In spring 2022, the U.S. Department of Education's Office of Educational Technology (OET) committed to advancing digital equity through the Digital Equity Education Roundtables (DEER) Initiative. Through DEER, OET hosted a series of national conversations with leaders from community-based organizations, as well as families and learners furthest…

Poor retention and completion outcomes cast doubts about the ability of higher education to provide a return on the money, time, and resource investment. Accountability for the quality of higher education has been an increasingly significant national issue in higher education over the past decade. As pressures for accountability increase, so does…

In July 2014, the U.S. Department of Education announced a new round of experimental sites focusing on competency-based education. Capella University was selected to participate in three of the Department of Education's competency-based education (CBE) experiments and began by implementing the prior learning assessment experiment, which allows…

Since the publication of the "College Scorecard" by The U.S. Department of Education in 2015, comparisons between college attendance costs and institutional outcomes (i.e., graduation rates, post-graduation earnings) have come into sharp focus. This increased scrutiny requires institutions of higher learning to be more transparent about…

The fiscal year 2012 budget process has been anything but typical or predictable. While fiscal year 2012 starts in just a few weeks on October 1, 2011, the annual appropriations process is far from complete, and funding for federal education programs has not yet been finalized. Nevertheless, congressional action in the months that have led up to…

The steadily growing body of literature on universities' contribution to democracy and civil society has repeatedly called for a re-examination of the nascent purposes of higher education and the nature of higher education's compact with society. Although more faculty and administrators explore ways to produce public scholarship, infuse their…

From the White House to Capitol Hill, the winners in this week's elections won't have much time to savor their victories. Even as federal policymakers sort out the political landscape, the remainder of 2012 and the early months of 2013 are likely to be dominated by divisive, unresolved issues with broad consequences for K-12 and higher…

President Obama's FY 2013 budget request includes another major spending increase for the Department of Education--2.5 percent more than last year--to nearly $70 billion. American taxpayers are calling for spending restraint in Washington, yet President Obama's proposals would exacerbate the existing bureaucratic maze of federal programs and…

Stakeholders of higher education expect a positive return for their investment. One of the measures of success for higher education is persistence; one of the measures of persistence is retention rate. One segment of higher education, community colleges, receives a significant outlay of public resources in terms of government appropriations,…

While most in the academic community know about the attempt to rein in the for-profits, few are aware of its collateral damage. In October, the Department of Education (DOE) issued its Program Integrity Rules, intended to protect federal funds especially from those for-profit institutions with high student loan default rates. Well-intentioned…

The American higher education system is plagued by two chronic problems: dropouts and debt. Barely half of the students who start college get a degree within six years, and graduation rates at less-selective colleges often hover at 25 percent or less. At the same time, student loan debt is at an all-time high, recently passing credit card debt in…

In December 2012, the "U.S. Department of Education Chapter of Blacks In Government (BIG) Report: The Status of the African American Workforce at the U.S. Department of Education" (ED538186) described racial and demographic data by grade levels for Pay Period 11 in 2012 compared to similar data towards the end of the Bush administration.…

Stimulus funds unquestionably have helped many schools keep going through tough times, but for many institutions, the tough times aren't going away anytime soon. That is why, a little more than a year after Congress passed the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act and began allocating billions of dollars in aid across the nation, the so-called…

This paper discusses what federal student aid is and how to apply for it. It also provides a list of federal student aid programs for 2011-12. Federal student aid comes from the federal government--specifically, the U.S. Department of Education. It's money that helps a student pay for education expenses at a postsecondary school (e.g., college,…

Passage of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) and the creation of the Race to the Top (RTTT) Fund in early 2009 provide states (SEAs) and local school districts (LEAs) with an historic opportunity to develop and implement dramatic reforms to improve the rate at which students graduate ready for college and careers. This brief is…