The Higher Education Act of 1965 (HEA; P.L. 89-329), authorizes the operation of programs and activities that make federal financial assistance available to individuals who are pursuing a postsecondary education and to institutions of higher education (IHEs). It also authorizes a number of other activities and functions. While the HEA was last comprehensively reauthorized in 2008 under the Higher Education Opportunity Act (HEOA; P.L. 110-315 ), it has been amended on numerous occasions since then. Amendments to the HEA in the 114 th Congress include those made under the Federal Perkins Loan Program Extension Act of 2015 ( P.L. 114-105 ), and the Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2016 ( P.L. 114-113 ). On Wednesday, June 22, 2016, the House Committee on Education and the Workforce marked up and ordered reported the following five bills that would amend selected HEA programs and activities: H.R. 5528 , the Simplifying the Application for Student Aid Act; H.R. 3178 , the Strengthening Transparency in Higher Education Act; H.R. 3179 , the Empowering Students Through Enhanced Financial Counseling Act; H.R. 5529 , the Accessing Higher Education Opportunities Act; and H.R. 5530 , the HBCU Capital Financing Improvement Act. This report identifies and describes how the proposals made in these five bills would amend the programs and activities authorized under the HEA. Each bill is described separately. Under federal student aid need analysis procedures, a student's calculated ability to pay for higher education is known as the "expected family contribution" (EFC). The EFC is determined by a formula that considers the income and assets of the student and, if applicable, the student's parents or spouse. Information to calculate the EFC is collected via the Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA). If applicable, family members who have submitted their income tax returns for the applicable tax year prior to completing the FAFSA may be able to import tax information to the FAFSA using the Internal Revenue Service Data Retrieval Tool (IRS-DRT). H.R. 5528 would make several changes to the FAFSA completion and submission process with the intent of reducing respondent burden in completing the form. Finally, the bill would make technical changes to the calculation of the annual adjustment percentage for federal Pell Grants. The HEA specifies that the EFC formula considers the income and other tax information of the student's family in the calendar year prior to the academic year (i.e., the EFC for the 2015-2016 academic year was based on information from the 2014 income tax return). However, the HEA also grants ED the authority to adjust this definition and base EFCs on tax returns from the second preceding year ("prior-prior year"). ED will exercise this authority for the first time in academic year 2017-2018 when it will base EFCs on information from 2015 tax returns. H.R. 5528 would amend the HEA to specify that ED "shall" base income for the purposes of calculating the EFC on information from the second-preceding tax year. This would make permanent ED's recent administrative change of basing federal student aid on prior-prior year tax information. Sponsors of the bill and student aid stakeholder organizations have suggested that this shift in the reference year will make it more likely that applicable tax information will be available through the IRS-DRT and thus reduce the amount of information that families must input to the FAFSA manually. Currently, a family may submit the FAFSA through ED's website or via a paper application. H.R. 5528 directs ED to "make the electronic version of the forms ... available through a technology tool that can be used on mobile devices." The bill specifies that the mobile version of the FAFSA shall be available within 180 days of enactment and must permit the user to save responses and submit the form to ED. The bill directs ED to conduct consumer testing "to ensure the forms and technology tool are designed to be easily usable and understandable by students and families." As noted above, some families may use the IRS-DRT to import tax information into the FAFSA. H.R. 5528 directs ED to "make every effort" to increase the functionality and reliability of the IRS-DRT and reduce the amount of information that must be manually entered into the FAFSA. The bill also specifically directs ED to implement the IRS-DRT such that families of all tax filing statuses (single, married filing jointly, married filing separately) can use the tool to its full capability. The total maximum Pell Grant award amount is the sum of the discretionary base maximum award and the mandatory "add-on" award. For award year (AY) 2014-2015 through AY2017-2018, current law permits the total maximum Pell Grant award to increase with inflation as long as the discretionary base maximum award is $4,860. The inflation rate is calculated as the change in the Consumer Price Index for All Urban Consumers (CPI-U), as measured from the most recently completed calendar year before the start of each applicable award year. H.R. 5528 would modify the calculation of the inflation rate to measure the change in CPI-U over the most recently completed fiscal year. This change would only apply to AY2017-2018, as current law does not authorize the total maximum Pell Grant award amount to adjust automatically thereafter. The HEA was amended by the HEOA to establish a number of provisions that require the reporting and publication of detailed information about institutions of higher education and their offerings, the students who attend them, and college costs and prices. Current requirements include the reporting and publication of this information on the College Navigator website, the development of net price calculators and multi-year tuition calculators, and the publication of College Affordability and Transparency Lists and State Higher Education Spending Charts. H.R. 3178 would establish a College Dashboard as the successor to the College Navigator website, and would revise the information required to be reported on it. The bill would also repeal the requirement to publicize College Affordability and Transparency Lists and State Higher Education Spending Charts, revise the requirements applicable to net price calculators, and repeal the requirement for multi-year tuition calculators. The HEA currently requires the Department of Education to make certain types of consumer information about IHEs that participate in the Title IV federal student aid programs publicly available on the College Navigator website. H.R. 3178 would require ED to establish a new consumer-tested College Dashboard website to succeed the College Navigator website. With the College Dashboard, requirements for the reporting and disclosure of consumer information would be revised. For instance, the bill would require the publication of information on completion rates for all undergraduate students, rather than only for first-time, full-time undergraduate students, as is currently required. Information on completion rates would also be disaggregated for a variety of student subgroups; and the reporting of information on topics such as cost of attendance, net price, financial aid, student loan debt, and veterans education benefits would be required to be reflective of undergraduate student enrollment as a whole, as opposed to only first-time, full-time students. Additionally, requirements for the reporting of information on academic faculty would be added, while the reporting of information on undergraduate admissions and standardized test scores would be eliminated. H.R. 3178 would also require that students who complete a FAFSA be provided with a link to the College Dashboard website for each institution they include on the FAFSA. The HEA requires each IHE that participates in the Title IV federal student aid programs to make a net price calculator available on its website to help current and prospective students obtain estimates of their net price at the institution. Net price is the average amount a student pays to attend an IHE in a single academic year, after subtracting need-based and merit-based grant and scholarship aid (i.e., aid that does not need to be repaid). H.R. 3178 would establish new, minimum requirements for net price calculators, including that IHEs provide clearly labeled and prominent links to their net price calculator on the portions of their websites where information on costs and student aid is made available. Net price calculators also would be required to display results for the various components of the cost of attendance of a full-time undergraduate student (e.g., tuition and fees, room and board, books and supplies), and estimated total need-based and merit-based grant and scholarship aid available to a full-time undergraduate student. In addition, information would need to be provided on the percentages of students who receive need-based or merit-based grant or scholarship aid. H.R. 3178 would also prohibit IHEs from selling or disclosing to third parties any personally identifiable information provided by users of net price calculators. The HEA requires that Title IV-participating IHEs make available loan entrance and loan exit counseling to certain Direct Loan (DL) borrowers, which generally provides borrowers with information relating to their Direct Loan terms and conditions, and with debt management strategies in the case of exit counseling. The provision of this loan counseling is intended to provide borrowers with information about the federal student aid debt they may incur and the consequences of doing so. H.R. 3179 would make numerous amendments to the current loan counseling requirements, with the intent of enhancing the timing, frequency, and content of the counseling to enable borrowers to make sound borrowing decisions. HEA Section 485(l) requires IHEs to provide entrance counseling at or prior to the time of disbursement of Direct Loans to most first-time DL borrowers.