Public Hearing; Negotiated Rulemaking Committees

DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION <CFR>34 CFR Chapter VI</CFR> <DEPDOC>[Docket ID ED-2025-0151]</DEPDOC> <SUBJECT>Public Hearing; Negotiated Rulemaking Committees</SUBJECT> <HD SOURCE="HED">AGENCY:</HD> Office of Postsecondary Education, Department of Education. <HD SOURCE="HED">ACTION:</HD> Intent to establish negotiated rulemaking committees. <SUM> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUMMARY:</HD> We announce our intention to establish two negotiated rulemaking committees to prepare regulations for the Federal student financial assistance programs authorized under Title IV of the Higher Education Act (HEA) of 1965, as amended (Title IV, HEA programs). One committee will consider changes to the Federal student loan programs and the other committee will consider changes to institutional and programmatic accountability, the Pell Grant Program, and other changes to the Title IV, HEA programs. This rulemaking is necessary to implement recent statutory changes to the Title IV, HEA programs included in Pub. L. 119-21, known as the <E T="03">One Big Beautiful Bill Act,</E> that President Trump signed into law on July 4, 2025, as well as to implement other Administration priorities. Prior to submitting draft regulations to the negotiated rulemaking process, the Department invites the public to provide advice and recommendations addressing the implementation of the changes to the Title IV, HEA programs included in Pub. L. 119-21 during a virtual public hearing that will be held on August 7, 2025, from 9:00 a.m. to noon and 1:00 p.m. to 4:00 p.m., Eastern time. As part of the hearing record, the Department will also accept written comments providing advice and recommendations on the implementation of the changes to the Title IV, HEA programs included in Pub. L. 119-21 through August 25, 2025. </SUM> <EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">DATES:</HD> The dates, times, and locations for the virtual public hearing and the schedule for negotiations are listed under the <E T="02">SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION</E> section of this document. The Department will accept written comments providing advice and recommendations for the hearing record via the Federal eRulemaking portal through August 25, 2025. </EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">ADDRESSES:</HD> Submit your comments through the Federal eRulemaking Portal at <E T="03">regulations.gov</E> . The Department will not accept comments submitted by fax or by email or comments submitted after the comment period closes. To ensure we do not receive duplicate copies, please submit your comments only once. Additionally, please include the Docket ID at the top of your comments. Information on using <E T="03">Regulations.gov,</E> including instructions for submitting comments, is available on the site under “FAQ.” If you require an accommodation or cannot otherwise submit your comments via <E T="03">Regulations.gov</E> , please contact <E T="03">regulationshelpdesk@gsa.gov</E> or by phone at 1-866-498-2945. If you are deaf, hard of hearing, or have a speech disability and wish to access telecommunications relay services, please dial 7-1-1. <E T="03">Privacy Note:</E> The Department's policy is to make all comments received from members of the public available for public viewing in their entirety on the Federal eRulemaking Portal at <E T="03">www.regulations.gov</E> . Therefore, commenters should only include in their comments information that they wish to make publicly available. Additionally, commenters should not include in their comments any personally identifiable information on other individuals. The Department reserves the right to redact at any time any personally identifiable information in comments about other individuals. <E T="03">Mass Writing Campaigns:</E> In instances where individual submissions appear to be duplicates or near duplicates of comments prepared as part of a writing campaign, the Department will post one representative sample comment along with the total comment count for that campaign to <E T="03">Regulations.gov</E> . The Department will consider these comments along with all other comments received. <FURINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT:</HD> For general information about negotiated rulemaking, see the Frequently Asked Questions section of the Negotiated Rulemaking Process for Title IV regulations website at: <E T="03">https://www.ed.gov/laws-and-policy/higher-education-laws-and-policy/negotiated-rulemaking-process-title-iv-regulations-frequently-asked-questions</E> . For information about the virtual public hearing, or for additional information about negotiated rulemaking, <E T="03">contact:</E> Tamy Abernathy, U.S. Department of Education, Office of Postsecondary Education, 400 Maryland Avenue SW, 5th floor, Washington, DC 20202. <E T="03">Telephone:</E> (202) 245-4595. <E T="03">Email: NegRegNPRMHelp@ed.gov</E> . If you are deaf, hard of hearing, or have a speech disability and wish to access telecommunications relay