Congress Approves Technical Amendments to Higher Education Act

Washington — Congress has approved a bill to patch holes in the Higher Education Act, including a glitch that would have forced thousands of veterans to return federal student aid they had been awarded for the coming academic year.

The glitch stemmed from a discrepancy between two pieces of legislation enacted last year: the Post-9/11 GI Bill and the reauthorization of the Higher Education Act. The House of Representatives passed legislation correcting the error in March, but the Senate did not vote on the measure until yesterday.

The House passed the measure for a second time yesterday because the Senate version of the bill added a scholarship program providing the maximum Pell Grant award to any student who had a parent die while on active military duty in Iraq or Afghanistan. Both the House and Senate approved the measure unanimously.

The legislation, which President Obama is expected to sign, would allow loan-guarantee agencies to sell rehabilitated student loans to the Education Department, a policy that had appeared in the version of the bill the House passed in March. The change would allow thousands of borrowers who have been stuck in default to escape from their debt and clear their credit histories.

The bill also would ensure that the Education Department’s “experimental site” program will continue for another year. The program allows participating financial-aid offices to use experimental approaches when awarding aid to students, with a goal of identifying innovative approaches that would work for the entire federal student-aid program.

The bill defines a successful experimental site as one that cuts administrative costs while providing more student services, without increasing government costs. —Austin Wright