NASFAA Off The Cuff Episode 76. Hey everyone, welcome to another edition of Off The Cuff, I'm Justin Draeger.

Transcription

1 NASFAA Off The Cuff Episode 76 Hey everyone, welcome to another edition of Off The Cuff, I'm Justin Draeger. I'm Allie Bidwell, one of our Today's News reporters. I'm Stephen Payne with NASFAA'S policy team. I'm Megan Coval, with NASFAA's policy team. Welcome back, everyone, this is the first time we've been together in- Over a month, with everyone. Yeah, it's been awhile. It's been busy. Stephen, you got married. Yeah, check. Do we wanna talk about that, or are we good? No? We're good? Was it the best day of your life? It was a great day, I think so. I mean, you can't put it above your birthday because that's the day you were born. Right, but I have no memory of that. I know, but you wouldn't exist without that. True, it was very significant. No, we had a blast. It was a great day, great honeymoon. Did you do the wedding and reception all in one day? Yes. Well, congratulations. Was the weather cooperative? Yeah, when it needed to be, which is all that matters. Well, we are one and a half weeks from the conference, right? So, on a scale... how many sessions are you doing? Do you remember?

2 I think six, I'm involved in. Six, and Stephen? Four. Okay. So, on a scale from one to ten, how prepared are you? Ten being the most prepared for your sessions. Five, and that's a little generous. Four. I wish everyone could see Stephen's face right now. Stephen? Yeah, five. I mean, it's not like nothing's been happening. In fact, a lot's been happening on the hill. A lot of prep calls, and we've been working. Like well-intended to be more prepped. But I mean like, competing. Oh, competing attention, yes. With policy, you could carve out... 'cause I saw, Megan, you had carved out, like, hours to get this stuff done this week. And I have not done any of it. Right, because you just keep getting pulled into stuff, and yada yada... For my part, I would say normally I would be at a five or six. For my part, this year, I'm at, like, an eight. That's really good. Yeah. I'm in a good place. I think it's 'cause I took vacation earlier, but I'm feeling very prepared for this conference. It's gonna be a great conference in Austin. Numbers are all great, where we want them to be. We're gonna do a podcast at the conference. 4:20, which is at kind of an odd time. 4:20 to 5:20. And where is that?

3 The Learning Lounge in the Exhibit Hall. So it's in the Exhibit Hall. What day is it? Monday. Monday. During the Un-Wine d happy hour. During happy hour. Oh, so there will be wine. Yeah. And then people can come over. And then we're gonna have-- They can come over and heckle us with their wine. We're gonna have some games, we're gonna have some prizes, we're gonna have some new Off The Cuff swag. We're gonna be making a big announcement at this session. What are you most looking forward to about the conference? I'm not just saying this because you're plugging it right now, but I had a lot of fun doing the live Off The Cuff. Same. Oh you guys did it? Okay, good. Yeah, I think it's fun and I feel like I'm excited about some of the things that we have planned for this year. And it's just nice to have all of our staff in the same place and to see members in person. Like we just communicate, yeah. It's a mixed bag, right? Like this is sort of, like, from the staff side, a little bit like, it can be rough. So when you come out the other side of it as a staff, it feels like we all just went through something together. So, it's morning til night. How about you, Stephen, what are you looking forward to? The NASFAA dance party. Did you actually buy tickets? Are you going? Yes, I am.

4 Justin Draeger I'm going. Allie, you're going to the dance party? I am. And is that what you're most looking forward to? No, I think I'm most looking forward to the podcast. Okay. For me, the opening session's gonna be a lot of fun. We have something special to share with the entire audience. Oh, I forgot about that. Me too. Okay, without spoiling what it is, be honest, okay? It's just us, let's be honest. Do you think this is gonna, like, bomb, or Oh, I think it's gonna be amazing. Okay, you predict amazing. Yes. Megan? I mean, it's a little risky. I mean, not risque, but risky. Nice distinction, that's important. Do you know what I'm saying? It's not risque in terms of, like, rated R content. It's just, it's different. Yeah. I think people are gonna love it. What, Allie, what? I just think it's funny the things that NASFAA considers risky. Well, we're in higher ed. It's a very We're really pushing the envelope here. Alright, well when you put it that way... Stephen, you have a... did you see it? Were you here when we watched it? What'd you think?

