education. 'But those individuals do come back into our community. It's a question of what kind of condition do they come back in?'"

"Several states across the country are in the spotlight this week as local elections are expected to measure the national political climate ahead of the 2018 elections," according to Diverse: Issues in Higher Education. "Arguably the nation's most high-profile election will be in Virginia, where President Trump's lukewarm support towards the Republican gubernatorial candidate has cast doubt over the political value of a presidential endorsement."

"Economists warn of a troubling, growing divide between two segments in the U.S.: those who will benefit from and be a part of the emerging global economy, and the many more who will not," Jacob Murray, the faculty director for professional education at the Boston University School of Education, writes for WBUR.

"The saddest stories among those who owe some of the $1.3 trillion in student loan debt are those of college dropouts. They took out loans to go to school, hoping for a better life. But without college degrees, many don't find good jobs to help pay back these loans. It not only ruins their lives, it's terrible for the nation's budget. The loans are financed by the federal government, ultimately leaving taxpayers on the hook," Jill Barshay writes for The Hechinger Report.

"Four alumni have been honored as distinguished alumni by the Indiana University School of Education. Brady Barr, Saisuree Chutikul, Ted S. Hasselbring and Edson W. Sample were named Distinguished Alumni Award winners for their achievements in a variety of areas, including wildlife education, women's rights, education for students with disabilities and financial aid," according to a press release from the IU School of Education.

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