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 major strides toward these and other goals. This latest round of "negotiated rulemaking" is aimed at transforming higher education policy, potentially driving entire subsets of colleges out of business, and placing taxpayers on the hook for an even greater share of rising college costs. This rulemaking could even create entirely new loan repayment programs and enact new methods of forgiving both current and future loans. This report describes negotiated rulemaking and where it has gone awry in higher education. It also highlights two particularly contested issues, gainful employment and borrower defense. The report concludes with what's ahead for the Department of Education's latest negotiated rule-making process and how conservatives can get more involved in this process.