This Semiannual Report presents the activities and accomplishments of the U.S. Department of Education's Office of Inspector General (OIG) from October 1, 2022, through March 31, 2023. The report highlights audits, investigations, and related work issued during this time frame. Sections include: (1) Pandemic Relief Oversight; (2) Disaster Recovery…

The federal government now offers a multitude of complicated income-driven repayment (IDR) plans that are difficult to understand, enroll in, and stay in. Many students who would benefit from IDR do not enroll, and others will have large amounts of debt forgiven despite earning high wages. The current problems with IDR are not an indictment of the…

The Council for Higher Education Accreditation (CHEA) is a national, nongovernmental membership organization of degree-granting colleges and universities, the only organization with the sole purpose of providing national coordination of accreditation of higher education institutions and programs. CHEA serves as an advocate, national authority and…

In this report, Corey Stoughton, the Advocacy Director of the human rights organisation Liberty, looks at the issue through history, international experience and recent legal changes. She notes that asking disempowered people to accept a total right to free speech is expecting them to put down a tool of resistance. She also claims the biggest…

This study was to determine the relationship between e-library and quality assurance in the Federal Government Colleges (unity schools) in Rivers and Bayelsa states, Nigeria. The population comprised of the teachers and students (SS3 and JS3) of the six unity schools in Rivers and Bayelsa States Nigeria numbering 3186 (teachers 1019, students…

The topic of the Federal Reserve's (the Fed's) implementation of monetary policy has a significant presence in economics textbooks. Unfortunately, as the Fed purposefully shifted the way it implements monetary policy to an environment with ample reserves in the banking system, many textbooks have not kept up. The authors walk through the key…

This document records testimony from a hearing before the Committee on Education and Labor that was held to examine the policies and priorities of the Office of Federal Student Aid. Member statements were provided by: (1) Honorable Frederica S., Chairwoman, Subcommittee on Higher Education and Workforce Investment; and (2) Honorable Gregory F.…

On the campaign trail, President Joe Biden's higher education agenda featured prominent promises to forgive student loan debt and make community college debt free. But as Congress continues to debate these high-profile proposals, Biden's Department of Education has signaled its intent to use a little known yet powerful regulatory process to take…

Troubled by the inequities in competitive grantmaking, we use critical quantitative methods to analyze the FY2023 federal academic earmarks as a potential mechanism for racialized change work. Specifically, we ask: To what extent does Congress distribute academic earmarks in ways that reinforce or weaken the racialized stratification of resources…

According to a 2019 Pew Research Center survey, 67% of Americans support raising the federal minimum hourly wage from $7.25 to $15 per hour, with 41% strongly supporting the increase. Raising the federal minimum wage to $15 per hour has been the battle cry for many members of Congress, while others have opposed or expressed concern regarding, such…

The objective of this inspection was to describe Federal Student Aid's (FSA) control activities over institutional processes for completing verification and reporting verification results in accordance with Federal requirements. The inspection covered award years 2016-2017 and 2017-2018 (July 1, 2016, through June 30, 2018). It was found that FSA…

Since 2003, the State Higher Education Executive Officers Association (SHEEO) has produced the annual State Higher Education Finance (SHEF) report to broaden understanding and enable analysis of state-level and national funding and enrollment trends over time. The final section in each SHEF report has focused on the effort and capacity of states…

Digital technology and social media are rapidly changing the way that citizens consume, create, and share information. Many learners spend significant time each day online, yet they have never received training on how to engage meaningfully with the information they encounter. The country's civic present and future depend on our ability to…

The White House released an executive order to protect free speech on college campuses, appropriately highlighting the issue of ongoing threats to expression in the ivory tower. The President and his Administration exercised restraint with this order by directing federal agencies to stay within the bounds of existing law as the agencies implement…

Regional higher education growth in non-federal states has not attracted much academic attention. This paper is one of the first attempts to explore China's latest higher education expansion and its systematic and regional impact from the perspective of multi-level governance. This article argues that the state had explicitly utilized the…