More than 60 amendments were submitted to the House Committee on Rules to be added to the House HEA reauthorization bill - The College Opportunity and Affordability Act of 2007 (H.R. 4137), which is expected to be voted on by the full house this week. House Education Committee Chairman George Miller (D-CA) also released a 115 page manager's amendment yesterday to accompany the bill.

The House HEA bill was passed unanimously by the Education Committee in November. A manager's amendment is a package of numerous individual amendments agreed to by both sides of aisle in advance of a bill's final vote.

The manager's amendment offers several points of clarification as well as some technical and provisional changes. Some of the provisions in the Manager's Amendments include:

• An adjustment in the minimum cohort default rate needed to avoid Title IV sanctions from 25 percent to 30 percent going back three years. The percentage of default used to restrict fund disbursements would also go from 10 percent to 15 percent.

• A definition of "disconnected youth"

• Additional guidance on transparency in college tuition and costs

• An outline of what and how the Secretary should report on state appropriations for higher education and college costs

• Six month grace for Grad PLUS borrowers

• Requirements for school certification of private student loans

• Provisions for an "Adjunct Teacher Corps" to award grants to individuals with expertise in math, science, and crucial foreign languages

• A requirement that the Secretary conduct a study to examine regional sensitivity to the needs analysis formula

• A requirement that the Secretary conduct a study on how an extension of the standard repayment period beyond 10 years would affect borrowers in low income areas

• Additional guidance on HBCU funding

The entire Manger's Amendment is available online.

Additional Amendments

In addition to the Manager's Amendments, more than 60 other amendments were submitted to the House Rule Committee for consideration before the HEA bill is brought to a full vote. Several amendments deal specifically with Title IV provisions. Some are expected to receive bipartisan support while others have little chance of being adopted. Some of the most interesting amendments to be taken up by the House include:

• An amendment directing the Secretary of Education to monitor the availability of student loans in light of the situation with the financial markets (McKeon - CA).

• An amendment to direct the Secretary of Education to conduct a study on the costs and benefits of making student aid available to less than half-time students. The Secretary would then make recommendations on how to best design a demonstration loan program targeted for less than half-time students (Baird - WA)

• An amendment to ensure that students only take the private loans they need to bridge the gap between the cost of attendance and other aid (Capuano - MA).

• An amendment to require a Quality Efficiency Task Forces to develop annual benchmarks for the top 5 percent of institutions in each institution category that have the largest increase in their tuition and fees over the most recent three year period in which data is available. The amendment also requires those institutions not meeting the benchmarks to provide the Secretary of Education a detailed explanation of the reasons why the institution did not meet such benchmarks (Castle - DE).

• An amendment that repeals the provision currently contained in the Higher Education Act (HEA) that denies federal student financial aid for anyone convicted of a drug offense for 1 year, 2 years, or indefinitely after the conviction, depending on whether it is a first offense and on whether the conviction was for possession or sale of a controlled substance (Cohen - TN).

• An amendment to allow community college students to have $10 forgiven from their student loans for every hour they dedicate to mentoring an at-risk child (Crowley - NY).

• This amendment will allow students who are interested in receiving financial aid information from Institutes of Higher Education to receive this information through the Department of Education's financial aid Web site. This amendment instructs the Secretary to develop an online tool, within the Department of Education's financial aid Web site, that will allow students to send one email to financial aid departments of the student's choice in an effort to alert Institutes of Higher Education of the potential student's interest in obtaining more information (Cuellar -TX).

• An amendment to encourage the prepopulation of FAFSA income and asset information, by taxpayer consent, with tax data provided directly from the IRS to the Department of Education, and allows the Secretary of Education to provide for the use of second preceding tax year information - (Doggett TX).

• An amendment to provide data matching between the IRS and the Department of Education. The amendment directs the Comptroller General and the Secretary of Education to form a study group with experts from colleges and universities, the Office of Management and Budget, the Treasury Department and any other appropriate experts who have a real commitment to making the FASFA easier for students and parents. The amendment requires a study committee to meet and report to Congress within a year (Hayes - NC).

• A sense of Congress that the Federal Perkins Loan Program, which provides low-interest loans to help needy students finance a degree in higher education, should remain a campus-based aid program and to support increased funds to provide more low-income students with options (Inslee - WA).

• An amendment to strike language from the HEA reauthorization bill which extends the length of time for calculating the cohort default rate to 3 years. Retains the current calculation of 2 years (Moore, Gwen - WI).

• Authorizes the Secretary of Education, in coordination with organizations with expertise in the field of public service, to study how student loan debt affects the decisions of graduates of postsecondary and graduate education programs to enter into public service careers. The study shall include 1) an assessment of current challenges to recruiting and retaining well-qualified public servants, 2) an evaluation of existing federal programs, 3) an evaluation of whether additional federal programs could increase the number of graduates who enter careers in public service, and 4) recommendations for pilot programs to encourage careers in public service (Moran, James - VA) / Shays - CT).

• An amendment that would require the existing Education-Treasury Study Group to study and recommend to Congress an alternative market-based reform to the Federal Family Education Loan Program in addition to the enacted PLUS Loan Auction. The alternative recommended model should reduce federal costs to taxpayers and use savings to increase need-based grant aid to low-income students (Petri - WI).

• An amendment that requires colleges and universities to pay out at least 5% of their endowments each year, and this pay-out must be directed towards efforts to contain college costs (Welch - VT).

• An amendment would require annual reporting by colleges and universities on how much of their endowment was paid out each year, what the money went for, and specifically what went toward containing college costs (Welch - VT).

• An amendment to forgive loans to individuals who have been employed for five consecutive complete school years as full-time speech-language teachers. The benefit would extend to those in elementary and secondary schools who have a graduate degree in speech-language pathology, or communication sciences and disorders (Wilson, Joe - SC).

A summary of all the amendments submitted to the Rules Committee is available online.

Next Steps

The House is scheduled to vote on the HEA reauthorization bill on Thursday, where it is expected to pass. From there the bill will need to be conferenced with the Senate HEA reauthorization bill that was passed last July before going to the president's desk and becoming law. NASFAA will continue to monitor HEA reauthorization progression and solicit members' comments as the bills progress toward enactment.

Media Coverage

• Higher Ed Act Gets Hairier (Inside Higher Ed)

• House Bill Retains Controversial Default-Rate Plan but Adds Safeguards (The Chronicle of Higher Education)