By Maria Carrasco, NASFAA Staff Reporter

Congress tends to approach the bulk of its legislating on a deadline, but lately those hard stops are becoming increasingly malleable. Instead, the legislative body has taken a somewhat Frankenstein-esque approach to the legislative process, leaving many federal programs, including those housed within Federal Student Aid (FSA), bundled into annual appropriation bills. 

While the Higher Education Act (HEA) recently celebrated its 60th anniversary, it hasn’t been reauthorized in nearly 20 years. Since the law is meant to be reauthorized every five years, Congress has missed roughly four cycles and has instead extended or amended the law’s programs – which include the federal Pell Grant and Federal Work-Study (FWS) programs – through other vehicles, primarily related to the annual appropriations process.

This patchwork approach has left the law underpinning FSA programs outdated, while piecemeal attempts to update individual programs and processes have left the student aid system fragmented.

To take stock of the law’s anniversary, this article will highlight the HEA’s history, the reauthorization cycle, and evaluate how the congressional process could be improved to provide clearer updates to these programs and meet the needs of future student cohorts.

What's in the HEA

The HEA was signed into law on November 8, 1965, and governs institutions of higher education and federal student aid, among other things. 

Emmanual Guillory, senior director of government relations at the American Council on Education (ACE), said the original intent of the HEA was to increase access to postsecondary education for all Americans. Guillory noted that President Lyndon B. Johnson articulated the need for more higher education opportunities for lower- and middle-income families, as well as program assistance for small and less-developed institutions. At the time, lower- and middle-income families didn't necessarily have access to federal assistance.  

“This was an opportunity to help increase social and economic mobility for those lower- and middle-income families who maybe just struggled a bit more to pay,” Guillory said. 

Since the law’s implementation, it has been the home for multiple initiatives, programs, and provisions to assist students and their families in gaining access to and financing a postsecondary education, particularly under Title IV. That includes the creation of the federal Pell Grant Program in 1972, an initiative by former Sen. Claiborne Pell (D-R.I.) to assist lower- and middle-income students and their families in paying for college. 

Other initiatives created to help students pay for college include the FWS program, which was created in 1964 as part of the Economic Opportunity Act and later incorporated into the HEA, and the Federal Supplemental Educational Opportunity Grant (FSEOG) program, which was created in 1965 as part of the HEA. 

Under the HEA is also the William D. Ford Federal Direct Loan program, which includes direct subsidized loans, direct unsubsidized loans, direct PLUS loans, and direct consolidation loans. Notably, under the creation of the HEA in 1965 was the Federal Family Education Loan (FFEL) program, which was terminated in 2010. 

2008 Last Reauthorized

Throughout its 60 years, the HEA has been reauthorized several times – in 1968, 1972, 1976, 1980, 1986, 1992, 1998, and 2008. When the HEA was signed into law, the intent was for the law to be renewed every five years through a reauthorization. Guillory noted that the programs housed within the HEA actually expired in 2013, five years after its reauthorization in 2008. However, Congress continues to fund these programs under the annual appropriations process. 

In 2008, the HEA was reauthorized under the Higher Education Opportunity Act, which created new reporting, disclosures, and other requirements. This reauthorization took place 10 years from the previous reauthorization, which was in 1998, due to political gridlock in Congress. According to ACE, between 2003 and 2008, Congress extended the statutory deadline of the HEA 14 times. 

“There's still a conversation around the need to reauthorize the entire Higher Education Act to reflect today's higher education system and industry and the way that it has modernized,”  Guillory said. “The HEA still refers, for example, to CD-ROMS. We don't use CD-ROMS anymore, if we're talking about technology. Then there's tons of programs in Title VIII of the HEA, which have never received funding. Why are they still there?”

Bryan Cook, director of higher education policy at the Urban Institute, noted that a five-year reauthorization period for the HEA offers several benefits to both Congress and higher education as a whole.

“First, given the growing costs of higher education, the rapidly changing workforce, and the increasing policy interests in students’ return on investment, reauthorizing HEA every five years would give policy makers a chance to modify policy to keep pace with these changes,” Cook said. “Second, a 5-year period provides a long enough timeframe to evaluate the effectiveness of new programs and policies to ensure they are benefiting students.” 

