Gregory Jon Consulting

05/20/2025

Facts.
The National Defense Education Act (NDEA) was passed by Congress in 1958 as the Cold War and space race between the United States and the Soviet Union accelerated. Funds to enable more students to attend college were authorized.
The Senate’s version of the NDEA provided grants only. However, the House wanted to issue loans primarily. To guarantee passage of the bill, the Senate acquiesced to the House and added low-interest loans as the primary funding for undergraduates instead of grants.
By 1960, the number of college students increased to 3.6 million, a 50% increase over 1950.

Higher Education Act (HEA) (1965)
The Higher Education Act (HEA) was passed in 1965 as part of President Johnson’s Great Society programs. It was the successor legislation to the NDEA. Title IV of the HEA authorized need-based financial aid to students, including grants, loans (Guaranteed Student Loans, or GSLs), and work-study.
Title IV also included rules for determining students’ financial need and required that a federally recognized accrediting agency accredit institutions participating in federal aid programs.

When the HEA was passed in 1965, approximately six million students were enrolled in college. Two-thirds of college students in 1965 attended public institutions. The ratio of men enrolled to women was 2:1.

The first reauthorization of the HEA was in 1968. Where the Basic Education Opportunity Grant was established as the lower of $1,000 or half of the sum of student financial aid under this title
In 1972, the Title IX Amendment was added to the HEA. The amendment prohibited s*x discrimination in any program or activity at an institution receiving federal financial aid.
In the first seven years after the passage of the HEA, the number of college students increased to nine million, a 50% increase. Male students continued to outnumber female students, but the ratio declined. Approximately 15.4% of all males in the U.S. had earned a bachelor’s degree, while women with a bachelor’s degree comprised 9.0% of all Americans.

In 1976, an amendment to the HEA extended the Basic Education Opportunity Grant for low-income students. The amendment increased the grant ceiling from $1,400 per year to $1,800 per year.

The 1978 Revenue Act marked the beginning of a period where the federal government encouraged employers to cover some or all of their employees’ education costs. Section 127 of the Act stated that an employee’s gross income does not include amounts paid or expenses incurred by the employer for educational assistance if the assistance is furnished under a separately written plan of assistance to the employees.
1978 also marked the year that Harvard increased its undergraduate tuition by 10%, followed by a decade of increases averaging 8% annually.

The 1980 Reauthorization of the HEA established Title III – Institutional Aid. The Act authorized the Secretary of Education to provide short-term funding to institutions to improve their quality if they qualified based on a high percentage of low-income students using Basic Educational Opportunity Grants and relatively low educational and general expenditures per full-time equivalent (FTE) student.
Higher education enrolled 12 million students. The average student loan balance at graduation was $3,900.

12/26/2024

The federal legislation would amend the Clery Act to require higher education campuses to disclose hazing crime statistics. on Christmas Eve Biden signed the Stop Campus Hazing Act, which creates disclosure regulations at federally funded universities, requiring them to report on campus hazing incidents in their annual security reports.
The legislation defines hazing as “any intentional, knowing, or reckless act” committed during “initiation into, an affiliation with, or the maintenance of membership in, a student organization.” It would include “any activity that places another person in reasonable fear of bodily harm through the use of threatening words or conduct.”

11/14/2024

Here is where accountability and responsibility needs to be reimagined at HOME.
Race-neutral admissions policies may help with diversity, but none alone are equivalent to affirmative action.
In states that have eliminated affirmative action, studies have consistently found declines in the admission and enrollment of Black, Latinx, and Indigenous people.
Although these policies helped increase diversity at some schools, they were less effective than race-based admissions policies in increasing Black and Latinx student enrollment because of Black and Latinx underrepresentation in the top percentages of high school classes and the fact that many of the racially underrepresented students at the top of their classes likely would have been admitted without the automatic admission plan. Leading to class-based affirmative action would likely not lead to racial diversity at the same levels as race-based affirmative action.

Our education system K-12 is so broken that what is necessary to shape a well rounded young adult has been replaced with screen time and wokeism. Time to clean house. Want better representation. Do the Work.

11/04/2024

Higher education news tends to be a mixed bag, preliminary findings for fall 2024 and found that undergraduate enrollment rose 3% compared with early data from last year.
On the other hand, it showed enrollment among first-year students dropped 5% compared with the year before, the first decline since the drop at the start of the pandemic.
The youngest adults, 18-year-olds, drove a majority of the decrease marking the beginning of the new definition of post-secondary.
We are in for a great reset in how and what education is and does for the future.
It has culminated from years of passing through uneducated kids through K-12 system broke by years of liberal intrusions and indoctrinations.
We need to educate our way back and it begins with taking full responsibility for failure by the student, parents first.

09/05/2024

To say that it has been a trying year for financial aid offices across the country is an understatement, a recent survey of financial aid employees indicated a majority are burned out and may leave the profession.
As many financial aid offices are understaffed, and these understaffed financial aid offices that are dealing with more student concerns and those 'pesky' FAFSA technical issues, which have caused not a bump, but a mountain, of other issues have left many current professionals to be "very likely" to seek new opportunities within the next 12 months.

The brain drain has begun.

02/11/2024

Think on this for a minute: Americans today believe in the value of a college credential, but they aren’t convinced higher education is fulfilling its promise to society.

Trade schools provide training for well-paying jobs in essential fields at a far-more-affordable price. The mentality that an undergraduate education is essential to teach you to think is garbage and that if her high-school classmates didn’t go to college, as she did, they were considered to be falling behind in life.

Majorities of survey respondents think four-year colleges positively influence students’ ways of thinking over all and their personal values. Far fewer answered the same when asked about students’ political views.
~Emma Pettit, "Who Should Shape What Colleges Teach?"

02/07/2024

Maybe there is intelligent people thinking about this problem.

Continuing to improve existing income-driven repayment plans—with borrowers paying a lower percentage of their discretionary incomes for a period of years after which the remaining balance is forgiven—by setting monthly student loan payments at amounts that are affordable based on income and family size

Creating an automatic option that handles all loan payments through the tax withholding system, much like Social Security contributions, to simplify debt management

Restructuring student loans and lowering interest rates, currently 5.5 percent on federal student loans for undergraduates and ranging from 4 to 14 percent on private student loans

10/12/2023

The Next Shoe will fall and it will break the floor.
As The Wall Street Journal comments on the new gainful employment regulations: “If the Biden debt-to-earnings metric were applied equitably…public and nonprofit colleges would account for nearly 80% of failing undergraduate programs.”

11/02/2021

...and so it begins...Accreditation commissions that have rules and regulations need to enforce those rules properly, otherwise they should be sanctioned.

Yesterday, the U.S. Department of Education’s Senior Department Official (SDO) informed nine accreditors about the status of their recognition. The following agencies were approved for renewal of recognition for five years:

10/28/2021

The Ed Dept revived a financial aid investigative unit and it will be responsible for investigating whether colleges are abusing federal student aid and posing a risk to students and taxpayers.
Is it open season on for-profit colleges?

The sector fears it will be unfairly targeted by probes into financial aid abuses. Experts say the division should look into infractions across higher ed.

08/05/2020

Imagine how difficult it would be to finance a car or a home if you didn’t know how much it would cost or even how long you’d be paying for it.
Taking out a student loan is the largest purchase most students will make at that stage of their life (sometimes ever). Yet, financing higher ed works in almost the exact opposite way that consumers finance every other large-scale buy. Rather than starting with what is affordable and shopping within that constraint, students instead first shop for the program or degree they want and then back into a mash-up of loans, grants, scholarships, and personal resources to cover the costs.