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Committee members worked their way through the remaining issue papers during the third and final negotiated rulemaking — or neg reg — session for a borrower defense to repayment standard, and agreed to come to a tentative agreement on some areas, such as closed school discharges, guaranty agency collection fees, subsidized usage period recalculation, and false certification discharges.

As part of the Trump administration’s fiscal year (FY) 2019 budget proposal released Monday, the Department of Education (ED) responded to directives included in a Senate committee appropriations bill — related to student loan counseling, loan servicing, and borrower defense claims — within its budget justification.

Last week’s two-year budget deal that increased overall spending caps cleared the way for Congress to give the $100 increase to Pell that Senate appropriators included in their original bill, but final decisions have not been made. Pell Charts will be updated if Congress makes an increase to the Pell Grant in their final fiscal year (FY) 2018 spending package. The current continuing resolution goes through March 23.

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.

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.

"There's at least one big reason the Trump administration and congressional Republicans are looking to revamp student lending. Consider the New York Federal Reserve's latest snapshot of household credit in the U.S.," The Wall Street Journal reports. "During the recession, delinquencies on all types of consumer debt spiked. Then, starting around 2011, delinquencies on credit-card debt and auto loans, along with mortgages, dropped as unemployment fell and the economy healed. Student-loan delinquencies never did."

"House Republicans' rewrite of the Higher Education Act was a dud in almost all respects for student aid advocates and higher education associations. But in its proposal for the Federal Work-Study formula, the bill appeared to deliver on calls to make the program’s funding allocation more equitable," Inside Higher Ed reports. NASFAA's Karen McCarthy is quoted.

"A new working paper released by the National Bureau of Economic Research argues that the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program had a 'significant impact' on the educational and life decisions of undocumented immigrant youth, resulting in a 45 percent decrease in teen birth rates, a 15 percent increase in high school graduation rates and a 20 percent increase in college enrollment rates," Inside Higher Ed reports.

"Shannon Otto graduated nursing school when she was just 18 years old. It was the Tennessee woman's dream job. Then, suddenly at age 32, she started having seizures and was diagnosed with epilepsy. Unable to work, she stopped making payments on her student loans," WRIC reports. "'I got a really scary court-certified letter,' Otto said. The letter from the State of Tennessee said her nursing license had been suspended, and she had to start paying her loans in full or she wouldn’t get it back."

"Late last year, House Republicans proposed a major reform of the federal government's student aid programs for higher education. The Congressional Budget Office recently released its official score of the bill, which is dubbed the Prosper Act. Republicans have latched onto the score to defend the bill as an act of fiscal responsibility, while Democrats and advocates have labeled the bill as a cut to student aid, claiming it slashes benefits and 'hits students hard,'" Jason Delisle and Preston Cooper write in an opinion article for The Hill.

"In a new analysis published in The Hill last week, we reported that recent major media coverage of education policy debates shows a clear anti-Republican tilt," Frederick Hess, Brendan Bell, and RJ Martin write in an opinion article for The Hill. "Roughly half of the major newspaper news stories featured headlines and leads critical of GOP proposals on the Higher Education Act and the education-related provisions in last year's tax bill, with those stories devoting more than twice as many paragraphs to critiquing GOP proposals as to sketching the arguments for them."

"With Americans owing more than $1.3 trillion in federal student-loan debt, some places are offering students an alternative: Pay us nothing up front, but give us a percentage of your future income. The government should encourage the spread of this innovation -- with regulations that limit its risks," the editorial board at Bloomberg writes in an opinion article. 

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