Public Hearings – 04/11/23 

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DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION OFFICE OF 

POSTSECONDARY EDUCATION PUBLIC HEARINGS

SESSIONS 1 & 2, DAY 1 MORNING AND AFTERNOON

April 11, 2023 

On the 11th day of April 2023, the following meeting was held

virtually, from 10:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m. 
Public Hearings – 04/11/23 

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P R O C E E D I N G S

MR. MARTIN: 

Good morning and welcome to the US Department of Education's 

virtual public hearing to discuss its proposed rulemaking 

agenda. My name is Greg Martin, Director of Policy Development 

Group in the Office of Postsecondary Education. I'm joined 

today by Denise Morelli from the Office of the General Counsel 

and by Wesley Whistle from the Office of the Under Secretary. 

We are pleased you have joined us and look forward to what I'm 

certain will be a productive and informative couple of hours. 

In a moment we will proceed with the first of our public 

hearings. But first I would like to introduce, Under Secretary 

of Education James Kvaal, who has some opening remarks he 

wishes to share. Mr. Kvaal.

MR. KVAAL: 

Thank you, Greg. I appreciate the opportunity to welcome 

everybody to the first day of the Department's public hearings 

on the rulemaking agenda for postsecondary education and 

appreciate everyone who is participating in this process. We 

take public input very, very seriously, and we recognize that 

the success of our rulemaking process depends upon the active 

participation of stakeholders and experts. So, appreciate your 

time. Our goal here, as always, is building a higher education 

system that promotes upward mobility, equity, and economic 

growth. And we see the regulatory process as a tool to improve 

our programs and better serve students and taxpayers. The set 

of issues we are considering involve the nuts and bolts of the 

Department's regulations for Federal Student Aid and 

institutional accountability to make both work better. And in 
Public Hearings – 04/11/23 

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addition to the topics that were listed in the Federal 

Register, we also invite you to suggest and comment on other 

topics that may be important for us to consider. In addition 

to the oral comments, we are receiving this week, you can also 

submit written comments through April 24th. I'm hoping that 

we'll hear a range of ideas to ensure that institutions and 

programs provide high-quality educational opportunities, are 

accountable for outcomes, and to strengthen Federal Student 

Aid programs for students and borrowers and taxpayers. We will 

bring key issues before the rulemaking committees and plan to 

begin negotiations this fall. We will notify the public of the 

schedule and topics of each committee through Federal Register 

notices and will also be seeking nominations for negotiators 

to serve on these committees. And I hope that's something 

you'll consider doing. Before I go, I want to say thank you to 

the Department of Education staff who have organized these 

sessions and will be compiling all the public input. You may 

notice Department staff are rotating through these sessions 

and we have a process to share information internally to make 

sure that every comment is carefully considered. So, thanks 

again for joining us today and I'll turn it over to Greg.

MR. MARTIN:

I believe I was muted, so, we'll start that one again. That 

was my error there. So, thanks, Mr. Kvaal. We appreciate your 

comments this morning. On March 24th, we published a notice in 

the Federal Register announcing our intention to establish one 

or more negotiated rulemaking committees to prepare proposed 

regulations for the Federal Student Aid programs authorized 

under Title IV of the Higher Education Act of 1965, as 
Public Hearings – 04/11/23 

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amended. We also announced three public hearings at which 

interested parties may comment on the topics suggested by the 

Department and may suggest additional topics that we should 

consider for action by the negotiating committee. In addition, 

we announced that the Department will accept written comments 

on the topics suggested by the Department, as well as 

suggestions for additional topics that we should consider for 

action by the negotiating committee. Those wishing to submit 

comments electronically may do so by going to 

www.Regulations.gov . Written comments must be received on or 

before April 23rd of 2023. Today's hearing is divided into 

morning and afternoon sessions, scheduled for 10 a.m. Eastern 

Standard Time through 12 p.m. Eastern Standard Time, after 

which we will break for lunch and then again at 1 p.m. Eastern 

Standard Time through 3 p.m. Eastern Standard Time, 

respectively. Additional public hearings will be conducted on 

Wednesday, April 12th and Thursday, April 13th, using the same 

format. Listeners who desire more background on the topics of 

today's hearings should refer to the March 24th, 2023, Federal 

Register announcement, which also provides detailed 

instructions on how to submit comments electronically. The 

document may be found on Federal Student Aid's Partner Connect 

website at FSApartners.Ed.gov. That is the former IFAP

website, by selecting the Knowledge Center home, scrolling to 

laws and regulations, and selecting federal registers. Before 

we begin, I would like to remind participants of the threeminute time limit measured from when you commenced speaking. I 

will provide a 30-second warning and inform you when the 

three-minute period has elapsed. Speakers whose remarks 

continue beyond the allotted time will have their microphones 
Public Hearings – 04/11/23 

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muted. So, do pay attention to the time. I do want to also 

point out that we- or announce rather, that we have- I'm 

sorry, I was just informed that this particular session is a 

four-minute comment period. So, it's a four-minute comment 

period and I will give you a 30-second warning and then let 

you know when the time period has elapsed, so you all get an 

extra minute. I want to say that we do have some additional 

time slots for both tomorrow and Thursday. And so, if you are 

somebody who is not yet registered to speak but would like to 

share your comments with us, go ahead and do that, because we 

do have those additional slots. So, with that, I will now go 

ahead and introduce our first speaker today and I was getting 

some communications from our people behind the scenes. So, I 

think that our first speaker today will still be Mr. Harrison 

Wadsworth. So, Harrison, whenever you are ready to speak. 

Okay, I'm told that Harrison is not quite ready to go yet, so 

we are going to move on to Ms. Jamienne Studley. Ms. Studley, 

whenever you are ready to speak.

MS. STUDLEY: 

Good morning. Can you hear me, Greg?

MR. MARTIN: 

We can. Nice to see this morning, Jamie.

MS. STUDLEY: 

Just a minute. I've had, maybe for the same reason he did, 

I've had a challenge getting in, so let me switch to my text. 

I apologize. But there were some problems getting into the 

online as well. Hold on just one second. Thank you very much. 

I'm Jamie Studley. I'm president of WASC and chair of C-RAC, 
Public Hearings – 04/11/23 

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and we're pleased to comment today. C-RAC's seven federally 

recognized commissions accredit 3,000 degree granting colleges 

and universities in the US and internationally. Accrediting 

commissions are private, nonprofit, volunteer-driven 

organizations. We consult widely with stakeholders and at 

least one of every seven commissioners is a representative of 

the public. We understand the Department's interest in 

considering regulatory changes to improve student success, 

affordability, and accountability. Accreditation is a powerful 

lever for assuring higher education value and student success, 

and we look forward to working with you. C-RAC would like to 

underscore how our current practices reflect national and 

departmental priorities. Today's accreditation holds 

institutions accountable to rigorous standards and acts 

decisively to protect students. Today's accreditation focuses 

on what people care about most; quality, equity, access, and 

student success, including degree completion, readiness for 

work and community roles, and socioeconomic mobility. Today's 

accreditation is actively informed by data, metrics, and 

benchmarks to hold institutions accountable for financial 

sustainability and meaningful outcomes. And today's 

accreditation moves faster than ever to pave the way for 

innovation. We recognize, of course, the need to update rules. 

Our own agencies revise our standards and processes regularly. 

As the Department considers its agenda, C-RAC urges it to 

consider to seriously weigh the cost benefit of new or revised 

regs and their cumulative effect on institutions and 

accreditors. The Department estimated that the 2019 final rule 

related to the Secretary's recognition of accrediting agencies 

would result in annual net crop costs across higher ED of $19 
Public Hearings – 04/11/23 

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million dollars. That's $19,662,744 dollars. The regulatory 

impact analysis assumed net savings of $14,424 due to updated 

regulations on substantive change. But in fact, far from 

saving money, these policies increased costs for institutions 

and accreditors without clear benefits to students or 

oversight. Accreditors also assume additional duties to 

support implementation of varied complicated regulations. For 

example, the Department calculated that the prison education 

program rule would mean an estimated burden for accrediting 

agencies of 42,000 hours. Many changes from the 2019 regs have 

only just been fully operationalized, along with more new 

rounds of regulations in the last two years. It is vital to 

carefully tailor any further changes. This requires cost 

benefit analysis backed up by evidence that regulation would 

result in clear substantial benefit for students. When 

regulations are necessary, we will happily help craft targeted 

solutions that also recognize the responsibilities of states 

and the Department of Education. We stand ready to work with 

the Department if it decides it is essential to regulate on 

accrediting agency recognition. A few examples now; more in 

our written letter. We encourage the Department to streamline 

some change requirements. The 2019 rules aim to ease the 

administrative burden of some changes by allowing accreditors 

to focus on complex changes that might pose risks for 

students. However, the time and cost to institutions and 

accreditors that some agencies have spent on such change has 

skyrocketed due to these rules. We point particularly to 

excessive requirements with no apparent value regarding [30 

seconds] notifications. Several aspects of the rules also 

apply to innovation. We're happy to work on that. Most 
Public Hearings – 04/11/23 

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important, I want to emphasize that historically regional CRAC members are actively using student outcomes measures to 

identify strong performance. Our agencies have implemented 

data dashboards and peer benchmarking to monitor and promote 

student success. We're collaborating now with the Department 

to improve the scope of student access measures. We encourage 

the Department to focus on this collaboration and to respect 

the Higher Education Act provisions that leave definitions of 

student success and specific consequences to the judgment of 

federally recognized accreditors. For more than a century, 

accreditation has used external review to promote quality. We 

look forward to working with you on our shared commitment to 

student success.

MR. MARTIN: 

Thank you, Ms. Studley.

MS. STUDLEY: 

Thank you.

MR. MARTIN: 

Our next speaker will be Harrison Wadsworth. Mr. Wadsworth, 

whenever you are ready. Mr. Wadsworth? Okay. I think we stillHarrison's still having some trouble getting in, so we're 

going to go beyond him and go down to Brian Whalen. Mr. 

Whalen, whenever you are ready.

MR. WHALEN:

Thank you very much. My name is Brian Whalen and I'm the 

executive director of the American International Recruitment 

Council, known as AIRC. AIRC is a nonprofit membership 
Public Hearings – 04/11/23 

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association recognized by the US Department of Justice to 

serve as a standards development organization for the field of 

international student recruitment and enrollment. Our 400 plus 

institutions and organizations represent accredited secondary 

schools, two and four-year public and private colleges and 

universities, and AIRC's certified educational recruitment 

agencies. AIRC appreciates the Department of Education's 

desire to gain a better understanding of institutional 

relationships with third party servicers. We have 15 years of 

deep experience in setting standards and providing resources 

for institutions that work with third party servicers to 

recruit international students. These third parties are known 

as educational recruitment agencies, and they serve a critical 

role in assisting institutions to recruit and enroll 

international students to meet institutional enrollment goals. 

According to a recent survey by the Institute of International 

Education, 67% of US higher education institutions partner 

with these agencies to recruit and enroll international 

students. AIRC helps to ensure that the relationships between 

institutions and agencies are ethically sound based on 

objective standards and that they benefit international 

students by setting standards and providing quality assurance 

programs, AIRC safeguards the interests of international 

students. And we know from this work that standards and 

training lead to quality outcomes. This is why AIRC, and its 

members are very concerned that the Department's guidance 

letter is unclear regarding institutional relationships with 

recruitment agencies because of the title of and language in 

the guidance letter, leaders at AIRC member institutions are 

worried that incentive payments to agencies may be prohibited. 
Public Hearings – 04/11/23 

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They have told us that such a prohibition would negatively 

impact their ability to meet their international student 

enrollment goals by taking away an important strategy at a 

time when institutions are depending more than ever on 

international student enrollment to fill their classrooms. 

Incentive-based payments are a critical aspect of institution 

recruitment agency partnerships and are established in US law, 

specifically in the Higher Education Act of 1965, which makes 

special reference to allowing incentive payments for the 

recruitment of international students who are not eligible to 

receive federal student assistance. This act was further 

confirmed by the remote act that was signed into law on 

December 21, 2021, which reinforced an exception for the 

recruitment of international students by using similar 

language adapted from the Higher Education Act. AIRC believes 

that both the Higher Education Act and the Remote Act make 

clear that using commission-based payments to third party 

educational recruitment agencies is permitted under US law. 

The law supports this for a simple reason. These relationships 

provide an effective strategy for recruiting and enrolling 

international students. Department of Education guidance that 

hampers institution educational agency partnerships would 

cause a sharp downturn in international student enrollments 

and without question, threaten the stature of the United 

States as the world's top destination for students. Under the 

Joint Statement of Principles in support of International 

Education, the US Departments of Education and State have 

expressed their strong commitment to a renewed focus on 

international education. The conclusion of that statement 

reads: It is imperative that the United States continue to 
Public Hearings – 04/11/23 

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lead the world and remain the destination of choice for 

talented international students. International [30 seconds] 

students make a critical contribution to a foreign policy that 

serves the interests of the American people. So, at a time 

when the United States seeks to assert itself as the world's 

leading destination for international students, we need more 

and better tools to recruit and enroll these students. 

Commission-based partnerships between institutions and 

agencies is one of the most important of these tools, and 

therefore AIRC requests the Department of Education clarify 

that its guidance does not apply to these relationships. Thank 

you for this opportunity to make these comments on behalf of 

the American International Recruitment Council.

MR. MARTIN:

Thank you for sharing your comments with us this morning, Mr. 

Whalen. Our next speaker let's go back to see if Harrison has 

been able to join us. Harrison, are you ready? It appears Mr. 

Wadsworth is still having some difficulties, so let's go down 

to Dr. John Lucas. Dr. Lucas, are you ready?

DR. LUCAS: 

I am.

MR. MARTIN: 

Okay. You may begin. 

DR. LUCAS:

I am president and CEO of ISEP, International Student Exchange 

Programs founded in 1979 under the [inaudible] Fulbright-Hays 

and Chair of the Board of the Forum Education Abroad, a 
Public Hearings – 04/11/23 

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nonprofit recognized by the Department of Justice and Federal 

Trade Commission as a standards development organization for 

the field of education abroad. On behalf of our 1,000 combined 

institutional members, I submit this comment respectfully. If 

implemented as currently written, the proposed DCL would have 

a significant and detrimental impact on education abroad 

organizations and programing. We strongly urge the Department 

to revise the DCL to explicitly exclude study abroad, 

volunteer and internship programs from the scope of the thirdparty guidance. The value of education abroad programs to both 

individual participants and the American public cannot be 

overstated. For centuries, academic partnerships with foreign 

institutions have provided remarkable opportunities for 

domestic and foreign students to learn from and be fruitfully 

challenged by environments other than their own. In addition 

to individual advantages, program participants generate a wide 

range of benefits for the United States, including 

international goodwill, academic, scientific, and cultural 

exchange, recruitment of foreign talent and preparation of a 

globally competitive workforce. I'll focus on a few points of 

the DCL that create problems for the education abroad 

community. My colleagues may highlight others. Under the DCL 

entities performing student recruiting and retention or 

providing educational content and instruction to US 

institutions of higher education would be considered third 

party servicers, this in combination with the DCL's 

prohibition on contracting with third party servicers located 

outside the United States or third party servicers owned and 

operated by an individual was not a US citizen, national or 

resident, would curtail or potentially eliminate the ability 
Public Hearings – 04/11/23 

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of institutions to contract with foreign institutions, 

entities or individuals. And as currently written, any 

international college or university would be a third-party

servicer, even duly recognized international universities and 

friendly nations, and of course, hundreds of international 

universities that are already accredited by US accrediting 

bodies. If implemented as written, the DCL could even derail 

the Department's own programs, including HEA Title VI and 

Fulbright-Hayes Grants, as well as the Department of State's 

Benjamin A. Gilman International Scholarship. All of these 

programs currently work with a great many foreign entities and 

partners. For example, under the DCL, institutions could be 

prohibited from hiring local faculty or cultural experts for 

education abroad programs. As a result, the guidance would 

effectively bar partnerships with the people and institutions 

who are the experts in the native culture, negating the 

benefits uniquely available to students through education 

abroad programs. Functionally prohibiting collaboration with 

local specialists or curriculum design experts deny students 

the opportunity to learn from the true experts, which is a 

critical hallmark of the education abroad experience. We also 

note the prohibition on foreign ownership appears to conflict 

with congressional intent. Nowhere in the statute or 

regulation is there currently a prohibition on contracting 

with a third-party servicer or its subcontractors located 

outside the United States or owned or operated by an 

individual who is not a US citizen, national or permanent 

resident. On the contrary, Congress has chosen to permit 

domestic institutions of higher education to participate in 

Title IV, even if they have foreign ownership and has also 
Public Hearings – 04/11/23 

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chosen to permit certain foreign institutions, many who are 

members of ISEP to participate directly in Title IV programs, 

again through the accreditation process, despite being outside 

of the country or under foreign ownership. [30 seconds] Many 

of these institutions work to support our educational goals. 