5 Yes. When I saw whatever we're doing, surprise, I think it's quick. So I think that, I don't know if everyone's gonna be able to like Okay. Do you know what I mean? Yes. Will they catch it. Yeah. But I think it's great. I think people are gonna love it. And so it's going to, in some... whatever this is will be available later on, right? Yeah, yeah. They can digest. Or take a look at whatever it is. I'm most looking forward to our opening session, besides the surprise, we have Wes Moore, who's coming to speak. He's excellent. I'm looking forward to our Wednesday morning session. We're gonna be doing a very expansive-type session, so it's not just inside the beltway, it's really about trends and opinions and philosophies that are sort of underwriting some of the -- underpinning some of the philosophies and legislation we're seeing coming out of D.C. I'm excited for our reauth. session that the three of us, Megan and Stephen, are doing. That's Monday morning, early. Yeah. We have congressional staff in town. Yeah, we have two congressional sessions from the Senate and the House. I can't remember, those are both Tuesday afternoon, I think. Yep. One's at 3:00, one's at 4:15. Yeah. So they'll be talking with the people who drafted the Prosper Act, and people who are working on Senate reauth. It's gonna be solid. They're all solid, but it's gonna be the best one yet. Agreed. This is gonna be sort of our last podcast, traditional podcast before the conference. Next week we have some special guests coming in, you wanna talk a little bit about what we're doing next week, Allie? Yeah, so Megan and I mentioned last week that we are gonna have Rachel Fishman from New America coming in to talk about the report that they've released recently on awards letters. Laura Keane from uaspire, and uaspire

6 collaborated with New America on this report, so it'll be a special episode focusing on that and just getting into the details of everything in that report. Yep. Speaking of last week, so you guys, you ladies, held down the fort for us. Feedback was good from that. In fact, I don't know if you saw this, Stephen, but one person said that it was the best podcast episode ever. That's awesome. Kudos. Thanks. That's exactly how I felt. Just really happy for them. Right, no sarcasm at all. No, actually, I knew you guys would do a great job. So, alright. Let's get into what's happening this week. Stephen, we had some action -- potential action in the House on PROSPER. You wanna catch us up? Sure. So, as we've been talking about over the last few months, the House Republican HEA bill, dubbed the PROSPER Act, has passed out of committee last December, and as sort of the Schoolhouse Rock "How A Bill Becomes A Law" process, once the bill goes out of committee, then it can come to the floor, and so Chairwoman Foxx has been working for some time, and I think we've even talked about this on the podcast before, to pull in offices to support the bill and try to get the number of votes she needs to sort of confirm that it can pass on the floor, right? Because leadership doesn't wanna bring a bill to the floor that's going to fail. It's sort of a waste of everyone's time and it doesn't look good. So, we found out this past week that the Whip's office, and that's the office sort of in charge of getting votes together, was conducting sort of an informal poll of the -- or formal, I guess, of the Republican caucus to see if there were the votes needed to pass the Prosper Act if it were to come to the floor in the next week or two, or few weeks. And, sort of the consensus out of that -- they don't release numbers or statistics on the vote -- was that this sort of caucus poll was not too favorable for the PROSPER Act, and that we may not see action on the bill in the near future. Obviously that doesn't mean it's dead, in any way, shape or form. There's negotiations that can happen to change the bill, to get more support, and this and that. But at this point, it doesn't look like there are the votes today to pass it on the floor. Yeah, they... how many, is it 218 Republican votes. So they need to pick up that many, 'cause no Democrats will be supporting it. Mm-hmm.

7 There's also some vacancies, which, I haven't looked into the math on that, but that's something to keep in mind. If it's a really tight vote, there's a few vacancies right now in the House from some members who have resigned. And we didn't hear, at least I didn't see anything official out of Chairwoman Foxx's office on it. You kind of alluded to that, but it's not like there was sort of this announcement that came out that said, "We won't be taking it to the floor," it's just sort of silence, which we take to mean. Yeah, she's been... I guess their office, at least political reporters have been referring people to McCarthy's office and the Whip's office. She definitely has the support of her committee members, because they've all, except for Representative Grothman, from Wisconsin, have all co-sponsored the bill. And there are a number of moderates in there who I know didn't like provisions in the bill, based on conversations we've had with them. But there are no other co-sponsors on the bill other than committee Republicans. And so.. Are any of those committee Republicans at risk of, do they have serious competitors in their districts? I'm trying to think of the committee members. I know you have Elise Stefanik from New York State, who's a co-sponsor on the bill, who's definitely more of a moderate member. I don't know the exact sway of her district. You've got a lot of who you think of as the folks who are really in those battleground districts who are on the committee. I just wonder, as co-sponsors, if any of them really are taking a battering in their midterm because of that co-sponsorship. It seems like there are bigger issues, and in a lot of ways, this election will be more about Trump than necessarily Than HEA reauthorization? Yeah. Well, certainly more than HEA reauthorization. Oh, dream shatterers. But that's the case with any President in the midterm. Right, but I think that gets at why leadership doesn't really care, right? It's like, if you have the votes, great. Let's bring it. If you don't, fine. Trump's not putting the pedal to the metal, trying to get this through. It's not like there's a pending security issue that we need to have action on. No, and they've got other top priorities. Spending being chief among them, and on that note, we are moving pretty quickly on spending bills. We have a markup scheduled this week. Stephen, you wanna catch us up here?

