US: Compromise over higher education act

A small group of US senators and representatives and their staffs are working at breakneck speed with the hope that Congress can wrap up its work by Memorial Day on compromise legislation to renew the Higher Education Act, reports Inside Higher Ed. But if a draft of the bill that is being circulated this week is any indication, numerous major issues remain unresolved and the measure, as currently written, could be a nightmare for colleges and the Education Department to carry out.

The draft measure obtained by Inside Higher Ed, which amounts to just shy of 700 pages already even though it lacks three of the bill's 11 sections (on graduate education, new programs, and private student loans), is the product so far of intense negotiations between leaders of the House and Senate higher education committees as they try to knock out a compromise version of the legislation passed by their respective chambers.

In many ways, the compromise Higher Education Act bill represents the quintessential product of such a "conference committee," in that lawmakers and their staffs have sought to merge elements of often differing House and Senate bills into a cohesive whole.
Full report on the Inside Higher Ed site