So, for the reasons outlined above and others, we strongly 

urge the Department to think carefully about how this will 

impact study abroad and exclude education abroad and 

internship programs from the scope of the DCL. Thank you for 

allowing me to speak on behalf of the Forum on Education 

Abroad and on ISEP. Thank you kindly. 

MR. MARTIN:

Thank you for sharing your remarks with us this morning. Our 

next speaker will be Dr. Irene Mulvey. Dr. Mulvey, whenever 

you are ready.

DR. MULVEY:

Good morning. I'm Dr. Irene Mulvey, president of the American 

Association of University Professors. Since its founding in 

1915, the AAUP has articulated professional standards for 

higher education. As an association of over 44,000 faculty 

members at over 500 institutions, our position is that the 

Department of Education has a duty to ensure that 

accreditation is more than just a rubber stamp. The regulatory 

triad must uphold academic freedom and tenure and shared 

governance, principles that are essential to academic quality. 

We are distressed to see in some states increasing political 

interference in teaching and learning, areas that should be 

the purview of the faculty. We are deeply concerned that such 

interference threatens what makes higher education in the 
Public Hearings – 04/11/23 

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United States the best in the world. Opportunities for 

students to be challenged by differing ideas and perspectives, 

including those that are controversial. Faculty members 

require academic freedom to determine course materials and 

curriculum and the economic security and protection of tenure 

so that teaching and research is free of corporate and 

political pressure. Recent legislation introduced or passed 

across numerous states threatens this hallmark of American 

higher ED by limiting what can and cannot be taught, 

eliminating entire fields of study, or gutting the protections 

of faculty tenure. We have also witnessed state legislation 

that would curtail collective bargaining rights at public 

institutions or centralized governance of state institutions 

in the hands of political entities, activities that would 

further restrict the faculty's essential role in shared 

governance. We'll elaborate on our positions in written 

comments. But in my short time today, I want to focus on why 

the faculty voice must be front and center in this negotiated 

rulemaking process. The AAUP's policies on accreditation state 

that faculty members play a primary role in evaluation of 

curriculum, library, teaching loads and conditions, research, 

and other critical areas such as tenure and institutional 

government. Furthermore, a formally adopted institutional 

policy on academic freedom and tenure consistent with major 

provisions of the AAUA's 1940 Statement of Principles on 

Academic Freedom and Tenure should be a condition for 

accreditation. Any changes the Department makes to 

accreditation regulations must not infringe on faculty rights 

to oversee curriculum and participate in the accreditation 

process. Furthermore, our position on accreditation is that 
Public Hearings – 04/11/23 

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institutions that have committed egregious violations of 

academic freedom and tenure or shared governance should have 

their accreditation revoked if such violations are not 

corrected. We also ask that the Department of Education 

designate seats at the negotiating table for faculty. Too 

often, institutional representatives across sectors come only 

from the ranks of the administration rather than from faculty 

members. The Department must ensure that faculty voices are 

adequately represented at any negotiated rulemaking table it 

convenes, an act consistent with the AAUP's policies on the 

role of faculty in the shared governance of postsecondary 

institutions. Our members have concerns over issues such as 

accreditation shopping and online program managers, issues 

that increase political or corporate influence in areas of 

higher ED that fall under the purview of faculty. By 

increasing the voice of faculty in this negotiated rulemaking 

process, the Department will help promote academic freedom, 

tenure, and shared governance and protect higher education 

from further [30 seconds] interference that threatens and 

undermines academic quality. Thank you for your time today. We 

look forward to working with you throughout this negotiated 

rulemaking process.

MR. MARTIN:

Thank you for sharing your comments with us this morning, Dr. 

Mulvey.

MR. WASHINGTON:

Hello, everyone. I think we lost Gregory Martin. My name is 

Aaron Washington and I'm a management program analyst in the 

Office of Postsecondary Education, and I will be serving as 
Public Hearings – 04/11/23 

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his backup. I'd like to call Melissa Torres.

MS. TORRES:

Thank you. I'm Melissa Torres, president and CEO of the Forum 

on Education Abroad. The Forum is a nonprofit membership 

association recognized by the US Department of Justice and the 

Federal Trade Commission as the Standards Development 

Organization for the Field of Education Abroad. On behalf of 

our 722 institutional members representing two and four-year 

colleges and the Education Abroad organizations with whom they 

partner, I respectfully submit the following comments on the 

Department's Dear Colleague letter GEN-23-03 issued on 

February 15th. Study abroad programs are widely recognized as 

high impact practices leading to greater academic achievement. 

If the DCL is implemented as written, it will likely result in 

a complete halt in participation in education abroad by 

students receiving Title IV funding since many rely on this 

funding to study abroad. It is imperative that the Department 

Act urgently to exclude education abroad programs from this 

guidance. The DCL would severely disadvantage students with 

financial need who are often from underrepresented and 

underserved populations. As researched by the Consortium for 

Analysis of Student Success through International Education 

demonstrates, Ed Abroad provides particular benefits to 

students receiving need-based aid, leading to higher 

graduation rates and higher GPAs than comparable students who 

do not study abroad. The DCL would also exacerbate preexisting 

economic disparities between study abroad- because study 

abroad serves as an important component of workforce 

development as students prepare for an increasingly global 
Public Hearings – 04/11/23 

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economy. Excluding students who rely on aid from participating 

in international internships and co-ops, an important part of 

education abroad programing at the precise moment when it is 

critical for the United States to develop a globally savvy 

workforce is contrary to the Department's own goals. As a 

country, we cannot afford to disenfranchise a large segment of 

our future workforce. Many of the skills employer’s demand are 

commonly associated with study abroad, including intercultural 

communication, language acquisition, resilience, adaptability, 

and cultural awareness. An unintended outcome of this guidance 

would be to limit student access to careers that require 

advanced language and diplomacy skills since study abroad 

programs are one of the primary means of foreign language 

training. And as a nation, we will all suffer should the US 

experience a decrease in its capacity for international 

understanding and competitiveness because students have been 

prevented from developing the critically important skills 

attained during these programs. The DCL also poses safety 

concerns for students. Contrary to basic international risk 

management principles, the DCL would forbid hiring local 

experts to plan itineraries, book safe transportation and 

reserve safe housing. Being required to hire a US citizen to 

plan activities in a foreign country is not a best practice 

and does not make sense. More importantly, planning such 

activities without local on the ground experience and 

understanding of risks can put students in dangerous 

situations. We note the Department's concern regarding its 

ability to recover Title IV aid against foreign entities 

generally does not apply in the Ed Abroad context since most 

foreign academic and Ed Abroad organizations have no role in 
Public Hearings – 04/11/23 

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administering Title IV aid. As the academic year draws to a 

close, students planning to begin their study abroad programs 

in August and September are already being advised that they 

may not be able to use Title IV funds as planned. It is 

imperative that the Department Act urgently to exclude 

education abroad international internship programs and 

providers from the scope of the DCL. Thank you.

MR. WASHINGTON:

I'll turn it back over to Greg. Thank you very much for your 

comment.

MR. MARTIN:

Thank you, Aaron. I do apologize for having dropped off. I 

thought perhaps the Department wanted to go with a younger and 

better-looking host, and no one told me. But anyway, no such 

luck, and I am back. So, let's move on to our next scheduled 

speaker, who will be Kyle Southern. Mr. Southern, whenever you 

are ready.

DR. SOUTHERN:

Thank you and good morning. I'm Dr. Kyle Southern and I serve 

as associate vice president for Higher Education Quality at 

the Institute for College Access and Success. TICAS is a 

nonprofit, nonpartisan research and advocacy organization 

working to advance affordability, accountability, and equity 

in higher education. We welcome the Department's intention to 

strengthen regulations as proposed in the Register Notice of 

March 24th. Along with many of our partner organizations, 

TICAS has worked for years to enhance protections for 

students, borrowers and taxpayers' investments and Title IV 
Public Hearings – 04/11/23 

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aid programs. We particularly support the Department's 

attention to issues including accreditation, state 

authorization, third party services and defining distance 

education. With nearly three quarters of the nation's students 

enrolled by programs at least partially delivered online by 

2020, the Department faces an urgent need to strengthen 

student protections amid a rapidly evolving higher education 

instructional landscape. As a matter of process, we urge a 

balance of views on the anticipated negotiated rulemaking 

committee later this year. Although we supported seats in the 

fall of 2021 for both dependent and independent students as 

well as for student loan borrowers and individuals with 

disabilities, the Winter 2022 table collapsed categories to 

provide seats only for students and student loan borrowers. 

There should be at least as many student consumer, civil 

rights, and public interest groups voices at the table as 

there are members from regulated sectors. In addition, as both 

state and federal agencies move to implement restoration of 

Pell Grant eligibility for incarcerated students, we urge the 

Department to ensure representation of prison education 

programs or other entities who can speak to the experience and 

potential impact of regulatory changes on justice impacted 

individuals. On the issues, recent years have shown that in 

some cases, accreditors have allowed low quality and even 

fraudulent institutions to continue conducting business as 

usual while the Department has continued to use a largely 

opaque process for reviewing accreditors. The previous 

administration's actions to weaken the accreditation 

recognition requirements related to failing schools only 

worsens this failure of oversight. To protect students and 
Public Hearings – 04/11/23 

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shore up the quality of institutions accessing federal 

financial aid, we support a comprehensive review of 

accreditation regulations. For many years, state authorization 

requirements have meant too little. And while every state 

except California participates in National Council for State 

Authorization reciprocity agreements, we remain concerned that 

NC-SARA standards subvert state consumer protections, leaving 

students vulnerable to low quality programs. We encourage the 

Department to lift the floor for state authorization processes 

and capacity, ensure programs lead to licensure where 

applicable, and improve oversight of distance education 

programs through regulation, among other needed actions. As 

the higher education delivery model continues to evolve in the 

wake of COVID 19, ensuring the quality of online and distance 

education programs will only become more critical. Yet online 

program managers may exploit a loophole that bans incentivebased compensation driven to spike enrollment numbers without 

a comparable concern for quality. TICAS maintains the position 

that the Department should rescind its 2011 guidance that 

opened this loophole. Regulatory language should reflect the 

ongoing realities of distance education across the 

postsecondary landscape. Thank you for the opportunity to 

advocate for representation of student and borrower interests 

as diverse as today's student and borrower populations, as 

well as to comment on the important topics proposed for 

rulemaking later this year.

MR. MARTIN:

Thank you for sharing your remarks with us this morning, Mr. 

Southern. Our next speaker will be Satra Taylor. Ms. Taylor, 
Public Hearings – 04/11/23 

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whenever you are ready.

MS. TAYLOR:

Good morning. I am Satra D. Taylor, Director of Higher 

Education and Workforce Policy at Young Invincibles. I'm here 

to provide public testimony for the young adults we represent 

nationally. As the largest national young adult advocacy and 

policy organization, we are eager to comment on the Department 

of Education's intent to establish a rulemaking committee on 

improving institutional quality and accountability. We are 

especially keen on potential revisions of several Federal 

Student Aid programs authorized under Title IV of the Higher 

Education Act that directly impact student success, 

protection, and persistence. Young Invincibles have the 

opportunity to participate in the previous- previously 

negotiated rulemaking committee, ensuring the committee did 

not exclude, but amplify the concerns of students. Including 

young adult voices on the committee is our greatest priority 

for your consideration. We believe in young adults' abilities 

to lead social change and understand that providing young 

adults with opportunities to develop their leadership skills 

strengthens their ability to voice their concerns for a 

brighter future for us all. On that same note, students must 

have a seat at any decision-making table pertaining to 

policies that directly impact their educational journey. Gone 

are the days when perceptions of young adults centered on 

their disinterest or inability to articulate their needs and 

develop comprehensive and robust solutions. Students across 

the United States are showing up in record numbers at their 

state capitals in the highest courts to ensure they are heard 
Public Hearings – 04/11/23 

23

loud and clear. At Young Invincibles, we have taken the onus 

of collaborating with trusted partners to ensure our young 

adults are educated and trained to advocate for the most 

pressing issues they care about. The lack of student 

involvement in policy making is a critical missing piece in 

conversations and cannot continue. While it is equally vital 

for conversations to center around equity-driven best 

practices, students and taxpayers' protections and efficiency, 

the impact on students for any potential revisions of Federal 

Student Aid programs and accountability and quality under 

Title IV should be at the forefront. At Young Invincibles, we 

are committed to working alongside students and student 

advocacy organizations to support the ongoing efforts to 

center today's student’s voices. We welcome the opportunity to 

connect further with the Department to ensure that voices of 

young adults, policy experts, and advocates are part of the 

discussion on how to equitably revise Federal Student Aid 

programs to ensure student success and persistence in higher 

education. Thank you all, and I'll yield back my time.

MR. MARTIN:

Thank you for sharing your remarks with us this morning, Ms. 

Taylor. Our next speaker will be Aurie Clifford. Aurie, 

whenever you are ready, you may begin.

MS. CLIFFORD:

Good morning. My name is Aurie Clifford. I've been a financial 

aid administrator for 15 years and currently work in the 

community college setting. My first comment will be to address 

the DCL guidance for reporting third party servicers and 

related issues associated with that reporting. While the 
Public Hearings – 04/11/23 

24

Department may see the efforts of the DCL as advancing 

important student protections, we are concerned the vast reach 

of this guidance will create unintended and negative 

consequences for many schools. Most notably, the scope of the 

DCL will unintentionally sweep in an enormous amount of 

entities and activities that pose no risk of creating harms

that the Department is trying to avoid. It has created 

uncertainty and has taken precious institutional resources 

from the important work that we do of serving our students. It 

has also imposed a large and unmanageable burden on schools in 

order to come into compliance by reporting the broad 

categories that are listed in this DCL. The Department should 

avoid punishing all institutions for the bad actions of a few 

and placing onerous burdens on the institutions and businesses 

that are trying to do the right thing. Careful consideration 

of the breadth of the reporting from all schools nationwide 

should be given by the Department because of the sheer volume 

of the new reporting that's required. My institution, for 

instance, is considering an enormous amount of vendors and 

contracts for potential reporting, and we are only but one 

institution. Is the Department ready to receive and process 

all this new information? Is there an infrastructure built to 

follow up on all of this information? Many institutions across

the nation have reported when a change is made to the Program 

Participation Agreement, such as would be required in this 

DCL, do not receive the PPA back in a reasonable amount of 

time. Moreover, institutions would be more at ease if we had a 

published and guaranteed timeline to receive the PPAs after 

making a change. We are very concerned that we will not be 

able to comply with the ten-day rule as outlined in this DCL. 
Public Hearings – 04/11/23 

25

Our institutions are constantly changing software and digital 

tools for students and our institutions. If we report one 

change on the PPA and have no guarantee from the Department 

that the PPA will be returned back to us in a reasonable 

amount of time to report another change. We recommend the 

following changes to the current language. An entity that 

qualifies as a third-party servicer should have direct contact 

with students and you should exempt products and services that 

do not access individual students' information. The rule 

should consider a minimal dollar threshold value of a 

contract. The sheer number of one-offs, purchase orders, small 

dollar transactions makes the collection and verification of 

compliance and reporting of these transactions unmanageable. 

The guidance should focus on vendors or products with the 

primary purpose of recruiting and retention that compensates 

on a per-student basis. On the topic of cash management, also, 

please consider adjusting the current CFR to allow for $750 or 

more to pay a previous student balance instead of the current 

$200. We also recommend allowing it to be applied to the 

previous aid year at the student's request. This is often an 

issue for returning students that may have a balance from the 

spring or summer semester and would like to use the fall 

disbursement to pay the previous balance on the previous year. 

On the topic of the R2T4, we recommend considering allowing 

the student to keep the aid that was disbursed if the student 

attended courses. Institutions would still be required to 

report the unsuccessful payment period to the Department, and

then we would suspend the ability to receive aid for some 

period of time, maybe one or two semesters.

MR. MARTIN:
Public Hearings – 04/11/23 

26

30 seconds.

MS. CLIFFORD:

The R2T4's create student debt for the student, either with 

the institution or the Department, and prevent them from 

reenrolling and completing their educational goals. Thank you 

for inviting my comments on these topics today.

MR. MARTIN:

And thank you for sharing your remarks with us this morning. 

Our next speaker will be Maryann Zink. Ms. Zink, whenever you 

are ready. 

MS. ZINK: 

Yes, thank you. Um, my background is 30 years as an educator 

and administrator, and I had seven family members that had 

student loans that are in the process of being paid or have 

been paid. My concern is with oversight of the servicers. I 

have a family member who has paid 13 years on a student loan 

and owes more money today than the day she borrowed the money. 

