As the month of March 2020 draws to a close, the nation is experiencing an unprecedented array of governmental and non-governmental proactive and reactive initiatives to mitigate the impact of COVID-19. Closing K-12 to postgraduate education activities will exert a wide variety of strains on students and their families. For example, a health professional who also happens to be a single parent with children is placed in the unenviable position of trying to juggle the responsibility of going to work every day to provide care for patients while also contending with the challenge of assuming family life duties for offspring who are at home because of school closings.
Portions of the education sector are being affected in different ways. Classroom teachers throughout the nation have to figure out how best to furnish a comparable level of education for their students who now are at home rather than on school grounds. Children who depend on school nutrition programs for food need to have effective alternative ways of being fed satisfactorily. Colleges and universities fortunate enough to possess hefty endowments may not have any immediate concerns of having to make refund payments to students for dormitories that have been closed and classes that have been suspended indefinitely. The same is not true, however, for institutions with little in the way of financial reserves and that rely heavily on tuition income. A related concern is that the high cost of operating intercollegiate athletic programs for students cannot be offset by post-season tournament revenues derived from television and ticket sales.
Governmental Assistance For Education In Response To The Spread Of The Coronavirus
Phase 2 of a federal stimulus package in the form of the Families First Coronavirus Response Act (P.L. 116-127) expands paid family and medical leave for child care due to school and day care closings for both private and public employers with less than 500 employees. Recognizing that more assistance is needed, legislators continue to seek agreement on how to address related situations that include: (1) Continuation of school lunch programming; (2) Allow the secretary of education to defer student loan payments, principal, and interest for three months without penalty to the student, with an additional three months’ deferment available if necessary; (3) Ensure that students at eligible institutions whose semesters were ended due to the emergency do not have to return their Title IV aid or have the distributed aid count towards their loan limits; and (4) Allow institutions to issue work-study payments to a student who is unable to work due to work-place closures and grant institutions the ability to transfer unused work-study funds for supplemental grants.
Under a change announced on March 20, borrowers can suspend payments for two months by contacting their servicers and enrolling in “forbearance.” No interest would accrue during that time. The plan would apply to all loans made directly by the federal government and to a portion of those made by private lenders and guaranteed by the government under a program that ended in 2010. However, loans made under the federal guarantee program that are held by commercial institutions won’t qualify. Approximately 43 million Americans owe roughly $1.5 trillion in federal student loans. The typical family spends $179 a month on payments, according to a July 2019 report by the JPMorgan Chase Institute.
Accreditation In The Context of Disease Transmission Increases
The congressional legislative hopper contains bills aimed at improving accreditation. The necessity of focusing on initiatives that bear directly on controlling the spread of disease means that for the immediate future such legislation will not move forward. Examples are: H.R. 5768, the Accreditation Reform Act to amend the Higher Education Act of 1965 to protect students and taxpayers by modernizing evaluation and increasing transparency in the accreditation system, and for other purposes; and H.R. 5171 to authorize the National Advisory Committee on Institutional Quality and Integrity permanently. Currently, it must be reauthorized each time the Higher Education Act is extended or reauthorized. Meanwhile, Education Secretary Betsy DeVos announced finalization of a package of regulations on college accreditation that are designed to erase any distinction between regional and national accrediting agencies. If the original schedule is adhered to, they will be effective this coming July 1. Aimed at promoting innovation in higher education, consumer advocates have expressed concerns that new regulations will enable low-quality institutions to shop for friendly accreditors more easily, thereby allowing them to access federal funding.
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