Since 2008, the gridlock has worsened – with the HEA’s last reauthorization approaching a near 20-year anniversary. However, during this period, Congress has embarked on reauthorization efforts.

In 2017, Rep. Virginia Foxx introduced the PROSPER Act in the House Education & the Workforce Committee, which Foxx called a “long overdue reform” of the HEA. 

“With six million unfilled jobs and over a trillion dollars in student debt, simply reauthorizing the Higher Education Act will help no one,” Foxx said in 2017. “A hard truth that students, families, and institutions must face is that the promise of a postsecondary education is broken. We need a higher education system that is designed to meet the needs of today’s students and has the flexibility to innovate for tomorrow’s workforce opportunities.”

Ultimately, that bill did not clear Congress.

There was also an attempt to reauthorize the HEA in 2019 by a Democratic-led House Education Committee. In February 2019, Rep. Bobby Scott (D-Va.), chair of the committee, and Foxx (who previously ran the panel), announced plans to hold five hearings to start an effort to reauthorize the HEA in the 116th Congress. 

“This Committee has a rare opportunity to pass a comprehensive Higher Education Act reauthorization that puts a quality and affordable higher education within reach for every student,” Scott said in February 2019.

Later in October, the committee released the bill text to reauthorize the HEA, called the College Affordability Act. Former NASFAA President Justin Draeger said in October 2019 that this reauthorization would make historic investments in students and strengthen and expand the existing federal student aid programs. 

However, this reauthorization effort also stalled and did not lead to enactment. 

Reauthorization Via Appropriations

The nearly two-decade gap without reauthorization has forced Congress to update HEA programs through a variety of spending bills, the annual appropriations process, and the far less frequent budgetary process of reconciliation. 

And there have been big changes to the federal student aid programs in past years, Guillory said, citing the FAFSA Simplification Act, the FUTURE Act, and the One Big Beautiful Bill Act (OBBBA) as examples. Notably, the FAFSA Simplification Act was passed through as part of the Consolidated Appropriations Act of 2021, and OBBBA was done through reconciliation in 2025. The FUTURE Act was passed in 2019 as a standalone bill. 

When looking at the piecemeal way higher education legislation has been passed without reauthorization, there is an argument to be made for a comprehensive reauthorization, Cook said. 

For example, Cook highlighted the recent efforts around higher education accountability – particularly in the late 2000s, where there was a desire from Democrats to have more oversight and targeted accountability metrics over for-profit institutions. Cook noted that the growing partisanship of Congress made it unlikely that legislation around this issue could be achieved through an HEA reauthorization.

In 2009, the Department of Education (ED) began the process of defining "gainful employment" through a negotiated rulemaking process, with the final rule being released in 2011. 

“Many Republicans felt the gainful employment regulation unfairly targeted for-profit institutions and should be applied to all degree programs,” Cook said. 

Since then, gainful employment has been subject to multiple negotiated rulemaking committees, with both the Trump and Biden administration tackling this topic. 

Now, in 2025 a Republican controlled Congress passed an accountability measure somewhat similar to gainful employment, through OBBBA, but applied to all degree programs at all colleges and universities. However, Cook noted that there are technical and methodological inconsistencies in how GE and the OBBBA accountability measure work, which could create challenges to having a consistent accountability measure for all of higher education. 

“You can imagine how addressing accountability through a comprehensive HEA reauthorization would likely have resulted in a more streamlined set of accountability measures for all higher education programs,” Cook said.

While administrations have used negotiated rulemaking as a process to implement changes to the HEA, Guillory noted that regardless of HEA reauthorization and other passed legislation, ED doesn’t have the authority to create new programs without Congressional approval. 

“I would say people who would prefer for the department not to interpret certain things always will argue the case that Congress should be the one deciding that,” Guillory said. “The department simply implements, but Congress, it's on them to make sure it's clear what their intentions are, and to make sure the language is as clear as it possibly can be without being too overly prescriptive to prevent an agency from misinterpreting.”

Furthermore, the appropriations process is not ideal for long-term planning for higher education policy, as the appropriations process is annual and generally limited to things that are directly tied to budgets, Cook said. 