And I would like to know how Congress is going to address 

these issues of these servicers bundling, selling contracts, 

which is a common standard. I understand that. That's not the 

issue. The issue is when we get these loans in these bundles 

and buy them, they are rewriting these contracts with new 

terms, new charges, new fees. This is what's causing people to 

never get out of debt. The burden, I believe, should fall on 

Congress. And I would like to know what the Education 

Department is doing to work on Congress. It's my understanding 

through Senator Durbin, that Congress controls these laws that 

make these servicers comply, but they're not putting them in 
Public Hearings – 04/11/23 

27

compliance and then saying they're going- like [inaudible] and 

saying, well, we're giving up. But all they did was change 

their name and they're still doing the same practices. MOHELA, 

at this time, wants to refund all money paid during the CARES 

Act suspension and then 1099 those people and bring them back 

to the beginning balance. And I also would like to address the 

issue of the word suspend during the CARES Act. Does that mean 

that there is going to be two and a half years of compounded 

interest added on to these loans again when payment goes into 

effect? That is my biggest concern of the servicers, not the 

Department of ED, not the Treasury Department. The colleges, 

that's for the Education Department to deal with the colleges 

and keeping them in compliance. But the servicers seem to be 

running wild. And at this point in time, I don't see any end 

for this. Even with student loan forgiveness, the debt is 

still going to continue to build. And of this $20,000 that 

President Biden wants to forgive, which is a very generous 

offer, how much of that is Pell Grants? I know of people who 

have Pell Grants in their student loans. It's my understanding 

that a grant is nothing more than a grant, and those are for 

certain requirements of low income. And I'm not quite sure why 

they're being bundled into student loan balances. And I would 

like to know if there's ever going to be the issue addressed 

of are we going to crack down on the servicers. And I don't 

need my four minutes. I'm willing to yield to anyone who does. 

And I appreciate you listening. And please take this into 

consideration. Thank you very much.

MR. MARTIN:

Thank you for sharing your remarks with us this morning, Ms. 
Public Hearings – 04/11/23 

28

Zink. Our next speaker will be Morteza Mahmoudi. Mr. Mahmoudi, 

whenever you are ready.

MS. MAHMOUDI: 

Thank you for this opportunity to speak. I'm Morteza Mahmoudi, 

an assistant professor at Michigan State University. I founded 

the Academic Parity Movement, an organization that fights 

bullying, discrimination, and harassment. I also research and 

write on these issues. This country welcomed me after 

[inaudible] research in my native Iran. I hope that this 

perspective is useful and helps to repay that kindness. The 

Department of Education recognizes accrediting agencies under 

the explicit assumption that they are a reliable authority 

regarding quality. Yet there exists an enormous compliance gap 

because accreditors do not proactively monitor practice and do 

not seek to restrict systematic bad behavior that undermines 

professed standards. Two examples. Sometimes peculiarities 

appear when institutions publish data on program outcomes. For 

instance, the data is old, or it seems to exclude unsuccessful 

graduates, but accreditors will only ask about data sourcing. 

I ask, does [inaudible] stop as soon as a suspicious tax filer 

claims use of a W2? In effect, that's what happens when 

someone questions advertised program outcomes and accreditors 

intervene. Instead, accreditors should mandate detailed 

requirements for data collection and publication. Then they 

should randomly audit actual practice and quickly name 

violators and their violations. For example, such and such a 

school did not include new cohorts in data. My second example 

involves compliance process for issues like bullying, 

harassment, and discrimination. Institutions routinely 
Public Hearings – 04/11/23 

29

manipulate internal compliance processes only current students 

can find, but not recently graduated international students 

who's [inaudible] exploited their visa status and abusively 

overworked them. Then authorities attempt internal in-person 

intimidation because they can later invent something to 

counterbalance the compliance recollection. Institutions also 

find any opportunity to minimize or dismiss written complaints 

to claim ignorance and avoid reporting responsibilities. 

Multiple divisional processes and multiple authorities also 

help create plausible deniability. Similarly, retention 

policies quickly empty fines by design and do not record 

[inaudible]. Here what institutions fear tells us exactly what 

must be done. Complaint processes must have the formal and the 

automatic central review components. They must be open to all. 

They must be able to receive complaints immediately in 

writing. They must preserve complaints. They must specifically 

record who responded and how. Very importantly, any new 

complaints must necessitate a review of all past documents for 

all parties and units that are named. Perhaps a third-party

intermediary for filing and preservation could be mandated. In 

any case, while avoiding the re-adjudication of individual 

cases, accreditors must audit actual overall practice and 

quickly name violators and their violations. For example, such 

and such school did not record who reviewed complaints, nor 

any review of past file. Improvements like this will increase 

transparency and accountability and will encourage behavior 

matching the professed standards. Any administrative costs 

will be minimal due to the electronic age and institutional 

improvements will be worth it. [30 seconds] information, I'm 

happy to refer you to relevant research and media coverage. I 
Public Hearings – 04/11/23 

30

strongly encourage you to use your regulatory authority to 

address this compliance gap as much as possible. Thank you for 

your time.

MR. MARTIN: 

Thank you for sharing your remarks with us this morning, Mr. 

Mahmoudi. Our next speaker will be Cheryl Dowd. Ms. Dowd, 

whenever you are ready.

MS. DOWD:

Okay. Thank you. Hello. My name is Cheryl Dowd. I'm the senior 

director for the State Authorization Network and WCET Policy 

Innovations. The State Authorization Network is a division of 

the WCET, the WICHE Cooperative for Educational Technologies. 

I'm providing this comment on behalf of SAN, WCET, and our 

member institutions and agencies nationwide, as we all place a 

high priority on student protection and success. Thank you to 

the Department for the opportunity to provide this public 

comment. We have three important considerations for the 

development of new regulations. First is that the Department's 

announcement points to many complicated issues planned for 

this rulemaking. We believe it's important to choose 

negotiators with true understanding of these nuanced issues. 

We encourage the Department to develop a subcommittee, as has 

been mentioned, of members with significant experience on the 

issues to provide additional knowledge to the rulemaking 

committee. We think that the subcommittee is a great addition 

but can be improved through more meaningful input to the main 

committee. We will provide more detail in our written comment. 

The second consideration is when addressing third party 

servicers and related issues such as Online Program Management 
Public Hearings – 04/11/23 

31

or OPMs and considering the capacity of the FSA office to 

provide oversight and implementation, we urge a focus on 

regulations that address the greatest risk. We see that there 

may be a need for additional regulations addressing online 

program management. Regarding other contracted entities, the 

Department and Rulemaking Committee must consider narrowly 

tailoring the regulations to address the specific concerns 

affecting student protection and the integrity of the Title IV 

HEA programs. If not narrowly tailored, we see a broad 

definition of third-party servicer causing unintended 

consequences with the following examples. It could constrain 

the institution to provide students with important support 

services and information such as mental health counseling, 

collecting statistics to provide important notifications, and 

using learning management systems that facilitate efficient 

communication organization and content delivery to students. 

We're concerned that it could restrict state agencies from 

leading institutions in a collaboration in the development of 

economical and effective educational opportunities to advance 

learner access and success. Third and final important 

consideration of the development of new regulations. When 

addressing state authorization and reciprocity in federal 

regulation, the most important thing that the Department and 

the Rulemaking Committee need to remember and understand is 

that it is the purview of each state in determining how they 

wish to oversee education in their states. States make the 

decisions about oversight of institutions that have brick and 

mortar locations or that offer activities to students located 

in their state. State laws and regulations vary widely 

regarding state institutional authorization for oversight of 
Public Hearings – 04/11/23 

32

institutions that are domiciled in the state, and over 

institutions offering distance education to students located 

in the state. States are the parties to a reciprocity 

agreement. The states make the decisions and have made 

decisions to join reciprocity agreements. Reciprocity 

agreements are used by states to coordinate on a variety of 

interstate matters. These include tuition and also employment 

related issues such as state income tax issues. It is 

important to remember that the original purpose of the federal 

regulation for state authorization was to rely on the actions 

of the state as one indicator in aid eligibility and not the 

Department [30 seconds] on what they must do. We hope that 

consideration of new regulations includes collaboration that 

addresses the wide variety of state voices for oversight and 

not just a small handful of states. We thank again the 

Department for this opportunity to speak at this public 

hearing, for which we will follow up with written comments. 

And we look forward to working with the Department in this 

rulemaking process. Thank you.

MR. MARTIN:

Thank you for sharing your remarks with us this morning, Ms. 

Dowd. Our next speaker will be Maureen Hoyler. Ms. Hoyler, 

whenever you are ready.

MS. HOYLER:

Thank you for this opportunity to recommend changes in the 

regulations governing the Federal TRIO programs. These 

recommendations are put forward on behalf of the Board of the 

Council for Opportunity in Education and its membership, which 

includes over 1,000 colleges and community agencies that 
Public Hearings – 04/11/23 

33

sponsor TRIO programs. Our recommendations fall in two 

categories. Changes in the eligibility criteria for each of 

the TRIO programs that currently exclude anyone who is not a 

citizen or here in the country permanently. Secondly, changes 

in the need questions that determine eligibility for a TRIO 

grant in the Department's application process. These questions 

are set by regulation. Currently, COE recognizes that section 

484 of the general provisions of the Higher Education Act 

specifically exclude non-citizens from receiving grants, loans 

or work study under Title IV. However, TRIO funding is not 

grants, loans or work study. The bulk of the money goes to 

support services such as information dissemination, academic 

support, or personal or academic counseling. Why should these 

services be available to many undocumented individuals? First, 

it's the right thing to do. The Department itself recognizes 

this by including this recommendation in its FY 2024 and its 

previous budget recommendations to Congress. Secondly, doing 

so simplifies the delivery of services to TRIO eligible 

students, whether they're documented or undocumented or 

whether they're citizens. All of our pre-college programs work 

in partnership with local schools, and educators in those 

schools often identify potential students for the program or 

even gather the students to receive particular services. But 

these educators don't many times know who's a citizen and 

who's undocumented. So, by replacing the citizenship 

requirement broadly, it requires an extra level of logistical 

support that hurts not just the undocumented students, but 

also all the students that are eligible for these TRIO 

services. Third, 27 states already allow many undocumented 

students to receive in-state tuition. They determine 
Public Hearings – 04/11/23 

34

eligibility for that by factors that would be very easily 

included in the TRIO eligibility amendments. These are things 

like the number of years that an individual attended a US high 

school. The fact that a student graduated or received a GED 

from a US high school and the individual's intention to seek 

citizenship. Finally, COE is recommending changes in the 

mandated questions in the need section of applications that 

are required to get TRIO funding. We certainly think that some 

of the questions are appropriate, such as the number of and 

percentage of eligible individuals in the area or at the 

school that is seeking the funding. It also is important to 

discuss the strengths of the students and the obstacles they 

face in completing a degree or certificate at the 

postsecondary level. But there's other questions that 

disadvantaged categories of institutions or categories of 

students, for example, [30 seconds] and we can provide that 

information which actual students and institutions should 

[inaudible] during negotiation. Thank you so much for this 

opportunity.

MR. MARTIN:

And thank you for sharing your remarks with us this morning, 

Ms. Hoyler. Right now, we will go to a break. It is currently 

11:01 and we will convene at 9 minutes after 11. Thank you 

very much. Welcome back, everyone. We're going to get started 

in just a moment. I have a couple of announcements. Number 

one, we will be breaking at noon today for lunch. And I also

want to announce that we will probably finish today before our 

scheduled 3 p.m. end time. So, just wanted to apprise 

everybody of that. It's very likely we will not go until 3 
Public Hearings – 04/11/23 

35

p.m. So, with that, I'm going to introduce our next speaker 

and that would be Harrison Wadsworth. Mr. Wadsworth, whenever 

you are ready.

MR. WADSWORTH:

Thank you very much. Thank you for the opportunity to comment 

with regard to the topics to be considered by the Department's 

plan negotiated rulemaking committees this year. My name is 

Harrison Wadsworth. I'm the Executive director of the 

International Education Council, a 20-year-old association of 

foreign colleges and universities that participate in the 

direct loan program under Title IV of the Higher Education 

Act, so that American students who need help financing their 

educations can attend and earn a degree. The association 

currently has 81 members, including many of the most 

prestigious and oldest universities in the world. We are 

proposing topics to be included in the agenda for the 

negotiated rulemaking committees for regulations pertaining to 

Title IV of the Higher Education Act and related regulations 

pertaining to Title I. Because we propose several topics 

affecting mainly foreign schools, we in eligible foreign 

schools have unique perspectives and challenges. We are also 

proposing that a subcommittee be dedicated to foreign school 

issues, or alternately, that at least one negotiator on the 

committee be specifically designated as representative of 

foreign schools and their American students. The last time 

foreign school specific regulations were comprehensively 

reviewed and revised was in a 2010 negotiation that covered 

changes made in the Higher Education Act reauthorization of 

2008. Those regulatory changes were substantial and included a 
Public Hearings – 04/11/23 

36

number of provisions that are not specifically written in the 

statute. I participated as a negotiator representing the 

members of the International Council. It is not clear to the 

negotiators at the time, including me, what the impacts of the

many regulatory changes would be. In the intervening 13 years, 

there have been major changes in higher education throughout 

the world, and we know from experience how the 2010 

regulations have impacted foreign schools and their American 

students. The 2010 regulations clearly need updating to take 

into account the experiences of the past 13 years. We ask that 

you include the following issues in the topics to be 

considered by the upcoming negotiated rulemaking committees or 

by a special subcommittee on foreign school issues in order to 

take into account the changes that have occurred. I'll just 

list them right now. Updates to regulations affecting foreign 

medical schools to reflect recent major changes in the US 

medical licensing exam, differences in the order in which 

topics are taught at foreign medical schools and related 

issues that will keep foreign medical school options available 

to IEC member institutions, revisions to new financial 

auditing requirements meant for private institutions of higher 

education that impose high costs with little benefit when 

applied to foreign, public, and private nonprofit 

institutions. These include a new requirement that foreign 

public institutions prepare and submit audited financial 

statements as if they were actually private. Related to this 

issue, review is needed of the definition of foreign public 

institution since the prescriptive definition and current 

regulations do not does not fit the reality in many other 

countries. Next, elimination of a requirement that foreign
Public Hearings – 04/11/23 

37

institutions which are audited by under their own country's 

financial accounting principles, also prepare duplicated, 

audited financial statements under US accounting principles, a 

wasteful and unnecessary experiment that after 13 years, 

should end. Reconsideration of the Department's position on 

allowing American students enrolled in attending an eligible 

foreign institution to take one more online class without 

losing all access to Title IV or to be enrolled in a program 

that includes a possible online component. Finally, 

consideration of how regulation of third-party services will 

impact the ability of foreign schools to participate in the 

direct loan program and making sure Department policies [30 

seconds] foreign school participation as well as most study 

abroad options for students at US schools. IEC [inaudible] 

written comments on the regulation of third-party services in 

March and I would refer you to those. Thank you for the 

opportunity to speak and on behalf of tens of thousands of 

American students who are enrolled in high quality 

institutions abroad, we hope you'll add these topics to the 

agenda.

MR. MARTIN: 

Thank you for sharing your comments with us this morning, Mr. 

Wadsworth. Our next speaker is Nancy Zamora. Ms. Zamora, 

whenever you are ready.

MS. ZAMORA:

Good morning. My name is Nancy and I currently serve as the 

director of TRIO programs at North Central Texas College and 

am a TRIO alumni. For the past 13 years, I've dedicated my 

career to serving pre-collegiate and collegiate-level TRIO 
Public Hearings – 04/11/23 

38

programs at both four and two-year institutions. Throughout 

that time, I've encountered hundreds of students like my 

sister that, due to her immigration status, did not have the 

privilege of participating in any TRIO programs. She, like 

many other students, did everything right as a kid. They 

received good grades, often at the top of their class, were 

involved in extracurricular activities and did volunteer work 

and often worked in order to financially support their 

families. But despite their hard work and their passion and 

desire to obtain a college degree, they're not able to get the 

assistance they need to prepare for college and unfortunate 

enough to get to college on their own, don't have the 

resources or support needed to succeed in college. Like my 

sister, many of the students that I've encountered have been 

here for as long as they can remember. Some often don't 

discover that they're undocumented until they begin the 

application process for college or for financial aid. On 

average, 55% of the students at our community colleges are 

considered both low income and first generation. But instead 

of being able to provide services to all eligible students, 

regardless of their legal status, we often have to turn 

students away, denying them services to some of the most 

vulnerable populations because of their legal status. Due to 

the complexity of their admissions and financial aid process, 

the journey to higher education for undocumented students is 

often more difficult than those who are permanent residents or 

US citizens. I recall often having to sit in my office 

explaining to students why they're unable to participate in 

our programs because of their legal status. Seeing the 

devastation in their faces is heartbreaking and as they know- 
Public Hearings – 04/11/23 

39

because they know that they have taken the journey- they have 

to take this journey alone and face challenges after 

challenges without any assistance. Because of this, often time 

for graduation is prolonged due to the fact that they have to 

take on multiple jobs or navigate the system on their own to 

[inaudible]. The mental and emotional stress that they have to 

endure leads to decreased motivation and ultimately drop-out. 

