CECU Daily Update Email

Education Politics and Policy
Senate Compromise on HBCU Funding, FAFSA – Inside Higher Ed
Those bills would have served as a stripped-down version of a reauthorized Higher Education Act and included proposals for extending Pell Grant eligibility to short-term programs and incarcerated students.
 
Durbin: Will Senators Stand With Betsy DeVos Or Defrauded Student Borrowers?
U.S. Senate Democratic Whip Dick Durbin (D-IL) today, in a speech on the Senate floor, slammed Department of Education Secretary Betsy DeVos’ rewritten borrower defense rule that guts essential protections for student borrowers and taxpayers.
 
Education Department collected loans from 45,801 defrauded students, nearly 3 times more than estimated – Fox News
Education Secretary Betsy DeVos collected student loan repayments from 45,801 students who were defrauded by now-defunct Corinthian Colleges in a move that defied court mandates to cease loan collections, according to a compliance report by the Department of Education (DOE) filed Tuesday. 

​Financial Aid/Student Loan Issues
Chatbots, Loan Simulators, and a Stand-Alone FSA — ED Reveals Ambitious Plans at Annual Training Conference – NASFAA
Kicking off the first day of the Office of Federal Student Aid (FSA) Training Conference in Reno, Nevada, Education Secretary Betsy DeVos told a room full of financial aid professionals that FSA would function better as a stand-alone agency.
 
DeVos proposes spinning off federal student loans from Education Department into independent agency – Politico
The Trump administration proposed Tuesday to break off the nearly $1.5 trillion federal student loan portfolio from the Education Department and have it instead be managed by a new independent federal agency.
 
Secretary DeVos Shares Vision for a Better, Stronger Federal Student Aid at Annual Training Conference
She detailed both what FSA can and is doing now, including continued enhancements to customer service through the transformative myStudentAid app, and what requires the action of others, including improving how FSA is structured and governed. 

Veterans for Career Education (VCE)
(Video) U.S. Army Veteran, Keith Wilson, found the support he was looking for from fellow veterans at IntelliTec College after he left the military to pursue his career goals.
 
Click here to watch the interview.
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Legal and Regulatory Issues
Colleges Should Prepare: ED Loan Discharge Letters on the Way – Thompson Coburn
The first of the two electronic announcements is titled “Implementation of School Notice Requirements Under the 2016 Borrower Defense Regulations,” and concerns the roll out of the 2016 borrower defense claim process.

​Education News
The other college debt crisis: Schools are going broke – CNBC
Small, private liberal arts colleges — a staple of American academia since before the founding of the republic — are colliding with new realities including changing demographics, ever-increasing demand for technical skills and competition with bigger and richer schools.
 
Why Isn’t It a No-Brainer to Embed ‘Certifications’ Into Bachelor’s Degrees? – The Chronicle of Higher Education
At community colleges, the idea of students earning industry and professional certifications as they pursue their education is often standard operating procedure. At four-year colleges, not so much. 

​Career Education Convention
hosted by CECU & FAPSC
June 7-10 | Orlando, FL | www.career.org/convention
 
This year CECU will be partnering with FAPSC, the Florida state association. The CECU Annual Convention and FAPSC Annual Conference have joined forces to maximize the conference experience for all attendees!
 
Important Dates:
Dec 9 - Allied Member booth registration opens, (reg. link will be emailed 9am EST)
Dec 16 - Booth registration open to the public (reg. link will be posted here)
Feb 3 - Attendee registration opens
Feb 3 - Call for Sessions opens