Barmak Nassirian, vice president for higher education policy at Veterans Education Success
“Every one of the issues on the table is critically important and quite consequential for specific segments of the borrower population,” said Barmak Nassirian, vice president for higher education policy at Veterans Education Success, a bipartisan advocacy group that focuses on higher education for veterans, service members, and military families.
But beyond policy think tanks and advocacy groups, this process, which is called negotiated rulemaking (or neg reg), is not well-known. This year, however, some experts say neg reg has higher stakes as well as greater potential for achieving higher education reform as Congress continues to stall and the Biden-Harris administration looks to act.
“We’re at a time when there is so little legislation happening in Congress for higher education,” said Dr. Rebecca Natow, an assistant professor of specialized programs in education at Hofstra University. “So, a lot of the policymaking happens through rulemaking, not Congress. And the Department of Education's regulations have a lot of influence on what happens to students and student loan borrowers.”
Natow has researched negotiated rulemaking and explained how the Department of Education procedure works. Over a few months for several days at a time, the Department of Education discusses proposed regulations issue by issue with relevant stakeholders. They can include people who represent students, state governments, and different kinds of higher education institutions.
“The goal is to reach consensus on what a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking, or NPRM, will say,” said Natow, adding that this notice after neg reg goes in the federal register and out for public comment.
Yet reaching consensus during neg reg can be rare. If everyone does not agree, the Department of Education can write the proposed regulation on its own.
