§1094a Regulatory Relief and Improvement

Summary

The Secretary can choose colleges and universities to join a voluntary Quality Assurance Program. Schools in the program create and run their own systems for handling student aid, checking aid applications, and doing entrance and exit counseling. The Secretary will pick schools based on their past performance and current quality goals, and will make sure the group includes different sizes, missions, and regions. The Secretary may waive reporting or verification rules that the school’s system covers, but may not waive any laws. The Secretary can remove schools that cannot run the program and can require schools that quit to finish the current award year. The Secretary must review each school’s program and send recommendations to the authorizing committees about ways to simplify administration and protect program integrity. Experimental site rules let the Secretary keep any testing sites that existed on July 1, 2007 unless they’re judged unsuccessful; any earlier sites judged unsuccessful must end by June 30, 2010. Every two years the Secretary must report to the authorizing committees listing the participating schools, the waivers each got, what the experiments found, and any suggested changes. The Secretary may pick more schools to try out new rules and may waive many subchapter requirements for those experiments (including some award and disbursement practices, verification, and counseling), but may not waive award rules (except for experiments on modular or compressed schedules), grant and loan maximums, or financial-need analysis unless another law allows it. Success is judged on whether the experiment cut administrative burden without costing taxpayers and whether it improved service or helped students. Defined term: “current award year” — the award year during which a school says it will stop participating.