Granting access to undocumented students to receive services 

through the TRIO programs will greatly increase the number of 

students who enroll and are successful in higher education, as 

proven by those who have been served by TRIO programs in the 

past. Citizenship shouldn't be what determines the ability to 

make a better life for yourself. Thank you.

MR. MARTIN: 

And thank you for sharing your remarks with us this morning, 

Ms. Zamora.

MS. ZAMORA:

Thank you for having me.

MR. MARTIN:

Our next speaker will be Khandice Lofton. Ms. Lofton, whenever 

you are ready.

MS. LOFTON:

Good morning and thank you for the opportunity to speak today. 

My name is Khandice Lofton, and I am counsel at the Student 

Borrower Protection Center. This hearing marks the beginning 

of an important opportunity for the Department to strengthen 

many of the protections that students rely on to safely and 
Public Hearings – 04/11/23 

40

confidently pursue a higher education. Through NegReg, the 

Department can further the Biden Administration's ongoing work 

to bolster student protections and ensure accountability for 

the full range of participants in the Title IV program. With 

that backdrop in mind, SBPC offers the following thoughts on 

the agenda that the Department has proposed to consider during 

the NegReg. First, SBPC applauds the Department for including 

several topics that are long overdue for reform. The 

Department included rules relating to cash management. This is 

important as we continue to see abuses in the campus card 

space that are empowered by its historically lax regulation of 

cash management. These products and the backroom deals that 

produce them continue to bury students under mounds of hidden, 

exploitive, and unavoidable fees. For students, the imposition 

of these fees can make the difference between if they can 

afford their textbooks or even pay for food. SBPC is excited 

to comment on the need for stronger rules and better oversight 

of this space to prevent schools from rubber stamping products 

that cut against students' best financial interests. In 

addition, the Department included rules regarding third party 

servicers. This continues to be an area of widespread abuse,

including but not limited to as it relates to online program 

managers. We are excited to comment on how the Department 

should ensure that third party servicers are subject to the 

reporting, disclosure, and audit requirements necessary to 

ensure student safety. Finally, the Department included rules 

surrounding the return of Title IV funds in this agenda. This 

is a positive development as we continue to see problems 

related to schools returning funds and then charging students 

for the returned amount. SBPC is looking forward to commenting 
Public Hearings – 04/11/23 

41

on how the Department should reform this corner of the Title 

IV system, including by enhancing data reporting and 

preventing abusive debt collection practices. In addition, 

SBPC encourages the Department to add various other topics 

where students continue to face widespread harm and should 

continue- should include in its agenda rules related to 

preferred lender arrangements and preferred lender lists. We 

continue to see abuses in this space with structural 

shortcomings in the existing rules allowing for regular 

noncompliance that puts students at risk. It should also add 

to its agenda a revision to its rule on debt collection, 

something advocates have requested for a long time. We know 

that the Department's debt collection tools are among its most 

severe and impactful, and that the failure to regulate these 

tools effectively has led to Department and its predatory 

contractors to impose extensive harm on the most vulnerable 

borrowers. Stronger protections are needed to ensure that all 

involved in collections are following the law because COVID 

has laid bare how the Department is incapable of controlling 

its own cruel and punitive collection mechanisms. Finally, the 

Department should be sure that more consumer advocates have a 

seat at NegReg. In addition to the considerations above 

related to the Department's proposed agenda, we want to say up 

front that consumer advocates should have a distinct table at 

the seat during this process. This is necessary because 

borrowers have been failed time and time again by policy 

makers and representatives of institutions or worse for-profit 

institutions who claim to have their best interests at heart 

but who ultimately prioritize their profit or other concerns 

while borrowers fall to the wayside. On behalf of 43 million 
Public Hearings – 04/11/23 

42

student loan borrowers, we encourage a distinct representative 

who will always tend to borrowers first and foremost, a seat 

at this table that is intentionally and solely for the people 

impacted by the policies being designed here. [30 seconds] 

Again, SBPC is thankful for the opportunity to be here to 

comment today. We are excited for NegReg and we are confident 

that with the addition of the considerations discussed here, 

this process can mark a turning point for student protection. 

Thank you.

MR. MARTIN: 

And thank you for sharing your remarks with us this morning.

Ms. Lofton.

MS. LOFTON: 

Thank you.

MR. MARTIN:

Our next speaker will be Sebastian Myrick. Mr. Myrick, 

whenever you are ready.

MR. MYRICK: 

Good morning. My name is Sebastian Myrick, and for the past 20 

years, I've worked at South Seattle Community College, where I 

am the executive director of the TRIO Pre-College Programs. 

I'm also a TRIO alum and beneficiary of the life changing 

services from another TRIO SSS project in Washington. South 

Seattle College is designated a minority serving institution 

and operates five TRIO projects serving about 1900 

participants annually. I currently direct our educational 

talent search and two Upward Bound projects. I'd like to start 
Public Hearings – 04/11/23 

43

by thanking you for the opportunity to make a public comment 

and also for the Department's many years of investment in 

college access services for low income and first-generation

students. As the youngest of eight children from a single 

parent and low-income family, I know firsthand that TRIO 

works. Our TRIO projects provide robust college access 

services in several middle and high schools in the southwest 

Seattle area. Our nearest school has incredible diversity and 

a significant immigrant experience, with over 100 home 

languages spoken by the families of the students. We often go 

into the schools to make presentations to entire classrooms or 

grade levels about the college access services that we 

provide. We invite interested students to access their 

services so that they can get technical support and guidance 

to get to and through college. We're proud of the work that we 

do and the successful outcomes of our students. We don't get 

any data on which of the middle or high school students might 

be undocumented. And frequently the teachers and counselors we 

work with don't know either. Oftentimes, the students 

themselves are not aware if they are undocumented. We're justthey're just a normal part of the school community. In order 

to comply with the current trail regulations, we have to ask 

students and document if they are citizens or eligible noncitizen prior to providing any services to them. That really 

puts a damper on the trust that we try to develop with them 

and our ability to provide services. Two-thirds of these or 

more may receive free or reduced-price lunch and would be 

economically eligible. Frequently, an entire classroom or 

class level like the seventh grade for an example, want to 

take a field trip to visit a university which serves to 
Public Hearings – 04/11/23 

44

motivate the kids to prioritize their academic studies in 

order to establish and achieve a college going goal and 

identity. Since there may be a handful of students who are 

undocumented. Current regulations prohibit us from inviting 

the whole class to go on the field trip with us. That means 

our partnership is compromised, as we have to say, these 

students over here are all allowed to attend. However, those 

few over there have to stay home. We cannot use our grantfunded resources to provide services for them. This may be the 

first time that these students face this particular type of 

segregation and inequality in their educational career. 

However, their classmates and the youth in schools are 

painfully aware of these fundamental injustices when they see 

them. Changing the rules so that we can serve all of the 

students in the schools that wanted to go to college would not 

only make us more effective, it would be the right thing to 

do. Please consider changing the rules so that programs like 

TRIO [30 seconds] undocumented students and assist them to 

develop a college going dream for their future like their 

classmates. Thank you for letting me comment.

MR. MARTIN:

Thank you for sharing your comments with us this morning, Mr. 

Myrick. Our next speaker will be Victor Rojas. Mr. Rojas, 

whenever you are ready.

MR. ROJAS:

I am ready. Thank you so much. And thank you for the 

opportunity to comment this morning on Federal TRIO programs, 

specifically on including improvements to the programmatic 

eligibility and operations under 34 CFR parts 642 through 647. 
Public Hearings – 04/11/23 

45

My name is Victor Rojas and I have served as a TRIO director 

for over 15 years at various institutions. My request this 

morning is for the US Department of Education to consider 

amending the selection criteria to evaluate grant applications 

from target schools to data of LFIG students at these schools. 

Let me provide you with both a college-based example and a 

pre-college example, and I can get into a little bit more 

detail of how this affected us at Mt. San Antonio College this 

last grant cycle. So, for SSS, for example, for tribal 

colleges in the selection criteria for student support 

services, it has to compare TRIO eligible to noneligible 

comparison groups. This puts the school at a severe 

disadvantage because most, if not all, students at those 

institutions are eligible. Therefore, the eight points that 

the Department of Education Awards during the application 

process is unattainable because you don't have a control group 

and in essence, it's one in the same. Let me move on to Upward 

Bound, the precollegiate programs. For precollegiate programs 

right now, let's say you have a reasonably good school that 

has a pocket of TRIO students within it that are eligible that 

are TRIO eligible, grantees i.e., me, can't include these 

schools in their RFPs. Why? Because as is, the schools are 

graded and not the needy students. The reasonably good school 

may not have a high dropout rate or low college going rates, 

but many times this does not apply to the TRIO eligible

student. Therefore, hurting those most in need. And the 

example I wanted to provide, and I'll make this brief because 

I know you have others to hear from, this last grant cycle 

within our service area, we have four different high schools 

that approach Mount SAC in order to partner because they have 
Public Hearings – 04/11/23 

46

pockets of eligible TRIO students. Once I started formulating 

my RFP for all these and gathering data from all these high 

schools, it was to my surprise and again, being familiar with 

these schools and the neighborhoods that they're in, it was my 

surprise that unfortunately, because of the holistic data that 

the school presented us, I wasn't going to be able to partner 

with them. Although I know from visiting those high schools, 

from having relationships with those principals, those 

students, those teachers, those counselors, that there is 

tremendous need at those schools. But again, when asked by the 

principals, the vice principals, the counselors, hey, how come 

you're not writing an Upward Bound for my school? And I said, 

unfortunately, the way it stands and the way we're graded by 

the US Department of Education, we're not going to- we're not 

even going to come close because overall your data doesn't 

demonstrate need. So, my plea this morning to all of you is to 

consider amending the criteria, again, to go from looking at 

target schools to looking at the needs of the students. And I 

will conclude my comments there. Thank you. And have a good 

day.

MR. MARTIN:

Thank you for sharing your remarks with us this morning, Mr. 

Rojas. Our next speaker will be Michelle Dimino. Before she 

begins, I just want to announce that we're running a little 

behind schedule, but we'll be able to deal with that. And so, 

Ms. Dimino, whenever you are ready.

MS. DIMINO: 

Thank you. Good morning. Thank you for the opportunity to 

comment today on the Department of Education's proposed 
Public Hearings – 04/11/23 

47

rulemaking agenda. My name is Michelle Dimino. I am the Deputy 

director of the education program at Third Way, and we are a 

national public policy think tank based in Washington, D.C. 

The regulatory issues raised for consideration by the 

Department cover a range of topics for which sound federal 

regulation is essential to ensuring programmatic and 

institutional quality and providing true accountability 

mechanisms for the investment of students and taxpayers in 

higher education. Third Way strongly supports the Department's 

efforts to strengthen oversight and student protections 

through the regulatory process. We are particularly pleased to 

see the Department's continued focus on enhancing 

accreditation by pursuing rulemaking related to the 

Secretary's recognition of accrediting agencies. For 

prospective students, a school's accreditation status is 

interpreted as the Federal Government's seal of quality 

assurance. For American taxpayers, accreditors should be a 

trusted gatekeeper for institutional access to over $100 

billion in annual federal aid. Yet it is too common that both 

of these promises go unfulfilled, with accreditors continuing 

to recognize schools of dubious quality that leave students 

worse off than before they enrolled. Sometimes, right up until 

the day those schools shut their doors. We urge the Department 

to work to embed stronger emphasis on student outcomes in the 

accreditation process. Regulations that provide better 

definitions of standards for student achievement and offer 

clear parameters for the collection and disaggregation of 

student outcome measures would serve the field and improve our 

understanding of institutional and accreditor performance. 

Additionally, ensuring risk-based monitoring and evaluation 
Public Hearings – 04/11/23 

48

triggered by concerns like low graduation rates or high 

complaint volumes would help ensure that accrediting agencies 

are effectively monitoring the quality and value provided by 

the schools within their portfolios. To maximize clarity and 

transparency across accreditation procedures, revised 

regulations should consider the need for accreditors to 

develop common definitions and protocols for predator actions, 

notably, those involving substantive change. And guidance on 

public disclosures should ensure that all relevant documents 

are made public on appropriate timelines. Likewise, the other 

topics on which the Department has proposed to regulate later 

this year offer important routes to strengthen accountability 

around institutions' use of taxpayer dollars, and to advance 

needed consumer protections that will safeguard the interests 

of students. These reforms are critically important to the 

integrity of our higher education system. Notably, procedures 

for returning unearned Title IV funds must outline clear and 

appropriate guidance for institutional compliance and consider 

protections to prevent harm to impacted students and the 

definitions and eligibility conditions for distance education 

programs and state authorization must offer both clarity for 

providers and robust consumer protections for the growing 

number of students enrolled in online programs. Lastly, I'd 

like to address a critical upcoming stage of the negotiated 

rulemaking process, which is the Department's selection of 

negotiators who represent groups that will be impacted by 

these regulations. Given the direct and vested interest of 

students and federal student loan borrowers in the topics 

identified for these rulemaking sessions, we strongly urge the 

Department to ensure that student voices are well represented 
Public Hearings – 04/11/23 

49

at the negotiating table. Students and student borrowers have 

tremendously salient insights to aid in the consideration of 

federal rules on each of these proposed topics. Their 

perspective differs critically from those that will be offered 

by representatives from institutions and industry, and the 

inclusion of student voices that reflect the broad diversity 

of today's college student experience should be paramount in 

the Department of Education's negotiator selection. Thank you 

for your time and consideration of these comments.

MR. MARTIN:

Thank you for sharing your remarks with us this morning, Ms. 

Dimino. Our next speaker will be Ally Garcia. Ms. Garcia, 

whenever you are ready. I should say Dr. Garcia, whenever you 

are ready. I'm sorry.

DR. GARCIA: 

Awesome. Thank you. Can y'all hear me?

MR. MARTIN: 

Yes, we can.

DR. GARCIA:

Okay, great. Good morning and thank you for the opportunity to 

speak on the improvements to programmatic eligibility and 

operations under 34 CFR Part 642 through 647. Like you said, 

my name is Ally Garcia, and I come here today as a higher ED 

practitioner and scholar and have many years of supporting 

students from marginalized backgrounds, access, retain and 

succeed through the many obstacles that college can bring. I 

currently work to help adults access basic education, English 
Public Hearings – 04/11/23 

50

language skills, family literacy opportunities and high school 

diplomas or GEDs. This work is important for me as the 

learners I serve have often been disenfranchised by many 

systems in their lives and are looking for an entry point to 

educational opportunities, career success and many a chance to 

survive. In my previous role as an assistant dean for 

University, where I oversaw our Dreamer and Undocumented 

Center, our college assistant migrant program, and our TRIO 

Student Success program. Many students who participated in the 

Dreamer and Undocumented program were looking for wraparound 

support that the TRIO program offered, and students from the 

same families that often-had mixed statuses would be filled 

with sadness and shame when I had to tell them that due to 

their documentation status, they would be unavailable or 

unable to access TRIO support. The support that we all knew in 

the office would help them. It would pain me and many of my 

staff to let some students in the program and not even be able 

to start the true application with other students. The message 

that it was basically saying was that you don't belong here. 

You don't deserve services. If you want this degree, you're on 

your own. It is a very dehumanizing way to dangle educational 

opportunities in front of people, especially since we know 

that TRIO works, and I should know the TRIO works. I am the 

product of two TRIO participants from the late 1960s, from a 

small town in Colorado, and because of TRIO programs, my 

parents both had support educational navigational tools and 

confidence to attend postsecondary education and thus gave me 

many opportunities to learn and grow. I have mentored many 

amazing undocumented students and I've hired them to tutor 

TRIO students with state work city funds or institutional 
Public Hearings – 04/11/23 

51

funds. And in my experience, those students are brave, they're 

dedicated, they're honest, they're hardworking, they're 

driven, and they center their dream of a better future in all 

the decisions that they make. They are more than worthy of 

having humane opportunities for educational access retention. 

In my current role, I am so grateful that the federal 

regulations under OCTAE do not require data collection 

regarding Social Security numbers in order to access program 

services. I would really like to see TRIO programs move to 

follow this model and base eligibility on need rather than on 

immigration status. I would like to see our educational 

opportunities and decision-making center those who have 

purposely and systematically been excluded. Undocumented 

students deserve educational access opportunity by being 

allowed to access services that will help them. I hope we can 

make this progress and humanize education for all. Now's our 

chance to do that. And like our undocumented students have 

taught us, let's be brave and let's be bold. Thank you for 

your time.

MR. MARTIN:

Thank you for sharing your remarks with us this morning, Dr. 