8 Yeah. So we saw, today actually, the House Appropriations Committee released the text of the legislation for their fiscal year '19, that's award year spending bill. And we only have the text right now; most of the details are found in the committee report, but from what we can tell from the text of the bill, you can see that it looks like student aid across the board will be level-funded. And that includes the maximum Pell Grant award at $6,095. So we didn't see any boosts, but no cuts. And we didn't see any cut to the Pell reserves. Again, just a disclaimer, notice that we still don't have the committee report, and that's where sometimes there's language on how the funds have to be spent, or direction of the department, or further information. For example, last year we saw in the omnimbus bill, funding for PSLF, for borrowers who had been in the wrong repayment plan and had essentially qualifying payments, but that aren't being counted as qualifying to sort of re-count those. We'll see if that's included, and we need to wait for the committee report to tell that at this point. So, more to come. The mark-up will be tomorrow. From there, where does it go? So the mark-up will be tomorrow in the sub-committee, and then the full committee is expected to take it up next week. Are they doing... I thought I heard somewhere... Are they doing amendments tomorrow during the sub-committee mark-up? They said in an update we received from a coalition we're a part of, they said that the Democrats are probably going to withhold their amendments until the full committee mark-up. But that could change. It's all just a strategy thing and a messaging thing. Because in the house, as we well know, and you can look at PROSPER as an example, you don't need anyone from the minority to support anything you're doing, so it's all about messaging. Yeah. And messaging on a Friday in June doesn't usually get out. And then, from there we'll wait for the Senate to see what they're planning, and we expect that bill out in the next few weeks, too, so as always, the summer is big with approps, but as we've seen the last two years, they waited til May and March to wrap it up of the next year. Hopefully we'll get back closer to finishing this up by October 1. It seems like there's some commitment, but we hear this every year. It's like a broken record that we wanna do this all under regular order, bring all the bills to the floor, make it happen by October first, but we just don't see that. I mean, odds could happen, are more likely for that to happen in the House, just for the reason you said, right? 'Cause you don't need minority support. Right.

9 And the Senate, they could be doing calculus about what the Senate looks like after November to determine whether Democrats are willing to move. Yeah, and what they do, typically -- and we could spend a whole podcast talking about budget and appropriations process -- but what they've done this year is, the House has already passed three of the appropriations bills on the floor. But what they do is they typically start with the most non-controversial. So, military VA funding, defense, the ledge branch, funding their own offices and their own salaries, things that aren't too controversial. Our bill, the Labor, HHS, Education, and Related Agencies, which we talk about all the time, is super-controversial. You have healthcare in there, labor, union issues, abortion gets thrown in, there's just a lot of issues in there that make it harder to get through. So, that's why we're typically last. Alright, we will keep our eyes on that. Something else going on this week, we had some reports come out about, looks like maybe through some FOIA requesting, some official numbers about downsizing at the Department of Education. Megan, you wanna catch us up here? Yeah, so it came out this week that, from the time that the Trump administration came in officially, through this past April, there's been a reduction in employees by 550 people at the department. Which is a total of 13 percent. So that, I think they're making the point, is sort of unprecedented compared to prior administrations. This is something Betsy DeVos has been open about, and I really think this is sort of a top-down directive to, when President Trump first came in, he was talking about streamlining, and reducing the bureaucratic red tape and things like that. So it doesn't seem to be that the department is apologizing for this, or thinks that this is problematic. I think that Betsy DeVos has been on record saying, if a person leaves, I'm paraphrasing here, but there better be a really good reason or justification to keep that position or to fill that position. And they've said, people leave or there's early retirements and we don't necessarily need to fill them all. So, I have to say though, and we mentioned this on a podcast a couple of weeks ago, there was one hearing that she was in and being questioned by Representative Courtney, about answering a letter of a rather prominent constituent of his. And she mentioned not having enough staff to read her letter. And of course, there are appointees versus career folks, and there are things held up in the Senate, so it's not to say that some people she may have chosen just haven't made their way through that process. But I don't think the general counsel is gonna be reading her letters. I know. Well the other change they mentioned was compared to the Obama administration, compared to the Trump administration, was the number of

