The Higher Education Opportunity Act has certainly set the wheels in motion to help wrestle with some of the more undefined or ambiguous aspects of Higher Education. At CheapScholar.org, I like to focus more on the financial aspect of this legislation (since our motto is “Helping to Make College Affordable”).  I have already discussed how these new laws will be impacting the purchasing of textbooks (in a positive way) and also how it will help families to accurately compare the cost of one college to another.  Today is the last article that I am going to write about HEOA (at least in this series) and I would like to focus on the future of HEOA and how it may impact you (from a financial aspect).

The Future of HEOA

While this piece of legislation was going through the drafting phases, a good number of “price controls” didn’t make the final draft but that doesn’t mean that they won’t make an appearance on a future version of this bill. The following represents some initiatives that are being considered by the federal government to help mitigate future increases in education costs:

• No longer provide Title IV funding (federal financial aid) other than Direct Loans and Pell Grants to schools that increase tuition rates by more than twice the rate of inflation. While this seems like a logical proposal, my guess is that the reduction in this funding may actually hurt students (financially) than help. Some schools heavily depend on Title IV funding to balance the budget each year. If these funds are not available, they may be forced to pass the costs onto the students in the form of fee increases or program reductions/cuts.
• Require Additional Reporting to the Department of Education from institutions that exceed the “college affordability index” for three or more years. This proposal is actually set to be in place by July of 2011 but the details are still being hammered out. Schools that meet this criteria will have the additional review from DOE but will also be reported to their accreditors, and be subject to an audit by the Inspector General.
• Establish Third-Party Oversight Committees to review operations on the top 5% of campuses that have the highest cost of tuition increases. These committees will pull “experts” from various sectors of Higher Education and try to identify any areas of spending on campuses that can be contained or better controlled.
• Require schools to report net price information with all admission materials.  This may be beneficial for those that aren’t accessing the online net price calculators but it could be quite challenging for admission offices to have the most current information on all of their brochures.

Even though the legislation above is still on the drafting board and has not made it into law, it is good to know that the education division of our federal government (DOE) is still working to implement measures that will help to make college affordable (and accessible) by all regardless of socioeconomic status. My only hope is that they implement the right legislation for the right reasons and just don’t create some more bureaucratic hurdles that ultimately don’t help students and saddle down colleges with burdensome reporting requirements. I guess time will tell…