Garcia. Our next speaker will be Jasmine Thomas. Ms. Thomas, 

whenever you are ready. Ms. Thomas?

MS. THOMAS:

Oh, I'm so sorry.

MR. MARTIN:

No problem.
Public Hearings – 04/11/23 

52

MS. THOMAS:

Good morning. My name is Jasmine Thomas, and I'm an activeduty Army spouse that is stationed at Fort Campbell, Kentucky. 

I'm a stay-at-home mom. I'm a home mother of two and I 

attended Fortis Institute, a for-profit institute in 

Nashville, Tennessee. I started going to Fortis in July of 

2020 with hopes that by 2022 I would receive my associate's 

degree in nursing and be able to provide for my family as a 

registered nurse. I was robbed of this. I made it all the way 

to the end of the program. After two years of a long commute 

to school while my husband was deployed, and I was taking care 

of two small children. Now Fortis is withholding my degree and 

stopping me from taking my NCLEX exam. Fortis will not let 

nursing students graduate unless they get a certain score on 

an NCLEX predictor test called a HESI exam. The HESI 

administrators say the test is supposed to help students 

prepare for the NCLEX and they do not recommend using the test 

to block students from taking the NCLEX. Even Fortis's nursing 

program accreditor ACEN says it's not a good educational 

practice to use exams like the HESI to prevent students from 

graduating and taking the NCLEX. But ACEN has not stopped 

schools from using it. The first time I took the HESI, I got 

below Fortis's required score of 850, so I took it again and 

this time I got an 883. But Fortis said that it had changed 

its requirements and it needed to- we needed to get a 900 on 

the HESI. I appealed this decision and took it to the 

Tennessee Higher Education Commission. The Commission said 

that they would not intervene because the school acted within 

its policies when it made the change. So, I took the HESI 

again and this time got a score of 954 and got- also got a 93% 
Public Hearings – 04/11/23 

53

on my final simulation. You would think that it would have 

been it but would- and I'd be allowed to graduate. But it 

wasn't. Two weeks before graduation, Fortis added a different 

predictor test to the final class that was worth 20% of our 

grade. This was a different test than the one included in the 

syllabus that we had been studying for. We needed a 78 to pass 

the class and ended up making a 77.45 because of the new test 

that we had taken. I have filed a complaint with the Tennessee 

Higher Education Commission again and I have looked at filing 

complaints with Fortis's accreditors, but submitting a 

complaint to them is very complicated. When the predictor 

tests are used to keep nursing students from graduating and 

taking the NCLEX, they are called high stakes exams. It 

certainly was that for my family. I left the school with 

nothing. I took the class, the final class, two times and each 

time the class cost $3,000. I went all the way through the 

program and ended up paying 40,000 to this school just to not 

even walk away with a degree and not able to take the NCLEX. 

This has put my family's finances at risk. My husband and I 

even lost a vehicle, my vehicle, because I couldn't work due 

to the classes and the clinicals that were required, all while 

paying $900 for daycare. I have fought tooth and nail to get 

this decision reversed and I am angry over how unfair this has 

been to me and my family. I do not understand how Fortis was 

allowed to change the requirements and allowed to use the HESI 

test to keep me from graduating and taking the NCLEX. At the 

very least, it seems the school should not be allowed to block 

students from taking the NCLEX because that just makes it look 

like the school has a better licensure exam pass rate. I'm 

here today to ask you to consider rules to make sure that the 
Public Hearings – 04/11/23 

54

accreditors and agencies that approve schools are not allowing 

schools to engage in unfair educational practices that hurt 

students. Thank you for your time.

MR. MARTIN:

And thank you for sharing your remarks with us this morning, 

Ms. Thomas.

MS. THOMAS:

Thank you.

MR. MARTIN:

Our next speaker will be Ashley Beverly. Ms. Beverly, whenever 

you are ready.

MS. BEVERLY:

Good morning. My name is Ashley Beverly and I'm a Navy 

veteran. I've been a social worker for over seven years, and I 

decided that I wanted to teach in my field, which is what 

allowed me to pursue my PhD, which is what drove me to pursue 

my PhD degree in clinical social work at Walden University in 

2017. Walden University told me it would take 2 to 3 years to 

get my doctorate degree, but I attended for over four years, 

not completing my degree. During that time, Walden exhausted 

my GI Bill funding, resulting in me taking out over $90,000 in 

student loans on top of my GI Bill. However, during my time in 

attendance, the quality of the program was extremely poor. The 

educational setup was not anything like what the enrollment 

advisor described. It was completely ridiculous. Discussion 

boards, for instance, were frequently used with no interaction 

from the teacher at that university or during- in the courses 
Public Hearings – 04/11/23 

55

of that university. The teachers lacked proficiency in the 

field and did not seem to know the main or common topics that 

are covered in social work practice and the terminology that 

we use in a day-to-day basis as a practice, as a practitioner. 

There was no direction, and if you reached out in writing to 

the faculty and staff, you had long wait times waiting for 

them to respond or you got no response at all. There was very 

little rigor which resulted in teaching myself a lot of the 

material and content, unfortunately. And another requirement 

of the school was that students had to travel mandatorily to 

several states to complete residencies. I went to two of the 

four residencies face to face in Florida and Colorado, and two 

virtually. Once I received the- or once I began to go through

the dissertation phase, I noticed that Walden kept cycling me 

through the process. I developed a strong dissertation, but I 

was prevented from progressing in the program. A reviewer 

would look over my work and tell me that it was great work, 

but then someone on my committee would suggest that I go back 

and make changes. I would make those changes, and then the 

reviewer would say that it was not- one would say it was great 

and then one would continue to say that I needed to go back 

and revise it. So, I continued to get information about it 

being really good work and then being told that I have to go 

back each time. I went through that process at least four 

times. Meanwhile, my chair was never available to guide me, 

and my faculty advisor kept changing. Walden continued to drag 

it out, praising my work, but never allowing me to progress or 

move forward. I brought my concerns to leadership, and nothing 

ever changed. When I left Walden, I had maxed out on student 

loans, although I never finished that degree after four years. 
Public Hearings – 04/11/23 

56

One of the faculty advisors put a lot of pressure on me, 

trying to convince me to actually pay out of my pocket upon 

exhausting my student loans. Currently I'm in another doctoral 

program for social work at Barry University, and my credits 

from Walden University were unable to transfer over. Also, 

Walden is currently withholding my transcripts because they 

are saying that I owe them $3,000, but my GI Bill money and my 

student loan should have been more than enough to cover that 

amount. My growth was stifled, and I was unable to advance as 

a social worker or as a researcher from the education at 

Walden University. And I'm here today to ask you to consider 

regulations that will prevent schools like Walden from lying 

to students, especially student veterans, during the 

recruitment process [30 seconds] and then failing to deliver 

an educational value while they collect all of the available 

funding they can get. Thank you for the opportunity to comment 

today.

MR. MARTIN:

And thank you for sharing your remarks with us this morning, 

Ms. Beverly.

MS. BEVERLY:

Thank you so much for having me.

MR. MARTIN:

Our next speaker will be Quenton Ross. Mr. Ross, whenever you 

are ready. 

MR. ROSS:

[Inaudible] they tell you that I did not get the high-quality
Public Hearings – 04/11/23 

57

education that Full Sail University promised. Before leaving 

the Navy, I was told about Full Sail University. I decided to 

give them a call. On the call, they highlighted how the school 

was state of the art and that the instructors were all from 

the industry. They told me that I would receive real-world 

education and that the graduates worked on the biggest 

projects in the industry. Excuse me. I was promised an 

education that will ultimately lead me to a path of success. 

Some instructors at Full Sail University barely cared about 

any of the students. Many of them, I believe, were not even 

reading the assignments we turned in. In fact, I know this 

because I turned in some assignments completely blank and 

received an A and a generic great job. It was clear that the 

instructors did not care enough to teach the classes. They 

were just taught from PowerPoint and regurgitated what was on 

the PowerPoint. I knew I was not learning enough, and I wanted 

direction, but I did not get the feedback on many of the 

assignments I knew I did incorrectly. After finishing the 

Accelerated Recording Arts bachelor's program, I was not going 

to be able to get a job in the field, and my school counselor 

convinced me to go for the master's degree in entertainment 

business. The master's program was no better than the 

bachelors. They did not provide the much-needed instructions 

or feedback, and the grades felt meaningless. My final project 

was supposed to be a well-researched, organized, pro forma, 

but I was never taught what I needed to know to accurately 

complete the project. I couldn't even get my Excel spreadsheet 

to calculate correctly, so I just added random numbers. Still, 

I received an A on that project, which was shocking. I 

graduated from Full Sail in 2016 without having learned much 
Public Hearings – 04/11/23 

58

of anything of quality and never got a job in any way 

connected to my degrees. It is painfully obvious that I wasted 

my time and my student aid. I came out of Full Sail University 

having exhausted my GI Bill benefits with $100,000 in student 

loans. I'm hoping that by speaking today, I will be helping 

other veterans avoid what happened to me. As you consider new 

rules, please think about experiences like mine to make sure 

schools are providing real training and education, which is 

what veterans, and all students deserve. Thank you for your 

time and effort.

MR. MARTIN:

Thank you for sharing your remarks with us this morning, Mr. 

Ross. Our next speaker will be Dr. Gregory Hess. Dr. Hess, 

whenever you are ready. 

DR. HESS:

Good morning. Thank you for the opportunity to speak today. My 

name is Gregory Hess and I'm president and CEO of IES Abroad, 

not for-profit study abroad provider. We have an academic 

consortium of 270 top tier US colleges and universities and 

more than 240 additional partner universities worldwide. Our 

consortium approves every single course we teach. We send over 

8,000 students abroad every year, and while we don't directly 

receive federal financial aid, we do supplement it and support 

students by providing our own additional financial aid 

exceeding $6 million annually. My goal is to speak to the 

unintended devastating and damaging impacts the study abroad 

industry and the university students we serve from the Title 

IV funding guidelines laid out in the February 28th Revised 

Dear Colleague Letter. Better still, I will propose a 
Public Hearings – 04/11/23 

59

solution. Study abroad changed my life. It has changed many 

lives, and changed lives change the world. And we all know 

that the world needs change. We need thoughtful, 

interculturally effective and productive global citizens more 

than ever. Substantial empirical evidence demonstrates that 

these are part of the personal and professional skills 

students gain through study abroad. However, the recent DOE's 

proposed guidance would make it impossible for students to 

experience study abroad benefits and make it inaccessible for 

students receiving federal aid. This is not the change we 

need. I do not believe it is the intent of the DCL to bar 

participation in study abroad by the 85% of college students 

who receive federal financial aid. But that's what would 

happen with the DCL's guidance. The DCL's new definition of 

third-party servicers could include all services that would be 

provided to students outside of the US; emergency medical 

care, in-person health and wellness services, classes at 

foreign universities, housing, classroom space, 

transportation, and more. The new definition will prohibit 

students from using Title IV funds to pay for study abroad 

experiences, including with US accredited institutions if the 

servicer or subcontractor is owned or operated outside of the 

US. The DCL's expanded guidance regarding activities unrelated 

to handling Title IV funds appears to make it impossible for 

study abroad services to operate anywhere in the world if they 

utilize foreign subcontractors. And please note that every 

single study abroad program, no matter the operator, relies on 

overseas subcontractors for these types of services which 

could no longer be provided to students under the new 

definition. In our public comment, we proposed a solution, a 
Public Hearings – 04/11/23 

60

narrower definition of third-party servicer that excludes 

study abroad providers. This is how the DOE has operated for 

years until this recent Dear Colleague Letter and we believe 

our carve-out is grounded in legislative intent. I urge you to 

revise the proposal and ensure that students who receive 

federal financial aid can continue to benefit from 

participating in study abroad programs. First Lady Jill- Dr. 

Jill Biden wrote in an essay in the Chronicle of Higher 

Education, we know that education is the key to unlocking 

human potential. I'm sure that's why Dr. Jill Biden dedicates 

her professional life to serving postsecondary students. And 

I'm sure that shared commitment at the institution she serves 

is why Northern Virginia Community College allows financial 

aid to be used to help students study abroad. [30 seconds] Why 

would you take that away from them? Creating opportunities for 

study abroad for students of lesser means is the way you 

unlock human potential. Let's not impose unintended rules that 

eliminate a study abroad opportunity that will change their 

lives for the good. Thank you very much for the opportunity to 

share my thoughts with you.

MR. MARTIN:

And thank you for sharing those thoughts this afternoon, Dr. 

Hess. Our next speaker is going to be Jill Stein. Ms. Stein, 

whenever you are ready. Ms. Stein? Okay. I'm told that Ms. 

Stein is not prepared right now, so we're going to move on toI think we already did- we already had Dr. Hess. So, let's 

move on to Carolyn Fast. Ms. Fast, are you ready?

MS. FAST:

I'm ready. Thank you. Can you hear me?
Public Hearings – 04/11/23 

61

MR. MARTIN:

I can. So, whenever you're ready to begin.

MS. FAST:

Thank you. Thank you for the opportunity to comment on the 

Department's upcoming negotiated rulemaking. My name is 

Carolyn Fast. I'm a senior fellow at the Century Foundation. 

First, to ensure that students interests are adequately 

represented. The upcoming rulemaking should include 

representatives of students from all sectors, including forprofit and online colleges, as well as consumer legal 

assistance and civil rights organizations. We support the 

Department's inclusion of standards for recognizing 

accreditors and suggest that the following topics be included 

in the rulemaking. First, accreditor oversight of third-party

entities. The Century Foundation's research has found that 

accreditor review of schools' arrangements with third parties 

such as OPMs is inadequate to address the risks these 

arrangements pose to students and taxpayers. The Department 

should strengthen requirements related to such review. Second, 

consumer complaint processes. Some accreditors’ complaint 

processes seem designed to discourage students from submitting 

complaints. The Department should develop requirements to 

prevent such barriers. Third, accreditor capacity. Some 

accreditors lack resources to conduct adequate oversight or 

lack expertise needed to evaluate complex institutional 

structures or transactions, especially involving for-profit 

institutions and contractors. Agencies should be required to 

have the staff and resources to effectively carry out their 

responsibilities. Next, student outcomes. The Department 
Public Hearings – 04/11/23 

62

should consider changes on how accreditors measure, report on, 

and evaluate expectations related to student outcomes. 

Finally, accreditor recognition. Changes in the recognition 

process are required to permit meaningful public involvement. 

For example, accreditors could be required to post relevant 

materials on their websites in advance of [inaudible] meetings 

to ensure public access. We also support the Department's 

inclusion of state authorization in this rulemaking. The State 

Authorization Reciprocity Agreement, SARA, has lowered 

barriers for schools to offer online programs in multiple 

states. However, SARA sets an extremely low bar for consumer 

protection, leaving millions of online students vulnerable to 

abuse. Moreover, SARA prohibits states from enforcing many of 

their own consumer protection laws against participating 

schools based outside their state. In addition, SARA provides 

veto power over setting consumer protections to a nongovernmental entity which is not controlled by states and in 

fact includes representatives of regulated entities. To 

address these problems, the Department should set minimum 

standards for reciprocity agreements. Reciprocity agreements 

should be required to obtain recognition from the Department 

before they can provide state authorization under the rule. To 

obtain recognition, reciprocity agreements should be required 

to permit participating states to enforce consumer protection 

laws. Restoring the 2016 regulatory language on the definition 

of reciprocity agreements would address this issue. Member 

states must also have control over setting standards for 

participating schools. Agreements should not delegate that 

authority to groups not controlled by state representatives. 

The Department should also consider limiting the type of 
Public Hearings – 04/11/23 

63

institution that can obtain authorization through reciprocity 

agreements to categories that are structured to protect 

students interests like publics and nonprofits that do not 

outsource to for-profit entities. The Department could also 

consider imposing minimum consumer protection requirements on 

reciprocity agreements, such as refund and cancellation 

requirements. Finally, the Department should consider changes 

to the state authorization requirements that apply to all 

Title IV schools, not just online students through reciprocity 

agreements. These changes could include minimum capacity 

requirements for authorizing agencies, conflict of interest 

requirements for state authorizing entities [30 seconds] 

limitations on state exemptions from state authorization, and 

state-level protections from precipitous closures. Thank you 

for the opportunity to provide comments. We look forward to 

working with you going forward.

MR. MARTIN:

And thank you for sharing your remarks with us this morning, 

Ms. Fast. And our next speaker will be Della Justice. Ms. 

Justice, whenever you're ready.

MS. JUSTICE:

Hello. Good morning.

MR. MARTIN: 

Thank you. Hi.

