House Democrats released a new plan Tuesday to reduce the cost of college for students and hold schools more accountable for students’ success, including bringing back Obama-era protections for students at for-profit colleges removed by Education Secretary Betsy DeVos.
The bill, the College Affordability Act, aims to improve affordability by increasing the amount of federal student aid available and seeking to make student loans cheaper, simpler, and easier to pay off. The bill would also provide relief to 44 million Americans with student loans by giving existing borrowers more generous repayment plans, lower interest rates, and an expanded loan forgiveness program.
The bill would also create rules that would help defrauded students recover financially and would reinstate an Obama-era rule that aimed to stop federal funding from going to for-profit schools that consistently left college graduates with high student debt.
Furthermore, it would block Secretary DeVos’ controversial Title IX rule and introduce new rules for tracking and preventing sexual assault, harassment, and hazing on college campuses.
Committee on Education and Labor Chairman Bobby Scott of Virginia said he was working on marking up the bill and bringing it to the House floor.
“This is a more modest approach that we believe we can get passed with a Republican Congress and a Republican president,” he said.
Republicans are expected to oppose parts of the bill, since spending more money runs against their desire to decrease the federal role in education and reduce the taxpayer’s contribution to higher education financing. The bill would reauthorize the Higher Education Act, which originally passed in 1965 and is supposed to be renewed every five years but has not been reauthorized in a decade.
Some parts of the bill, however, are likely to get bipartisan support like the proposals regarding overhauling the financial aid application process and extending Pell grants to prisoners, which were included in a bill introduced in September by Republican Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee Chairman Lamar Alexander.
