Department Seeks New Ideas for Administering Student Financial Aid Programs

As a part of its Experimental Sites Initiative the Department is seeking proposals for ideas for experiments to test new ways of administering student financial assistance programs (see https://federalregister.gov/a/2013-29213). Institutions of Higher Education with student financial assistance programs authorized by Title IV of the Higher Education Act are encouraged to propose ideas. Suggestions should aim to achieve improved quality and lowered costs for higher education, and have enhanced or continued programmatic and fiscal integrity within the Title IV programs. ED is especially interested in improving student persistence and academic success, and in reducing both the average time required to attain a degree and the average total amount of student loans.  Suggestions should be submitted in an email attachment, by no later than Jan. 31, 2014, to experimentalsites@ed.gov.

Based on the suggestions received, experiments and accompanying evaluation plans will be designed, approved, and then announced in a second Federal Register notice. That notice will also describe implementation plans for the experiments and evaluation activities and extend an invitation to participate in them. Additional details may be found here.