MS. JUSTICE:

My name is Della Justice and I'm Vice President for Legal 

Affairs with Veterans Education Success, a nonprofit 
Public Hearings – 04/11/23 

64

organization that works on a bipartisan basis to advance 

higher education success for veterans, and to protect the 

integrity and promise of the GI Bill and other federal 

postsecondary education programs. The educational programs 

administered by the Departments of Defense and Veterans 

Affairs are affected by the quality assurance and program 

integrity safeguards that fall under the Department of 

Education's jurisdiction. Two of the three pillars of the 

Department's gatekeeping and program integrity regulations, 

state authorization and accreditation, are of particular 

concern to us. We are therefore pleased with the Department's 

intent to undertake a negotiated rulemaking process related to 

these critical topics. A comprehensive review of the 

Department's regulations on state authorization is urgently 

needed to address two distinct issues, nondelegation of 

governmental authority to purely private actors and mandatory 

terms and conditions of interstate reciprocity agreements. The 

Department should reexamine state authorization practices that 

delegate what is clearly intended to be a state function to 

non-governmental entities such as accrediting bodies. Not only 

do such arrangements delegate a state responsibility to 

private interests that are significantly controlled by the 

regulated entities themselves, but they effectively collapse 

one leg of the triad, state authorization, unto another 

accreditation and thus undermine the statutory design of the 

federal gatekeeping system. Additionally, the emergence of 

distance delivery across state lines has created new consumer 

protection concerns that require federal attention. While 

state reciprocity agreements can be an efficient mechanism for 

interstate delivery of distance education, their proper 
Public Hearings – 04/11/23 

65

governance and the adequacy of their safeguards must be 

addressed through federal regulations. Failure to do so has 

created a system that is unduly influenced by the regulated 

entities, that is designed primarily for purposes of 

convenience of the schools rather than protection of students 

and taxpayers and that creates perverse incentives for 

regulatory arbitrage and manipulation of geographic location 

to avoid robust state laws. Accreditation as it exists today 

is failing as a quality assurance tool, as evidenced in sudden 

collapses of accredited institutions, government allegations 

of institutional deceptive practices, and the prevalence of 

intolerable outcomes such as low graduation rates, low job 

placement rates, high debt to earnings, and low repayment 

rates that characterize the performance of too many fully 

accredited institutions in all sectors. The Department has an 

opportunity to strengthen accreditation and the American 

tradition of political noninterference in academic affairs of 

colleges and universities by instituting regulatory changes 

that extend secretarial recognition only to those bodies that 

can demonstrate a documented, evidence-based, and independent 

approach to federally mandated quality assurance functions. To 

that end, we urge the Department to consider the following: 

Place the entirety of 34 CFR 602 and 603 and the relevant 

sections of 600 on the committee's agenda even if the 

Department itself does not have any proposed changes. Require 

accreditors to delineate their mandatory quality assurance 

standards under the law from their voluntary quality 

improvement functions and require them to articulate how they 

enforce those. Require accreditors to disclose how they 

determine the accuracy of the information they rely on in 
Public Hearings – 04/11/23 

66

making accrediting decisions. Review conflict of interest 

rules and ensure that the separate and independent 

requirements of the law are not being circumvented.

MR. MARTIN:

30 seconds.

MS. JUSTICE:

Ensure that accreditors have adequate expertise and resources 

for the level of oversight and due diligence required of them. 

Accreditors should not be allowed to ignore or dismiss 

outcomes, and they should be required to maintain and enforce 

concrete and fact-based standards. Finally, the framing of 

institutional accreditation as an evaluation of the whole 

institution rather than a specific program, should not be used 

as an excuse by accreditors to maintain a position of studied 

ignorance with regard to programmatic offerings. Thank you for 

this opportunity.

MR. MARTIN:

Thank you for sharing your comments with us this morning, Ms. 

Justice. Our next and final speaker before we break for lunch 

will be Sara Partridge. Ms. Partridge, whenever you are ready. 

Ms. Partridge? Ms. Partridge? Okay. It looks like we don't 

have Ms. Partridge ready to go yet, so we will break for lunch 

now and reconvene at 1 p.m. Eastern Daylight Savings Time. 

Thank you. Good afternoon and welcome back. We're going to get 

started with this afternoon's sessions shortly. I do want to 

announce that we are now joined by Mr. Steve Finley from the 

Office of General Counsel. With that, we will go to our first 

speaker for this afternoon and our next speaker will be Ms. 
Public Hearings – 04/11/23 

67

Sara Partridge. Ms. Partridge, whenever you are ready.

DR. PARTRIDGE:

Hi. Thank you for the opportunity to speak here today. My name 

is Dr. Sara Partridge and I'm a senior policy analyst for 

higher education at the Center for American Progress. In my 

comments, I will address important ways that the state 

authorization rule should be strengthened to ensure interstate 

online education is held to the same levels of accountability 

as face-to-face education. While only 7% of students across 

all institutions enrolled in interstate online programs in 

2019, almost 50% of students at for-profit institutions fit 

into this category. Given the documented history of serious 

issues in the for-profit sector, along with the rapid growth 

of fully online programs in recent years, urgent action should 

be taken to protect this new class of students who may be more 

vulnerable to substandard programs and consumer protection 

violations. In the Higher Education Act of 1965, Congress gave 

states an important role in ensuring program integrity, which 

they carry out through state authorization. In 2010, the 

Department established minimum requirements for this process. 

They are, first, the adjudication of complaints. And second, 

the enforcement of applicable state laws. However, these 

central responsibilities were dangerously limited by an 

updated definition of reciprocity agreements in 2019. The 

current definition prevents states from enforcing laws 

"related to state authorization of distance education." While 

intended to streamline requirements across states, this 

provision creates a race to the bottom in which institutions 

of higher education located in states with weaker 
Public Hearings – 04/11/23 

68

accountability standards can enroll students in states across 

the nation. Reciprocity agreements should not undermine the

central responsibility of state authorization. The form these 

reciprocity agreements have taken for 49 states and 3 

territories is the National Council for State Authorization 

Reciprocity agreements known as NC-SARA. NC-SARA's policies 

undermine consumer protections by limiting students' power to 

file independent complaints against institutions. NC-SARA 

requires a student to file a complaint with their institution 

first, which is not an independent process and can be lengthy 

and challenging before filing a complaint with their home 

state's Department of Education. Because NC-SARA does not 

require institutions to report information about complaints 

received, there is a limited flow of consumer information to 

the states. The Department should require reciprocity 

agreements like NC-SARA to collect complaint data from 

participant institutions and likewise require states to share 

complaint data. It should also require states to share the 

institutional data collected during authorization and 

reauthorization process with all other states. Interstate 

education calls for interstate oversight. Finally, the 

governance and membership rules for NC-SARA continue to raise 

questions about its independence. It should be expressly 

prohibited for employees of institutions, subject to NC-SARA's 

regulations to serve on its board, which has veto power over 

all proposed policy changes. The Department should also issue 

guidance clarifying that a state reciprocity agreement 

requires, "an agreement between two states" and not through 

membership in a regional compact. Nine states are currently 

NC-SARA members only by default through their preexisting 
Public Hearings – 04/11/23 

69

membership in a regional, compact, and not with the express 

action of the state legislator or the state higher education 

regulatory body. The state authorization rule is one of the 

central mechanisms the Department has to ensure program 

quality for interstate online education, and it should 

significantly strengthen its requirements [30 seconds] to 

prevent a wave of poor outcomes, fraud, and abuse which can 

proliferate if left unchecked. Thank you.

MR. MARTIN:

And thank you for sharing your remarks with us this afternoon. 

Our next speaker will be Tanya Ang. Ms. Ang, whenever you are 

ready.

MS. ANG:

Good afternoon. Thank you for the opportunity to comment on 

the Department's intent to establish negotiated rulemaking for 

a robust list of topics. My name is Tanya and I'm the Managing 

Director for Advocacy at Higher Learning Advocates, a 

nonprofit advocacy organization working toward bipartisan 

federal policies to better serve today's students. Today's 

students are more diverse than any previous generation of 

college students. 33% of students are over the age of 25, 42% 

identify as a race other than White. 56% are first generation. 

And almost a quarter of all undergraduate students have 

children. Only 16% of students live on campus, and 51% of 

undergraduate students are financially independent. During the 

pandemic, like many others in America, students faced 

insurmountable challenges causing some to withdraw and others 

to find drastic measures to ensure they stayed enrolled. Soon, 

students will find themselves in similar situations as the 
Public Hearings – 04/11/23 

70

emergency exemptions during COVID come to an end. We are 

conscious of the tight rope the Department must walk as it

balances out in innovation with protections for students. 

Online education is one of these areas. 44% of undergraduate 

students were exclusively enrolled in distance education 

during the pandemic. As the pandemic has waned, some of these 

students are realizing that online modalities allow them to 

pursue a higher education credential while still being able to 

work and care for their children. Antonio is a firstgeneration student at an HSI. Due to his parents still facing 

health issues because of COVID, he had to move home to care 

for them and his siblings while also working and going to 

school. The only way he can finish his program of study is 

because his institution realized that many of its students 

were in similar positions and moved some of its classes

online. These classes filled up within only a few minutes of 

being opened and the school had to scramble and open more 

online courses to meet the needs of its students. Then there 

is Elise, a mother of three children four and under, who 

attends school full-time online. With no family around, very 

little support, and the cost of childcare being so expensive, 

this is the only way she can earn a credential. While the only 

option for these students is taking online classes, they have 

the luxury of choosing programs that offer high quality 

education, allowing them to work in their field after 

graduation. Not all students are as lucky and have found 

themselves in a worse place than when they started. This is 

not tenable for the student or the taxpayer. The conversation 

around ensuring quality while allowing for innovation must go 

hand in hand as the Department embarks on its- this next round 
Public Hearings – 04/11/23 

71

of negotiated rulemaking, it is essential to walk that line. 

Accreditors also play a role in ensuring oversight of quality 

and innovation. To ensure today's students have the best 

chance of economic success in upward mobility, we encourage 

the Department to include conversations during the process 

around things such as accreditors prioritizing student 

outcomes over institutional compliance and making the 

accreditation process more transparent. When discussing Return 

to Title IV and Cash Management, we asked the Department to 

keep in mind the 39 million adults with some college but no 

credential, and the answer to the question, how do policies 

surrounding these two topics support students who owe a 

balance return to school and how do they support students who 

are relying on some of their financial aid to pay for 

purchases off campus, such as books and basic needs? We must 

balance the need of protecting students from the unnecessary 

debt and from facing dire circumstances due to being unable to 

access their money until after the add/drop period. 

Additionally, we ask the- encourage the Department to consider 

adding student academic progress to this year's negotiated 

rulemaking process. SNAP regulations need to be updated to 

include the needs of today's students and make accessing a 

credential possible for returning adult students. We also 

would ask that you would have students from a two-year school 

and a four-year school [30 seconds] be available at the table. 

These policies directly impact students, and they must have 

their voices there. We look forward to continued work with the 

Department on these and other issues.

MR. MARTIN:
Public Hearings – 04/11/23 

72

Thank you for sharing your thoughts with us this afternoon. We 

appreciate it. Our next commenter will be Dr. Thomas Harnisch. 

Dr. Harnisch, whenever you are ready. 

MR. HARNISCH:

Thank you. My name is Tom Harnisch. I serve as vice president 

for government relations at the State Higher Education 

Executive Officers Association or commonly known as SHEEO. 

SHEEO is a national organization serving chief executives of 

statewide governing policy and coordinating boards of 

postsecondary education and their staffs. The announced 

negotiated rulemaking provides an important opportunity to 

strengthen the federal regulatory framework on a wide range of 

issues under Title IV of the Higher Education Act with a focus 

on institutional quality and accountability. As the national 

organization representing state higher education agencies and 

systems of higher education, we are significantly affected by 

the subject matters under consideration and welcome the 

opportunity to contribute to these discussions. Three issues 

listed that are considerable interests to the state higher 

education leaders include institutional eligibility, including 

state authorization as a component of such eligibility, the 

Secretary's recognition of accrediting agencies, and thirdparty services and related issues. With respect to state 

authorization, many state agencies act as state authorizers 

and states play a pivotal role in consumer protection in 

higher education. In partnership with national foundations, 

scholars, and states, SHEEO has worked in recent years to 

build a broader, deeper understanding of the state 

authorization function, including contributions exploring the 
Public Hearings – 04/11/23 

73

influence of federal policy on state authorization. This 

negotiated rulemaking will likely examine interstate 

reciprocity of distance education, and SHEEO is well 

positioned to discuss this due to its 50-state membership and 

subject matter expertise. Interstate reciprocity of distance 

education reduces administrative burden, allows for greater 

student choice, and strengthens institutional oversight and 

quality. We look forward to the opportunity to improve state 

authorization through the negotiated rulemaking process. 

Accreditation is also a paramount issue for state higher 

education leaders, as states are linked to accreditors and the 

Federal Government through the regulatory triad. As the 

Federal Government explores changes to regulations on 

accreditation, it is important to consider how changes in one 

part of the triad could affect the others, including states. 

SHEEO encourages policies that better coordinate states, 

accreditors, and the Federal Government and expands capacity 

to ensure the higher education marketplace provides high 

quality student opportunities and a good return on investment 

for students and taxpayers. Lastly, there's significant 

concern in the SHEEO community on the issue of federal 

oversight of third-party servicers. Some SHEEO agencies 

perform Title IV functions that would be considered third 

party servicers under the guidance issued earlier this year. 

Our members have expressed concern over this guidance, 

including the effects of relationships on foreign and domestic 

vendors, vendor capacity, and administrative costs. We look 

forward to learning more about how the Department plans to 

address third party servicers in the regulatory process. We 

applaud the US Department of Education for its continued 
Public Hearings – 04/11/23 

74

interest in strengthening accountability and fostering student 

success. We welcome the opportunity to contribute to these 

discussions on these important topics in the months ahead. 

Thank you.

MR. MARTIN:

Thank you for sharing your remarks with us this afternoon. Our 

next commenter will be Rafael Topete. Mr. Topete, whenever you 

are ready.

MR. TOPETE:

Let me take the time to also thank you for the opportunity to 

come before this negotiated rulemaking committee and allowing 

me the opportunity to present my comments. You have heard from 

colleagues and our national association before me earlier this 

day. But I want to come from a perspective that I'm not a TRIO 

alumni. As a matter of fact, I was not able to become a TRIO 

student because I was denied admissions to a TRIO program when 

I was finishing my middle school, going to high school because 

of my immigration status. That, as you can imagine, how 

heartbreaking that can be for a student. Having gone through 

it myself, I know how hard it is. Fast forward six years from 

that day. I was then provided an opportunity to work for an 

upper bound program for their summer residential program. That 

finally gave me the experience of a TRIO program, but from the 

other perspective, as a staff member. I enjoyed it so much 

that upon graduating college, I took on the full-time position 

in Trio, and 30 years later I'm still in the college access 

career. Unfortunately, that 30 years has been rocky, to say 

the least, because I've worked in my community where I grew 

up, and having been put into that situation where I'm now the 
Public Hearings – 04/11/23 

75

one that has been telling students, I'm sorry, we cannot serve 

you because of your immigration status. As you can imagine, 

this is a difficult spot to be in as a professional, but also 

as an educator who our main purpose is to guide and help our 

students and provide them the best opportunity possible. In 

the early 80s, Supreme Court case held that immigrant 

children, regardless of their legal status, were entitled to 

access to public education. This ruling pertained to K-12, 

left out college access, thus making it a privilege to go to 

college, not necessarily a right. And this privilege was- sort 

of amplified that college- going to college is a privilege and 

not a right. Students since have gone through different forms 

of getting to college, some the right way by paying out-ofstate tuition, by navigating the course themselves, by taking 

upwards of 10, 12 years to graduate while trying to figure out 

the process and how to pay for it. Others not so right way and 

towards their social security numbers and hid behind the 

shadows until they graduated and then tried to figure life out 

after graduation. The TRIO community is proposing that we 

allow students to come out of the shadows and be heard and be 

seen and be supported. For the last 20 years, from the DREAM 

Act to DACA, we have treated undocumented students as the 

poster children for immigration reform but have done very 

little to support them in their educational endeavors or 

dreams. In California, about 10 years ago, we were able to 

pass AB 540, which allowed students who went through our K-12 

system to be eligible for in-state tuition. And that's coming 

out of the shadow. A few years after that, we were able to 

provide financial support through the California Dream Act, 

which provides not only state aid, but also access to 
Public Hearings – 04/11/23 

76

scholarships and other financial support while they're going 

through the process of college in public institutions and some 

of the privates in state. TRIO would like to extend that 

support and that service to all of our students, not only in 

California, but through the TRIO programs that serve students 

across the country. When you grow up poor and in an immigrant 

community, you don't know your poor and you also don't know 

your undocumented, which puts you in a terrible disadvantage. 