10 people working in the Under Secretary's office as well. That that number is drastically reduced. Now, under the Obama administration, that's where a lot of higher ed. policy was made. Historically, though, it wasn't always that way. And so, Office of Post-Secondary Ed, OPE, that's where a lot of policy stuff was. I would say if you were casting, like a... I don't think you'd have to be too big of a conspiracy theorist, but you might say that the one area where the Trump administration has been successful in their first 500 days, or whatever it is we're at, is on the regulations. So they've now they re in the process of re-doing Borrower Defense, Gainful Employment, and if you are not hiring up for people that are leaving through natural attrition, and you're down 13 percent, it becomes easier for you to reduce the role of the federal government in anything, but in this instance higher ed., without passing any meaningful legislation. None of this has required a legislative agenda, it hasn't required working with Congress. And so if their goal was to reduce the imprint of the federal government, I would say they are succeeding. They are moving forward on that front. Of course, our acute concern here is... and the largest, I thought it said in that article, was Federal Student Aid. Which then gets to the operational... I mean, the whole thing raises questions, but FSA in particular because they are not necessarily supposed to be the policy-developing arm, so this isn't philosophical arguments. It's just making sure we have enough people to get the work done, to oversee contracts, loan servicing, disbursements, verification, doublechecking charts and underlying numbers that come out of the department, so yeah, I think this is something we're gonna wanna keep our eyes on. Also coming out in consumer student news this week, we have some Google getting into the fray. Allie, you wanna catch us up? Sure. So, earlier this week, Google announced that they were sort of developing a college search tool of sorts, where now, if you type in the name of a college or university, the first things that will pop up are things like the average cost of attendance after aid, the graduation rate, the acceptance rate, typical test scores of students, in-state costs by household income, so students have that information up front. Right on the Google page without actually going into a school's website or things like that. And they're getting this Does that work on mobile and? I think it does. I think it's actually supposed to be optimized more for mobile than for web. And they're gathering this information partly from the college score card and partly from IPEDS. Alright. So, let's do a little experiment and pull up our undergrad schools. Okay, are you going to the Google?

11 Yeah, I'm just using Google. The Google. On mobile? Yeah, I'm on mobile. I'm on an ipad. And I'm on my laptop. I'm gonna do it on my iphone. Okay. So my undergrad was at BYU, Brigham Young University, where was yours, Meg? Allegany College. Stephen? Penn State. UC Berkeley. Okay. So, when you pull it up... everybody got their school up? Mm-hmm. Okay. Average cost after aid. $13,000. $13,000? Mm-hmm. At UC Berkeley? Yes. See, mine is also $13,000. What's going on on the other side, are you guys, is there a fail over here, what's happening? I don't have, on the ipad I am not getting the same thing that you guys are getting.

12 Alright, what do you have at Penn State? Due to generous public support of higher education in Pennsylvania, average cost after aid is $29,226. What is it? $29,000. That's the average? Average cost after aid. Are you under the cost tab? Yeah. So on the mobile, there's actually an outcomes tab. Do you see that on your phone? Yeah. So, they have graduation rates broken by four years after enrollment, six years after enrollment, eight years after enrollment. Okay, so that doesn't show up, just so you guys know, if you're on your computer and you're looking it up. We're just doing some user testing right here, and so far we would say? Mobile friendly, otherwise Not so friendly. Which is interesting because most students are probably using a phone, right? But what about most parents? Right. Yeah. Probably using, like, a desktop or a laptop, or maybe an ipad. Yeah. Hmm. I wish Google had reached out to us. Anyway, it's just another tool, I guess. I would say our testing two days after launch proved a little rough.

