The Trump Transition landing team arrived at the Department of Education this week. Jim Manning, a retired former Department of Education official will lead the landing team. Manning worked in the Education Department for both the Bush and Obama administrations. Gerard Robinson of the American Enterprise Institute has also emerged as a key Transition Team member on Education policy. Full staffing of the Education team is still a work in progress.
Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee Chair Lamar Alexander has said that he hoped to restart work on reauthorization of the Higher Education Act (HEA) during the new Congress but that completion of a new HEA bill might not come until the second half of 2017. A key issue that Alexander and other Senators both Republican and Democrat hope to approve, possibly on some legislative vehicle prior to the HEA reauthorization is a restoration of year round Pell Grants.
A key regulation for higher education that takes effect December 1 is the Department of Labor’s overtime rule, estimated to cost colleges and universities millions of dollars for graduate students, including lab technicians. New House Education and the Work Force Chair Virginia Foxx and other House Republicans have already stated that repeal of the overtime regulation as it applies to higher education is a priority.
