CECU Daily Update Email

COVID-19 Resources & Webinars
On March 13, 2020, Career Education Colleges and Universities launched an information webpage for institutions responding to Coronavirus (COVID-19). CECU’s Coronavirus webpage includes a multitude of helpful resources to assist higher education leaders understand the various legal and operational implications of temporarily closing a campus or adapting courses to online learning.

View all past webinars here.

Upcoming Webinars:
Alleviate Student & School Financial Stress (while remaining compliant) During the COVID-19 Crisis
Tuesday, April 7th | 2:00PM EDT
Register Here
Presenter: Presenter: Sean Steinmarc, TFC Tuition Financing
With economic uncertainty looming for students, and schools thrust into a remote workforce environment, we need to find the right ways to manage student financing while minimizing impact to school operations.
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Topics included in this webinar:
• Proper ways to defer student payments and/or forgive interest
• Ways to alleviate student financial concerns without deferring payments
• Refinancing institutional loans to improve student affordability and lessen default rates
• Managing financial paperwork remotely
• How to handle payment collections when students can’t walk into your office

Coronavirus - Education News
Respiratory Therapists: Invisible Heroes
Respiratory Therapists have been part of the Allied Health profession since the early 1940s. These professionals are responsible for ventilators. Advances in medical engineering warranted higher levels of specialization in the field of Respiratory Care, as ventilators have evolved into sophisticated machines with a variety of breathing modalities.
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‘Zoombies’ Take Over Online Classrooms – Inside Higher Ed
Digital disruptors sharing racist, sexist and pornographic content in Zoom videoconferences show no sign of slowing down as “Zoombombing” trend grows.

Additional Coronavirus Coverage
Pandemic’s New Victim? Free College – Inside Higher Ed; Coronavirus Complicates an Already Tricky Balancing Act for Adult Learners – The Chronicle of Higher Education; COVID-19: Why higher ed may never be the same – University Business; The 3 Biggest Remote Teaching Concerns We Need to Solve Now – EdSurge.

Coronavirus - Financial Aid/Student Loan Issues
Consumer Protection Groups on the Lookout for New Student Debt Relief Scams Amid COVID Outbreak – NASFAA
As the coronavirus outbreak continues to impose new financial realities on consumers, it also subjects student loan borrowers to uncertainty in their repayment plans, which could make them more susceptible to scams stemming from the outbreak.

How the Education Department will suspend student loan payments – Politico
The Trump administration is planning to implement the roughly six-month pause on federal student loan payments included in the coronavirus economic stimulus law by April 10, according to people briefed on the Education Department’s guidance provided to loan servicing companies.

ED Directs Servicers to Implement COVID-19 Student Loan Relief by Next Week – NASFAA
According to the guidance, POLITICO reported, loan servicers will be required by the end of next week to apply the benefits of the COVID-19 relief package retroactively to March 13, and to turn off automatic payments for borrowers who have recurring ACH transfers.

Coronavirus - CARES Act
How might colleges benefit from the coronavirus stimulus package? – Education Dive
ACE used the formula outlined in the legislation for how the money would be distributed. It’s based on enrollments of two groups of students: full-time students who receive federal Pell Grants and full-time students who do not.

Moody’s: $14B stimulus funding unlikely to cover colleges’ coronavirus expenses – Education Dive
Although the stimulus package is “mildly credit positive” for the higher ed sector, the analysts note the amount it allocates directly to colleges for their own use is equal to just 1% of total university expenditures.

Education News
Lori Loughlin and 13 other defendants move to dismiss charges in college admissions scandal – CNN
Attorneys for parents in the college admissions scandal case, including Lori Loughlin and her husband Mossimo Giannulli, filed a collection of motions to the dismiss charges against them in Massachusetts federal court Wednesday.

Regulatory News
Not Fooling – A Third Package of Proposed Regs Has Arrived – WCET Frontiers
In the midst of managing rapid conversion of face-to-face courses to online to maintain academic continuity during a pandemic, we received the third package of proposed regulations addressing Distance Education and Innovation from the 2019 U.S. Department of Education Negotiated Rulemaking.

New Regulations Review #1: Regular & Substantive Interaction – WCET Frontiers
This post will examine the proposed changes to the distance education and credit hour definitions.

Online Education Advocacy Group Launches as Dept. of Ed Proposes Loosening Regulations – Ed Surge
The partnership linking the Online Learning Consortium, Quality Matters, University Professional and Continuing Education Association and WICHE Cooperative for Educational Technologies has been in the works for about a year, says Deb Adair, executive director of Quality Matters.

Workforce News
Over 6.6 Million People Filed For Unemployment: Experts Predict 20 Million More Jobs Will Soon Be Lost – Forbes
On Thursday, the Department of Labor reported that a staggering and record-setting 6,648,000 initial unemployment claims were filed for the week ending March 28.

Coronavirus - Resources
CER Coronavirus (COVID-19) News Coverage
We have put all of our coronavirus coverage regarding higher education on one page. View coverage here.

Coronavirus (COVID-19) Web Center - NASFAA
This web center has been created to keep NASFAA members and the financial aid community updated on pertinent news related to the coronavirus (COVID-19).

COVID-19 Resources Every Institution Needs
We all feel the impact of the COVID-19 virus pandemic affecting our lives, personally and professionally. We hope that everyone is safe and healthy. For institutions of higher education, your communities are your extended families and the efforts we have seen nationwide to continue to provide educational services and support has been inspiring. Certainly this predicament has been the most challenging event for institutions as a whole in modern history.