13 Yeah, so we have two "What Was That s this week. No, Megan, I gotta get the full story on this. 'Cause I love Metro stories. Is this what you were saying yesterday? Yeah, but you only heard part of it. Okay, so you have an adventure on the Metro, which, if people aren t familiar, Metro is our D.C. public transportation. Rarely works on time. Some people have died on it in the last couple years. There's all sorts of issues. Still better than driving, I maintain. Unless you're driving a motorcycle and you can go into HOV. So, what happened? So, I was taking the Metro home on Tuesday night. I met a friend for dinner, so it was later than normal. But not that late. And the girl sitting next to me, who was probably my age, so, woman sitting next to me, she had a suitcase. But it was like wedged inside so she was in a window seat. So, out of town? I presume out of town, or coming home, or something. But having a suitcase is a whole 'nother thing on the Metro. Everyone here knows that. Was it crowded? It was crowded. Yeah. And she was, we were at Farragut North, and she, after Farragut North, decided that she wanted to get up, because she was getting off at Dupont. And Justin and I have had this discussion where, a lot of times people in the inside, especially if they don't ride it a lot, "I need to get up, that's my stop next." Like, they want you to.. Right. It's crazy, because you're like, the train is moving; it's not smooth. And then I have to get up to let you out. And now, I'm also in danger. So, just relax, inside-seat people. There's plenty of time. Yeah. So I was like, "okay." And I moved my legs, 'cause we were like in one of the front seats, and she got out with her suitcase, and then the train stopped and started in the middle. And you know, sometimes they're good about saying, "We're gonna move again," or whatever. So they didn't do that then, so she tipped over a little bit, and someone kinda caught her, and then it happened again, and she was really not prepared for it, and she flew, I would say, a good four feet. Like, at high speed. I watched this whole thing. And her head went right into the pole. Smacked on the poll. She split her head open.

14 Did she fall down, like she was off her feet at this point? Yeah. She was like, yeah. And split her head open, blood... bad. Super bad. So, it was scary. So, wait a minute. What did the people on the train do? Everybody was like, "Oh my God." And she got up and she was like, "I'm fine, I'm fine," and then, I feel like this happens sometimes, but it takes a minute. It's like, she got up and then I saw the cut that there was nothing, and then all of a sudden, this just blood oozed. And she was like, "I'm fine, I'm fine," she's like, "Am I bleeding?" And it was just all over her shirt, it came down, she was so embarrassed. I felt so bad for her. So, we all helped her out or whatever. Moral of the story: wait until the train stops. Just sit down until the train stops. People don't have to get up, especially if it's crowded. Like, a whole bunch of people are getting off and on. Yeah. But people were, I mean like. Did you offer anything to help? I gave her my... I had a scarf. Like, a Pashmina scarf. Someone gave her two tissues, but she's like "oh thanks," and it was like, in a second, she was like, completely Soaked through. Yeah. So I just had that and I gave it to her, 'cause Did you get your scarf back? No. Yeah, Metro is super, like I have never experienced that jerkiness in a New York I was annoyed for her, that like-- I've ridden New York subway a lot; I've never experienced that sort of jerkiness. Metro is like at a whole 'nother level here. Yeah, well I was just reading an article about this, where they're trying to reintroduce the automated driving to cut back on that. The automated driving led to a death a few years ago.

15 Yeah, when they rammed into another train. Yes. So, that's sort of a-- Do you want a potential head injury, head trauma, or would you prefer just running full steam into another train? I mean, this is not good. I just, you have to laugh, otherwise you would cry, because if this is your main form of transportation, it feels like a crap shoot every day. Deferred maintenance. Let this be a lesson to all those people over all those years. Amen. That's right. There's a lot of applicability. You can't penny-wise, pound foolish policies. Now we have a complete mess. Alright. We had a raccoon we were all cheering this last week. Tell us what's going on with this raccoon situation. So, I actually have super bad anxiety, and one thing that was making it very bad this week was this raccoon that I saw, because my friend was posting about it on Instagram in Minnesota, that got stuck on a ledge of a building and then decided that it was just gonna keep going up. So it was on the twenty-third story or something, and hadn't eaten or had any water for over 24 hours, and so this, I don't know, I guess maybe it was a slow news day, but they started to live stream, every outlet was covering it, people were on Twitter. Was it like a Channel 9, like, copter in the air? Yeah, pretty much. And there was just this raccoon scaling the side of this skyscraper, and then it's an office building so of course, the windows don't actually open. So they couldn't get to the raccoon that way. They didn't wanna send people up on a window washer thing, because getting that close might provoke it. So basically, the fire department came, and put some cat food on the roof and just hoped that the raccoon would get up there. And, sometime in the middle of the night, it went on the roof, and I guess it's fine. Did they take it down from the roof, then? Yes. Okay. They had a live trap up there to get it, to lure it in with the cat food, and got it into the cage, and took her down. So, after you saw that, the resolution, your anxiety... you felt much better?

16 Oh my God, yeah. I got up the next morning... I had to really force myself to go to bed that night and not just keep looking for updates about this raccoon halfway across the country. That was the first thing I searched in the morning. I know you posted it, like, at 6:00 a.m. or something. That was the first thing I looked up when I got up, I was like, "How is this raccoon?" You posted in Slack and I was like, hmm, alright, yeah. Yeah. Alright. So join us again next week. We'll be doing a special episode as Allie talked about, and we will see, hopefully, a lot of folks at the conference. Thanks for joining us. Best episode yet.