“For short-term fixes, such as modifying aid eligibility during an emergency or extending an expiring program that has not been reauthorized, the appropriations process works, but for a longer-term, strategic approach to improving higher education policies and programs, the reauthorization process is better,” Cook said. 

Guillory noted the importance of reauthorizing the HEA to modernize the law, update certain programs, and overall to rely less on the appropriations process. 

“Even in the appropriations process, there's language in there that alters certain aspects of programs and titles in the HEA,” Guillory said. “We just keep passing the same language over and over through appropriations when that should actually just be put in statute.”

As the government has been shut down for over a month, the annual appropriations process has also become a tricky and fraught process, with both Democratic and Republican lawmakers trying to decide how to fund the federal government. 

Recommendations and Policy Priorities for the Future

NASFAA has and is currently advocating for reauthorization of the HEA. In an op-ed published on Friday, November 7, NASFAA President and CEO Melanie Storey called on Congress to reauthorize the HEA and to abandon the budget reconciliation process and annual appropriations process to make sweeping changes to federal student aid. 

“The federal appropriations process, once a vehicle for steady investment in the nation’s priorities, has been weaponized—and students are collateral damage,” Storey wrote. “The current government shutdown, now more than a month and counting, is only the latest reminder of how Congress is failing on its budgetary responsibilities. Congress consistently misses its own deadlines, instead relying on continuing resolutions, short-term fixes and partisan negotiations that leave students, families and the colleges that serve them in a constant state of uncertainty.”

Furthermore, noting that the HEA was meant to be reauthorized every five years, the current HEA, as it stands, is outdated, and there are challenges in higher education that must be addressed, Storey wrote.

“Without question, there are real challenges in higher education that demand congressional action,” Storey wrote. “College prices continue to rise, student loan debt remains a national concern and families are rightly asking whether higher education is still worth the investment. But the place to grapple with those long-term structural, accountability and sustainability issues is through a full reauthorization of the Higher Education Act, not a patchwork of policies layered on top of one another through reconciliation bills, regulatory processes and executive orders.”

NASFAA offers several resources around HEA reauthorization, including a complete list of NASFAA's HEA recommendations, first created through NASFAA’s Reauthorization Task Force, as well as a list of accomplished recommendations. NASFAA also lists its positions regarding HEA reauthorization, which includes strengthening the Pell Grant program and campus-based aid, enhancing student aid delivery, curbing excessive student indebtedness, and more. 

As for the best way to reauthorize the HEA, Guillory stressed the importance of Congress gathering stakeholders impacted by HEA programs, collecting data from these stakeholders, and working with the higher education community to write these policies. 

Ultimately, whether the HEA gets reauthorized or not depends on Congressional leadership, Guillory said. Congress needs to agree to a comprehensive overhaul of the HEA, rather than tackling certain aspects. He noted Foxx’s College Cost Reduction Act (CCRA) as a recent attempt to reauthorize some HEA programs, but ultimately was not a comprehensive reauthorization. Later, aspects of Foxx’s CCRA were included in Republican’s OBBBA, which was done through reconciliation. 

Guillory added that currently, there tends to be a feeling in Congress of only wanting to work on isolated higher education issues, rather than a full comprehensive effort. 

“At the end of the day, [Congress] is not going to make everybody happy, and it's not their job, per se, but it is their job to make sure that the overall product is something that has been vetted, that has something that is feasible and that can work,” Guillory said. 

Storey reiterated Guillory’s sentiment in her op-ed, noting that through HEA reauthorization, Congress and the higher education community could work together to thoughtfully evaluate the student aid system, while addressing the root issues – such as how to make college more affordable, how to adapt to new learning models, and more. 

“As we reflect on the last six decades of progress, it’s clear that the country still believes in the promise of higher education, but trust in the system to deliver on that promise is eroding,” Storey wrote. “What’s missing is the political will to rise above the polarization that threatens to pull us apart and to protect that promise. Congress must return to the thoughtful policymaking that once defined our approach to higher education and reauthorize the law that made opportunity possible for generations of Americans.”

Publication Date: 11/10/2025

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