This week in a special edition of “Off The Cuff,” Justin is joined by U.S. Department of Education Under Secretary James Kvaal to discuss the administration's higher education priorities. Kvaal spoke during NASFAA’s 2022 national conference in Austin and provided financial aid administrators with key insight into ED’s approach to addressing a host of challenges imposed by the pandemic. During the conversation, Kvaal answered questions from NASFAA members related to student loan forgiveness and repayment, forthcoming regulations, institutional quality and gainful employment, college affordability, and more.

This week on "Off The Cuff," Justin and Karen are joined by Jon Fansmith, the American Council on Education's assistant vice president for government relations, to discuss the latest news from the Department of Education (ED) concerning borrower defense claims against Corinthian Colleges, Inc. The team discusses the Biden administration’s efforts to implement targeted loan cancellation and whether the discussion over the potential for broad scale cancellation has overshadowed ED’s recent actions to provide relief to defrauded borrowers. Jon then updates listeners on ED’s promotion of the Public Service Loan Forgiveness (PSLF) program and whether enough outreach is being conducted to make borrowers aware of the available limited waiver. The team rounds things out with some questions they would consider asking Under Secretary James Kvaal, who later this month will be at the NASFAA national conference in Austin. Hugh then catches listeners up with a brief news recap concerning ED’s updated roadmap for the next generation of federal student loan servicing and details a letter penned by a dozen House Republicans looking for the Department of Justice to intervene in ED’s ongoing negotiated rulemaking process.