services, please dial 7-1-1. </FURINF> <SUPLINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION:</HD> <HD SOURCE="HD1">Public Hearing</HD> We will hold a virtual public hearing on August 7, 2025, from 9:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m. with a one-hour recess from noon to 1:00 p.m. for interested parties to provide advice and recommendations on the implementation of the changes to the Title IV, HEA programs enacted in Pub. L. 119-21, as well to implement other Administration priorities. Further information on the public hearing is available at <E T="03">https://www.ed.gov/laws-and-policy/higher-education-laws-and-policy/higher-education-policy/negotiated-rulemaking-for-higher-education-2025-2026</E> . Individuals who would like to speak at the virtual public hearing must register in advance by sending an email message to <E T="03">negreghearing@ed.gov</E> no later than 12:00 p.m., Eastern time, July 28, 2025. The message should include the name of the speaker, the general topic(s) the individual would like to address, and one or more times during the day which the individual would be available to speak. We will attempt to accommodate each speaker, however, if we are unable to do so, we will select speakers on a first-come, first-served basis based on the date and time we received their email message. We will limit each participant to three minutes. For those who need a reasonable accommodation in order to provide a live comment during the hearing, please see the “Reasonable Accommodations” section below for information about how to make such a request. The Department will notify registrants of the time slot reserved for them to speak and will provide information on how to log in to the hearing as a speaker. An individual may make only one presentation at the virtual hearing. If we receive more registrations than we are able to accommodate, the Department reserves the right to reject the registration of an entity or individual that is affiliated with an entity or individual that is already scheduled to speak, and to select among registrants to ensure a broad range of entities and individuals is allowed to present. If all time slots are not filled before the day of the hearing, we will accept registrations for any remaining time slots on a first-come, first-served basis beginning at 8:00 a.m. on the day of the virtual hearing at <E T="03">negreghearing@ed.gov</E> . <E T="03">Reasonable Accommodations:</E> The hearing will be accessible to individuals with disabilities. Information for contacting the Department to request auxiliary aids or services to provide a live comment will be included in the registration process for speaking at the hearing. If you will need an auxiliary aid or service to provide your comments, please notify the person listed under <E T="02">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT</E> in this notice at least two weeks before the scheduled meeting date. Registration is also required to view the virtual hearing. American Sign Language translation and closed captioning will be provided for the virtual hearing. We will post registration links for attendees who wish to observe on our website at <E T="03">https://www.ed.gov/laws-and-policy/higher-education-laws-and-policy/higher-education-policy/negotiated-rulemaking-for-higher-education-2025-2026</E> . The Department will also post transcripts of the hearing on that site. The Department will accept written comments providing advice and recommendations via the Federal eRulemaking portal through August 25, 2025. See the <E T="02">ADDRESSES</E> section of this document for submission information. <HD SOURCE="HD1">Negotiated Rulemaking</HD> We announce our intent to develop proposed Title IV, HEA program regulations by following the negotiated rulemaking procedures in section 492 of the HEA (20 U.S.C. 1098a). That section requires that, after obtaining advice and recommendations from individuals and representatives of groups involved in the Title IV, HEA programs and before publishing any proposed regulations to implement programs authorized under Title IV of the HEA, the Secretary prepare draft regulations and submit such regulations to a negotiated rulemaking process. We intend to choose members for two rulemaking committees from individuals nominated by groups involved in the Title IV, HEA programs. We will select participants with demonstrated experience in the relevant subjects under negotiation, in accordance with section 492(b)(1) of the HEA (20 U.S.C. 1098a). <HD SOURCE="HD2">Constituency Groups for Negotiator Nominations</HD> We have identified the following constituency groups involved in the Title IV, HEA program regulations being negotiated by each committee. We will choose participants for each constituency group on the committee from individuals nominated by various organizations within each of these constituency groups involved in the Title I ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Preview showing 10k of 21k characters. Full document text is stored and available for version comparison. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━