And it's really particularly hard when you're put in a 

situation to find out that you are poor and [30 seconds] that 

you're undocumented. So, we ask you to revisit eligibility 

criteria, which states that all participants must be either a 

citizen or permanent residents and align it with the 

administration's goal to be more inclusive and provide 

opportunities to disenfranchised students, including those who 

are undocumented. Let's stop using undocumented youth as 

poster children and help them pursue their dreams, which is 

the American dream of quality education. Let's allow TRIO 

programs to help all students thrive, not just survive. Thank 

you for your time.

MR. MARTIN:

Thank you for sharing your comments with us this afternoon. 

Our next commenter will be Zaniya Lewis. Ms. Lewis, whenever 

you are ready.

MS. LEWIS:

Thank you. Hello. My name is Zaniya Lewis and thank you for 

allowing me to speak today. I am a current law student and 

military dependent and have been a financial aid recipient 

since I was an undergrad student. My comment today will touch 
Public Hearings – 04/11/23 

77

on the Federal TRIO programs, including improvements to 

program eligibility. As a student who runs a college access 

and financial literacy nonprofit, I understand the importance 

of the Federal TRIO programs. As a student who almost had to 

withdraw from my undergrad program because of receiving an 

outside scholarship, I understand the implications and 

hardships of students who may have to withdraw from college or 

acquire additional debt because they were penalized for 

earning an outside scholarship. Many of the higher 

institutions that participate in the Federal TRIO programs 

participate in scholarship award displacement, a practice that 

penalizes need-based recipients for earning outside 

scholarships. One of the TRIO programs called Upward Bound, 

focuses on providing support to participants in their 

preparation for college. Yet these same higher institutions 

that are preparing students for college are teaching students 

how to get funding for the education through the FAFSA and 

scholarships. Then their policies are penalizing these same 

students for earning outside scholarships, forcing them to 

either acquire additional debt or drop out of college. 

Scholarship award displacement practices undermine the exact 

goal that the United States Department of Education is trying 

to achieve. I recommend that the United States Department of 

Education develop requirements and a discipline system within 

the TRIO programs and other federal funding programs to ensure 

that higher institutions' practices and policies align with 

the mission and vision of the United States Department of 

Education. These institutions should not be allowed to 

continue the predatory and harmful practices towards the same 

students that the United States Department of Education is 
Public Hearings – 04/11/23 

78

trying to support and fund. I have spoken with the Department 

of Education about our concerns about scholarship award 

displacement, and there have been many responses that are 

saying that you all are not sure if you have the authority to 

stop the practice. In addition, the websites of the Department

haven’t changed or emails that are currently misleading 

students to apply for outside scholarships to decrease their 

debt when higher institutions are actually penalizing those 

same students for receiving outside scholarships. While I 

believe that the Department can add a requirement to the 

federal TRIO program eligibility that higher institutions that 

participate in Federal TRIO programs cannot penalize students 

for earning outside scholarships. Let's come up with systemic 

solutions to keep students in school and graduate with no 

debt. It is not enough to just have the Federal TRIO programs, 

but the policies and practices of higher institutions that 

this Department funds, practices must be equitable and just. 

It is important that every student has the opportunities, 

resources, and funding to achieve a higher education. Thank 

you.

MR. MARTIN:

Thank you, Ms. Lewis. Our next commenter will be Sam Blanco. 

Mr. Blanco, whenever you are ready.

MR. BLANCO:

Good morning. Can you hear me, okay?

MR. MARTIN:

I can. 
Public Hearings – 04/11/23 

79

MR. BLANCO:

Alright, great. Good morning from California. My name is Sam 

Blanco, III, the director of the UC Davis pre-college TRIO 

Talent Search and Upward Bound programs. Originally from 

Delano, California, and a proud first-generation college 

graduate. I've been working here at the University of 

California Davis TRIO programs for the past 31 years, helping 

low-income first-generation students succeed in high school 

and obtain their college degrees. Thank you for the 

opportunity to comment on the federal TRIO programs, including 

improvements to programmatic eligibility and operations under 

34 CFR, which is to hopefully open services to undocumented 

students. Throughout my years of experience, I hope to share 

some information with you today to shed some light on helping 

some well-deserving students. Each year we administer 

recruiting sessions at each of our TRIO school sites, but we 

are not able to present to all students. Only those who are 

citizens or permanent residents are eligible to receive our 

TRIO services. This academic year, the state of California, 

fortunately was granted a waiver from the US Department of 

Education through the P3 Partnerships, which includes the 

community college system, California State University, and the 

University of California College Systems, which allows 

California TRIO programs to serve undocumented students 

through the fall of 2026. Although this does not change the 

programing services we conduct each year, it does open the 

window for our staff to work with undocumented students at 

each level. It allows California TRIO programs to help all 

other students, regardless of their citizenship status. Here 

at the UC Davis campus, we have an AB 540 Undocumented Student 
Public Hearings – 04/11/23 

80

Services Department helping undocumented students complete 

their college career. Throughout the years, I've helped many 

students with math tutoring, college advising, and scholarship 

opportunities, on my own time. All of the students I have 

helped throughout the years could have definitely benefited 

from the same types of services that TRIO programs throughout 

their high schools and college experiences. In fact, one 

student in particular that I remember helping about 20 years 

ago, she decided to transfer to Mills College in Oakland, 

California, and I continued to mentor her through phone calls, 

texts, and emails. She ended up graduating with honors from 

Mills College and went on to UC Berkeley Law School, which I 

still continue to mentor her until she graduated and is now a 

lawyer helping many undocumented families as well. She is one 

student that I helped in my free time, mostly weekends. But I 

also know that there are thousands of more students throughout 

this nation that could benefit from the TRIO services and 

receive help to ensure that their true dream of attending

college and obtaining a college degree is very possible. I 

have only five years left before I retire from the 31 years of 

helping thousands of low-income first-generation students 

obtain a college degree and become a college graduate and pay 

tax paying workers. Please consider including language 

legislation to ensure that our TRIO programs throughout the 

country can help establish new generational college success 

for many students and serve DACA students in the near future. 

I thank you for listening and have a great day.

MR. MARTIN:

Thank you, Mr. Blanco. Our next speaker will be- oh, before we 
Public Hearings – 04/11/23 

81

before I do that, I would like to acknowledge that Antoinette 

Flores of the Office of the Under Secretary has now joined us. 

Our next speaker will be April Medina. Ms. Medina, whenever 

you are ready.

MS. MEDINA:

Thank you for the opportunity to comment today on the Return 

to Title IV policy. I'm April Medina, Associate Director of 

Student Financial Support at the University of California 

Office of the President. I speak today both as an 

administrator and as a researcher of R2T4, the University of 

California System campus system that serves 300,000 students. 

One of our core principles is providing an affordable and 

accessible education. 75,000 of our undergraduate students or 

about 33% are Pell Grant recipients, and another 4,000 are 

low-income undocumented students. But getting low-income

students through the door means little unless we can see them 

through to graduation. The Return to Title IV or R2T4 is one 

of a multitude of federal aid policies intended to impose a 

level of responsibility for taxpayer investment by billing 

students who withdraw or cease enrollment during an academic 

term. However, it's a broken accountability measure. It 

reduces the benefits of financial aid programs for those at 

risk of not completing their degree. It's administratively 

burdensome, complicated and confusing to students, and has an 

insignificant share of returns based on total aid administered 

for large publics such as the University of California. It's 

one of a collection of other measures which regulate the 

amount of aid students’ access and one that disproportionately 

penalizes low-income students and those most at risk. R2T4 has 
Public Hearings – 04/11/23 

82

been in the top 10 audit findings nationally for over a 

decade. It alone encompassed over a quarter of the 1,000-page 

Federal Student Aid Handbook in 2021. Understanding the R2T4 

worksheet process is complex. So, much so, it took up a 

chapter alone at 90 pages. The regulation is inefficient, 

laborious and time consuming. It burdens aid offices with 

understanding how the calculation is affected by disbursed aid 

versus aid that could have been disbursed, varying 

requirements by individual type of aid and attendance taking, 

variations for schools that have modules, and the list goes 

on. The regulate- the financial impact of withdrawing is 

typically not known by a student until after they discontinue 

enrollment. Those students who do inquire before withdrawing 

are met with general information from financial aid and

academic advisors who must walk a tenuous line between 

supporting students and maintaining the integrity of the 

federal policy that may impact the student's ability to 

return. A financial aid bill as a result of R2T4 is a 

significant barrier, particularly for low-income students, as 

they have limited resources with which to pay these debts, 

affecting their ability to return, continue, and complete. I 

found evidence of this in my research study on this policy at 

one UC campus for first-time freshmen entrants between fall 

2006 and fall 2011. Students with the R2T4 financial bill had 

prolonged enrollment time and decreased conditional 

probability of completion. The campus did a good job of 

retaining students, and only about 5% of the population 

withdrew or about 600 students required at R2T4 calculation. 

The median time to degree at the UC campus for those 600 was 

about five years. However, when enrollment at other 
Public Hearings – 04/11/23 

83

institutions was considered, it ballooned to seven years. Of 

those built from R2T4, less than half graduated at the UC 

campus. Also, among this group, lower income students were 

more likely to leave the UC campus to attend elsewhere, 

primarily community college or fail to reenroll. Conversely, a 

majority of students from moderate high-income families 

persisted and graduated at the UC campus. All else being 

equal, a financial aid bill as a result of R2T4 resulted in 

about a 58% decreased probability of earning a degree at that 

home UC campus. Imposing a financial barrier to those with 

lower risk of persisting is bound to have negative 

consequences. What level of opportunity debt drives students 

away from college for good? Accountability measures which were 

imposed to establish responsibility on institutions and 

students for federal aid fundingMR. MARTIN:

30 seconds.

MS. MEDINA:

-compromise the promise of equity of these programs. And my 

study demonstrated this at a local level. There must be a 

better way to balance accountability with student success. I 

implore the Department to revisit the goal of R2T4 and 

consider how it may be achieved in a more equitable way. Thank 

you for the opportunity to provide testimony and I'd be happy 

to answer any questions.

MR. MARTIN:

Thank you, Ms. Medina. Our next commenter will be Dr. Sandy 

Caldwell. Dr. Caldwell, whenever you are ready.
Public Hearings – 04/11/23 

84

DR. CALDWELL:

Good afternoon. I am Dr. Sandy Caldwell, the executive 

director of the Wyoming Community College Commission for the 

State of Wyoming. I am speaking today on behalf of the 

Community College Commission and the eight public community 

college districts in our state. First, I do want to begin with 

thanking you for the opportunity for us to address the 

Department today. I will be speaking on the third-party

servicer. I will not be speaking on the accreditation. I think 

you have that one covered. We do respectfully request that the 

Dear Colleague letter be rescinded in favor of negotiated 

rulemaking, focused solely on the OPM or that the Department 

provide clarification and guidance through a clearly written 

guidelines. At the state level, we are concerned that this 

Dear Colleague letter is so broad that it captures nearly 

every contract, including the state and its agencies where 

statutory authority exists for system-level contracts, 

including IT, consortial arrangements, those types of things. 

Holding state agencies to an additional potential audit for 

long standing system operations such as IT and data management 

is of great concern, and it is duplicative of existing state 

and agency audit requirements. And then at the institutional 

level, the higher ED institutions do collaborate, and they 

align their work across the higher education sector and across 

the entire education pipeline and to create efficiencies and 

opportunities for students, which is permissible under our 

current state statutes. This Dear Colleague letter appears to 

apply to multiple situations where the colleges are deeply 

involved in their communities, their service areas, and they 

really do work to reduce barriers and create pathways to 
Public Hearings – 04/11/23 

85

completion, particularly for our populations that are in the 

equity gap. We were very concerned with that for postsecondary 

educational attainment in our state related to our attainment 

goals and long-term economic vitality. And this- when you're 

talking about the institution, we're concerned that this may 

apply to dual and concurrent enrollment, long-standing 

business and industry partnerships, the hospitals and our 

healthcare facilities and clinical sites, and then our mental 

health providers that help support our postsecondary 

institutions and their students with wraparound services that 

the institutions cannot directly provide. So, in closing, and 

again, we ask the Department to focus on the true intent, 

which is the OPM, or provide clear guidance with assurances 

that the state authority to manage its higher institutions is 

not encroached upon, or that the colleges will not have to 

impose new arbitrary requirements with long-standing partners, 

including their K-12, their sister colleges, the university, 

clinical sites, and then of course, the business and industry 

and nonprofit and mental health providers. As it stands 

without further guidance, the Dear Colleague letter 

implementation date of September 1 will result in burdensome 

and costly administrative processes at the colleges and at the 

state [30 seconds] that we are uncertain could even be managed 

by the Department of Education. So, with that, I thank you for 

this opportunity to address the Department and to hear just a 

little bit from the state of Wyoming. Thank you for your time 

today.

MR. MARTIN:

Thank you, Dr. Caldwell. Our next speaker will be Gregory 
Public Hearings – 04/11/23 

86

Sebasky. Mr. Sebasky, I'm sorry, whenever you were ready.

MR. SEBASKY: 

Well, good afternoon, everyone, and thanks for the opportunity 

to provide a comment during the listening session. My name is 

Greg Sebasky. I'm the CEO of Assessment Technologies 

Institute, LLC, also known as ATI. ATI is based in Leawood, 

Kansas, and for almost 25 years, ATI has supported thousands 

of nursing programs and their students in the United States by 

providing evidence-based products and services designed to 

help schools develop practice-ready nurses who are prepared 

for post-graduation licensure and clinical practice. In 

addition to the ATI nursing grant, ATI's National Healthcare 

Association brand provides certification for allied health 

care professionals such as medical assistance, pharmacy 

technicians, and phlebotomists. Generally, ATI provides

digital content such as eBooks, assessments and analytics that 

are designed to reinforce the instruction provided by the 

institution and help instructors and students identify and 

remediate individual areas of weakness. Our assessment 

products are based on psychometric principles that help 

institutions bolster student learning outcomes and prepare 

students to succeed on licensure or certification exams and 

enter the workforce quickly after graduation. ATI's 

institutional customers are educating an essential part of the 

healthcare workforce in the United States, where shortages of 

qualified professionals are having an increasingly significant 

impact on public health and policy. Along with other members 

of the higher education community, we reviewed the 

Department's proposed guidance relating to third party 
Public Hearings – 04/11/23 

87

services with great interest. As noted in our written comments 

to the Dear Colleague letter, we believe a substantially 

expanded definition of third-party services could be 

interpreted as capturing providers like ATI that have no 

responsibility for student recruitment or the administration 

of Title IV funds or programs. This would be a substantial 

departure from the existing statutory framework and prior 

Department guidance and in our view, would have a number of 

harmful impacts on students and institutions such as increased 

cost and reduced competition and innovation in learning. It 

would also negatively impact essential health care workforces. 

Nevertheless, we were heartened by the Department's 

announcement that it will be addressing third party services 

along with other topics through this negotiated rulemaking. We 

believe the negotiated rulemaking process will help produce a 

regulation that benefits the entire community without the 

negative consequences that I've outlined above. Providers and 

products of services to higher institutions will be materially 

affected by the proposed negotiated rulemaking topic, 

particularly with respect to the topic of third-party

services. So, for this reason, I'm here today to request that 

informing the negotiated rulemaking committees, the Department 

delegates at least one negotiating position to represent 

providers of products and services to higher education 

institutions like ATI that have no responsibility for student 

recruitment or the administration of Title IV funds or 

programs. Including a provider like this will help ensure the 

negotiated rulemaking process and includes an important and 

necessary perspective for the other negotiators and the higher 

education community at large. Alternatively, we ask that the 
Public Hearings – 04/11/23 

88

Department establish a subcommittee that would include 

participation by providers like ATI so their perspective can 

be reported to the committee. Thank you for your consideration 

today.

MR. MARTIN:

Thank you for sharing your comments with us. Our next 

commenter will be Ashley Jackson. Ms. Jackson, whenever you 

are ready.

MS. JACKSON:

Thank you. I am Ashley Jackson, Director of Government Affairs 

for the National Association of College and University 

Business Officers, commonly referenced as NACUBO. I thank you 

for the opportunity to share comments on the Department's 

efforts to improve institutional quality and accountability. 

NACUBO is a nonprofit professional organization representing 

chief administrative and financial officers and more than 

1,700 nonprofit and public colleges and universities across 

the country working to advance the economic vitality, business 

practices, and support of higher education institutions in 

pursuit of their missions to include sound fiscal and 

administrative practices at institutions of higher education. 

While NACUBO has concerns on many of the topics the Department 

has outlined in the Federal Register notice, today I'm going 

to focus on cash management provisions. Back in 2014, several 

NACUBO member institutions were nonfederal negotiators having 

a seat at the table while the Department drafted its NPRM 

towards program integrity and improvement regulations, which 

included the Department's most recent update to the cash 

management rules that took effect back in 2016. As related to 
Public Hearings – 04/11/23 

89

cash management, NACUBO's membership is a key constituency 

that can provide valuable insight and perspective into cash 

management regulations. In particular, staff in a college or a 

university student account office, the position officially 

known as bursar. This office is responsible for accepting, 

processing, and applying payments from families, the 

Department, and other agencies by processing refunds and 

maintaining student ledger accounts. As the Department 

examines cash management rules, we strongly encourage you to 

review the limited reference to Treasury's definition of 

electronic funds transfer or EFT, particularly for the 

purposes of transactions initiated by or on behalf of an 

institution, and there we ask you to review your requirement 

that only automatic clearinghouses or ACH transactions be 

used. Payment methods have evolved significantly since 2014. 

