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The U.S. Education Department announced Tuesday its plan to convene a panel of negotiators to hammer out new regulations on how colleges disburse federal student aid and rewrite a controversial rule requiring online programs to obtain permission from each state in which they enroll students.
The negotiated rule making committee is also expected to tackle the underwriting standards for PLUS loans, the conversion of clock hours to credit hours when awarding credit, and rules governing when a student can receive federal aid for repeated coursework, according to a notice set to appear in Wednesday’s Federal Register.
The department plans to appoint negotiators who represent various constituencies, including students, consumer advocates, businesses, state officials and representatives from different types of institutions. It is currently seeking nominations for members of the committee. The panel will meet for three, three-day sessions in February, March and April, the department said.
The list of topics announced Tuesday, while tentative, largely round out the remaining issues that the Obama administration had announced as regulatory priorities for its second term. The department has already announced its plan to hold a separate negotiated rule making session in January to write new campus safety rules. It is also in the process of negotiating a rewrite of the “gainful employment” rules on for-profit and community colleges that a federal judge blocked earlier this year. That committee met Tuesday for its penultimate day of negotiations and appears destined to finish its work without reaching consensus on a set of rules, leaving the department in the position of being able to impose its own rules.
