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President Joe Biden and congressional Democrats formally unveiled updated bill text for his administration's "Build Back Better" agenda, which in recent iterations has begun to narrow in scope as key members of Congress have pressured the White House to lower top-line spending from the previous $3.5 trillion budget plan. As a result, top priorities within the higher education sector have seen a significant scaling down, or in some cases have been eliminated from the drafted package entirely. Read on for what programmatic changes are included in the bill.

This week on "Off The Cuff," Justin is joined by Michael Stratford, an education reporter at Politico, to discuss all things student loans and federal financial aid. The two break down key differences between the Biden and Obama administrations’ higher education agendas before covering how the Office of Federal Student Aid (FSA) is being run under Richard Cordray — and how FSA is handling student loan servicers. Michael then details his reporting on the Department of Education’s plan to restart student loan payments after what will be a nearly two-year hiatus due to the coronavirus pandemic.  

The NASFAA website and all related services will be unavailable starting at approximately 10:00 p.m. ET tonight for a planned maintenance outage. During this period, all NASFAA online services will be unavailable — including nasfaa.org, the AskRegs Knowledgebase, the NASFAA Compliance Engine, the ability to take NASFAA professional credential tests and complete coursework, and access the Student Aid Reference Desk — please plan accordingly. All site services should return early Saturday morning and Today's News should be distributed without issue, on Monday, November 1. Thank you for your continued patience as NASFAA completes this critical work.

This November NASFAA's webinar line-up starts with the business services webinar, Making the Jump from Financial Aid to Enrollment Management on Tuesday, November 2. Later in the month on Wednesday, November 17, is the Recognizing and Eliminating Bias in Aid Office Policies and Procedures webinar. NASFAA webinars are all recorded and made available to view on-demand. Register now.

Please join us in congratulating Sheryl Reinschmidt, formerly the associate/deputy director of university financial aid at Case Western Reserve University, who is now the director of financial aid at Occidental College, and Luke Hoey, FAAC®, who was promoted from audit supervisor to audit manager at McClintock & Associates. Celebrate your own career developments by completing the "Movers and Shakers" form to share the news with your colleagues.

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