Students and consumers continue to adopt new and evolving 

payment methods because they want their transactions to be 

faster, safer, and cheaper. The regulatory flexibilities that 

the Department provided to institutions during the COVID 19 

National Emergency have demonstrated that these methods can be 

trusted for dispersing Title IV aid. Expanding disbursement 

methods beyond ACH, as the Department did in a December 2020 

Federal Register notice to allow institutions and third-party

servicers to utilize Treasury's broad definition of EFT, allow 

students and families timely access to their funds. The 

Federal Register notice mentions permitting schools and thirdparty servicers to use EFTs, including person to person 

payment methods such as Zelle and PayPal, as well as allowing 

schools to use a student's debit card number to transfer funds 

using an original credit transaction or OCT. While specific 
Public Hearings – 04/11/23 

90

methods were mentioned in your 2020 regulatory waiver, we 

encourage you to explore additional methods that can allow for 

the safe, fast, and inexpensive transfer of Title IV funds [30 

seconds] to students. With that, NACUBO looks forward to 

working with the Department in the upcoming negotiated 

rulemaking to include cash management, third party servicers, 

Return to Title IV, among other topics. Again, thank you for 

the opportunity to share comments on the Department's efforts 

to improve institutional quality and accountability. Thank 

you.

MR. MARTIN:

Thank you, Ms. Jackson. Our next speaker will be Deborah 

Butrim. Deborah, whenever you are ready.

MS. BUTRIM:

Thank you. Good afternoon. I'm Deborah Butrim. I served in the 

Army for 20 years. Towards the end of my service, I enrolled 

in a PhD program at Walden University. I was going to enroll 

at a different school, but I met some Walden University 

representatives on base at the local hospital. They seemed to 

be recruiting military members there. They promised that I 

would be able to finish my degree in three years. They made it 

seem like it would be fast and that it would be fully covered 

by my GI Bill. Once I completed the coursework, I selected a 

chair and started the doc study portion. My time at Walden 

turned into a never-ending circle, dragging out my time in the 

program. I would send versions of my dissertation to my chair 

who would provide only small minute changes. I would make 

those changes and then the chair would send back the same 

paper but with a few different changes. The process would 
Public Hearings – 04/11/23 

91

repeat in a never-ending circle. I never received any 

substantive feedback that would improve my work. Just 

elementary edits. It was often just as simple as adding commas 

or semicolons. I was never allowed to progress past this 

phase. I complained about my chair several times. The only 

solution I received was to change my chair, but then I would 

have to start from scratch again. This would have caused me 

even more of a delay and would have cost even more money. I 

had to take the eight-week doc study course over and over for 

a year and a half, around six times in a row. My GI Bill was 

charged each time and eventually my GI Bill benefits dried up. 

I eventually left because I was not willing to take out loans 

and go into debt for more of the same treatment. While at 

Walden, I was required to travel and attend two in-person 

residences. And these were nonsense. They just provided word 

documents that contained links that I could have easily looked 

up myself. There was no benefit to the in-person residences, 

but they used up weeks of my GI Bill. Walden said it would 

take three years to get my degree, and this was not true. I 

felt like my PhD process was dragged out for no educational 

purpose. I hope that you will remember stories like mine when 

you consider the rules around accreditation today. Thank you 

for the time to comment.

MR. MARTIN:

Thank you, Ms. Butrim. Our next speaker will be Yonaton Yares. 

Yonaton, whenever you're ready.

DR. YARES:

Hi. Thank you so much for making the time to Yael to speak 

today. I'm Dr. Yonaton Yares. I recently completed my 
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92

doctorate in higher education via a distance learning program 

at Fairleigh Dickinson. There's a couple areas of discussion 

for rulemaking I wanted to talk about. One is the 

accreditation needs to also be explored for the many 

universities that have turned online learning into a cash cow 

as a means of increasing revenue. It's also interesting that 

for many of them they don't allow their own staff to fully be 

tuition [inaudible] on them. They only do 60% of that, further 

increasing the cash flow of these programs. So, to go through 

and make sure these purposes, these programs do have 

successful completion rates for all students involved. Also in 

terms of the distance learning is the current rules seem to 

vary and point to a synchronous style of learning, whereas my 

master's degree was very asynchronous in style versus the 

doctoral programs that offer synchronous options that students 

need to know when they're going into what the expectation is. 

As was the inaugural cohort in my [inaudible] program, many of 

my fellow classmates were caught off guard with the 

synchronous component of those degrees requirements and how 

that goes about it. That when you're looking at students who 

are pursuing distance education, they are looking at 

asynchronous routes and understanding that although 

asynchronous is not the same as in-person instruction, you can 

still get the same high caliber of education from asynchronous 

education that goes on. I will say my heart goes out to the 

many stories I've heard from the for-profits. I went through a 

dissertation chair switch in the middle. I actually have to 

restart. I was able to go in and advocate. So, I think that's 

very important to know of what happens when you are going 

through a more traditional university versus a for-profit of 
Public Hearings – 04/11/23 

93

what that experience is. I also want to reiterate the request 

that students or recent alumni be involved when this moves to 

the next phase. Our voices matter. And in K-12 education, 

student voice has become a major component of that. Whereas in 

higher education it's oftentimes it's left out or it's so in 

the weeds, students are not even aware of when they can 

participate. Also wanted to address the financial aid 

situation. In my own experience, the financial aid offices 

have often made my own life very challenging and difficult 

during this process, especially if you've got schools that are 

on the quarter-based system and under the current 

understanding for some of the financial aid world, you have to 

be- cross that part-time status during that semester in order 

to do it. So, for example, say you were taking one course in 

the first quarter, then two courses, your aid would not fully 

distribute until you started the dawn of that second course 

during that second quarter. And for many students, that could 

prevent them from being able to pay other bills and things are 

going on even knowing they were enrolled at the time for those 

coursework. So, basically, the point is just it needs to be 

more aware and be more student centric and less administrative 

centric when it comes to these accreditation processes and be 

able to hold accountability across higher education. And 

that's all I've got for you. Thank you so much.

MR. MARTIN:

Thank you, Dr. Yares. Our next commenter will be Jason 

Gabbard. Mr. Gabbard, whenever you are ready.

MR. GABBARD:

Okay. I am here. It won't let me start my video, so you won't 
Public Hearings – 04/11/23 

94

be able to see me. There we go. My name is Jason Gabbard. I 

went to American National University, and I'm here to just 

kind of describe my experience with the low quality and lack 

of accountability of American National University. I kind of 

want to touch on the TRIO programs first as I'm a veteran and 

veterans are a protected entity and the TRIO program, I felt 

like American National University was definitely a school that 

targeted veterans. And they did it in such a manner where they 

would enroll students that I felt weren't eligible or mentally 

capable of enrolling in classes and obtaining the knowledge 

and paying to keep that knowledge moving forward past their 

education. Also, I want to touch on the points for 

accreditation. While I was a student at American National 

University, they lost their accreditation and told me because 

I was also an instructor at the same time as being a student 

in my bachelor's degree, I was teaching associate classes as 

well, which I knew would not help them with their 

accreditation. And for me to not disclose the accreditation 

issues to the students that I was teaching and to kind of keep 

it hush hush at the same time. One of the major issues that I 

have a concern with is the fact that, you know, due to all the 

things that are going on with the lawsuits and with all the 

benefits being given back for you know, student loans to all 

these students that attended some of these schools, one of the 

major issues that I have is the students that attended these 

schools under the assumption that it was a you know, a seal of 

approval school that were veterans and worked to earn the 

benefit of the GI Bill attended these schools use the GI Bill 

benefit to pay for these schools. Now they're getting 

reimbursed for any student loans that they may have been given 
Public Hearings – 04/11/23 

95

to attend these schools, but something that they earned is not 

being reimbursed. And I think that, you know, accountability 

of these schools and how they stand and their stature when it 

comes to their accreditation and, you know, just all oversight 

in general needs to be taken a look at because a lot of these 

things are earned and they're not given back, and you can't 

use them again. And in a lot of cases, some of these students 

may have wanted to pass these benefits on to their spouses or 

their children, and they can't do so. And they've acquired no 

knowledge from the classes or the courses that they've taken. 

Another thing I wanted to touch on was distance education. In 

my experience, I did my bachelor's online, my associate's was 

done on campus. There was a class that I attended in my 

bachelor's degree where I didn't have an instructor for eight 

weeks of a nine-week course. We had an instructor for the 

first day. I pretty much paid a regular tuition to do a selftaught and self-learning program. And most of the people in 

the group met at the local public libraries or each other's 

houses and had to work our way through the coursework on our 

own. So, definitely need accountability for stuff like that as 

well. Now [30 seconds] in conclusion, I am super happy with, 

you know, the stuff that's going on now with the Department of 

Education posting these hearings to improve quality and 

accountability. And I hope that this is seriously taken into 

consideration all these things that the students are bringing 

in. And it's- all these things are taken care of. And I just 

hope that this really helps us as students, and we continue to 

not be failed by the Higher Education Department. That's it 

for me.

MR. MARTIN:
Public Hearings – 04/11/23 

96

Thank you, Mr. Gabbard.

MR. GABBARD:

Absolutely. You guys have a great day.

MR. MARTIN:

You as well. Our next speaker will be Graceanne Hoback. Ms. 

Hoback, whenever you are ready.

MS. HOBACK:

Hi everyone and thank you for the opportunity to speak with 

you all today. My name is Graceanne Hoback, and I am a secondyear political science and sociology student at Florida State 

University. In my first semester at Florida State, I joined 

PIRG, which is a nonprofit student advocacy group, and in 

doing so, I became the textbook affordability campaign 

coordinator for Florida State, as well as for some national 

efforts of student PIRGs. And in my position as campaign 

coordinator, I wanted to better understand the scope of the 

burden felt by students from the intentional hidden practices 

of these textbook corporations. The image of the textbook 

affordability campaign attacking, say, like a expensive 

paperback book from McGraw Hill is certainly outdated. The 

greatest threat to students’ equal access to course materials 

is now automatic billing programs for books and homework 

provided by third party servicers. And I do want to thank the 

Department's efforts at regulating these opt-out programs 

through things like the Department's 2015 cash management rule 

for companies, partnering with universities and interacting 

with students' financial aid to finance course material 

purchases. These standards, though, certainly they do protect 
Public Hearings – 04/11/23 

97

students interests, however, in moving forward, automatic 

billing and access codes have expanded significantly since 

then. And while these programs are technically opt-out, the 

option is not clear to students. And I've worked at the 

grassroots level on this issue with many students across the 

country and heard many student testimonials on the impact of 

automatic billing. The problem here is no longer one of 

students scraping by to find the means to buy a textbook. It's 

that they don't have the choice. They're being automatically 

billed for these materials and are not given the quote 

unquote, saying that we always say of students get to choose 

between groceries or textbooks, which is a horrible situation. 

But now the choice is now being taken out of their hands. And 

this shift in structure of accessing textbooks has caused a 

peer of mine to be in unrelievable stress this semester 

because her expected amount of refund from her scholarship has 

shrunken due to automatic billing for her textbooks, a cost 

she would have prevented if she knew about the opt-out process 

and how to get out of the charges that she was charged for in 

her required courses. And so, this opt-out process is not only 

poorly communicated to students, but also largely 

misunderstood by my peers' parents, as I assume many students 

are in this situation. And her parents are frustrated in the 

sense that her living expenses are not covered by her 

scholarship. And as a student going through college and trying 

to provide for yourself when charges are taken away from a 

scholarship refund that you are expecting to be able to fund 

your basic living needs, it does certainly put a damper in 

your plans of how you're going to get by for the semester. And 

so, for students, this secretive process of automatic billing 
Public Hearings – 04/11/23 

98

is slightly taking away the choice from us as to whether we 

want to choose groceries or course material. And these 

bundles, of course, readings, attendance, and homework. They 

all force students to find the means to participate as our 

GPAs are now significantly more dependent on if we do buy our 

course materials and so this threatening partnership between 

textbook companies and universities does need to be 

interrupted by a greater call for transparency between 

universities and their students. And having been in an opt-out 

class personally, I, alongside my classmates and professor, 

we're all confused what the $100 additional charge was. And I 

would certainly love to see professors and admin better 

communicating the opt-out process and knowing of it themselves 

and how it works. But beyond that, I certainly do compel the 

Department to regulate the billing contracts between 

publishers and universities so that publishers may not further 

take advantage of this secretive process and increase their 

prices during the terms of their contracts, and then I also 

recommend further regulating the extent to which publishers 

can bundle course materials and having to pay for homework and 

course assessments, students are not able to truly participate 

merely by paying tuition.

MR. MARTIN:

30 seconds.

MS. HOBACK:

I do hope these suggestions help communicate the student 

interest and wanting greater control over our own academic 

experience. And once again, thank you for listening to the 

student voice today and I appreciate everything the Department 
Public Hearings – 04/11/23 

99

is doing.

MR. MARTIN:

Thank you, Ms. Hoback.

MS. HOBACK:

Thank you.

MR. MARTIN: 

We are now going to take a brief break while we wait for our 

last commenter to get ready to present. So, it should be just 

a few minutes and we'll be right back. Welcome back. We have 

one more speaker this afternoon before we conclude. And our 

final speaker will be Shraddha Babariya. I hope I pronounced 

that correctly. And Ms. Babariya, whenever you are ready, you 

may begin.

MS. BABARIYA:

Hi. My name is Shraddha Babariya, and I went to a school 

called Hope Medical Institute. And I'm speaking today because 

I wanted to share my experience due to the lack of quality and 

accountability through my medical education. And it relates to 

some of the topics at hand today. So, in regards to the TRIO 

programs, I don't really understand all of the intricacies of 

the TRIO programs, but from my understanding, it's meant to 

serve minorities. And I can say that- I can say with certainty 

that HMI harmed minorities, they racially or ethnically 

targeted students and they were playing into stereotypes such 

as Indian or Southeast Asian members tend to want their 

children to be doctors, and they tried to make it out to be a 

family affair so they could recruit multiple people from 
Public Hearings – 04/11/23 

100

within a family unit. They made it a very social, I guess not 

event, but they networked a lot within our community. In terms 

of Title IV funding, I wanted to share that my decision to 

attend HMI, or Hope Medical Institute, HMI for short, was 

influenced by them receiving Title IV funding. And I wouldn't 

have gone to this school unless they- well, basically, I went 

to the school because they did receive federal funding from 

the Department of Education. It was a very big factor because 

my parents- it was both me and my brother attending school 

together and we needed the financial aid in order to proceed. 

I know that, well, I guess now that I know that HMI is a 

predatory school, at the time when I was attending, I kind of 

brushed it off as if it were my fault that they fooled me. I 

had no clue that the US Department of Education has oversight 

of this. If anything, when applying as a 19-year-old I thought 

HMI was legitimate because I could get these student loans to 

go there. In regards to cash management, I just wanted to 

briefly share how our loan checks were withheld from us until 

our parents paid the middleman fees and these middleman fees 

would go directly to HMI while the loan checks would be used 

to pay for our tuition at the Medical University of Lublin in 

Poland. And these are fees that we did not know up upfront 

that it would be covered by federal loans, and we were often 

threatened if we would not be able, or we were often 

threatened and told we couldn't go to class or would be 

withdrawn from classes if these outstanding fees weren't 

resolved. So, I just want to leave you with three points that 

HMI deceived, and it continues to deceive students. If you 

look at their website, it claims a lot of things that are not 

true by misrepresenting opportunities that are [30 seconds] 
Public Hearings – 04/11/23 

101

For example, they claim to have a 100% pass rate on boards, 

but only a small portion of students are allowed to sit for 

boards, which is skewed. Also, HMI, again, is a middleman. 

They're not a med school, but they portrayed out to be this 

school and we're able to receive funding whereas we were able 

to get student loans through them. And then [Time] Sorry.

MR. MARTIN:

Your time is up. You must conclude your remarks. Thank you for 

sharing your thoughts with us this afternoon.

MS. BABARIYA:

Sure. Thank you.

MR. MARTIN:

This concludes today's public hearing. I would like to thank 

all of our speakers for taking the time to prepare their 

remarks and share them with us. As a reminder, comments may be 

submitted electronically at www.Regulations.gov. Our second 

public hearing will begin tomorrow at 10 a.m. Eastern Daylight 

Savings Time. Thank you, and good afternoon.