11. Department of Education · Notable · Needs Congress
Amend the HEA to eliminate the negotiated rulemaking requirement
Printed page 340 11. Department of Education
“The Department of Education should work with Congress to amend the HEA to eliminate the negotiated rulemaking requirement. At a minimum, Congress should allow the department to use public hearings rather than negotiated rulemaking sessions.”
What has happened
- Not started
Section 492 of the Higher Education Act is unchanged and the Department is still bound by it. No bill in the 119th Congress would repeal or waive the negotiated rulemaking requirement, and Public Law 119-21 — the one statute this Congress passed that rewrites title IV — contains the phrase nowhere in its text, so the Department had to convene negotiators to implement it. ED ran the statutory public hearing and then the committees, which is what section 492 already requires; it did not substitute hearings for negotiation. Three separate committees were convened in the window: the RISE committee on the loan provisions (2025-07-25), a Pell and institutional accountability committee, and an accrediting-agency recognition committee (2026-01-27).
Research log
What was searched, and what didn’t count as evidence
Research notes
- One negative search covered this ask and #855 and #856.
- Federal Register full text, quoted phrase “negotiated rulemaking requirement”, all types, 2025-01-20 onward: 0 documents.
- The enrolled text of Public Law 119-21 contains no occurrence of “negotiated rulemaking”. The statute gives the Secretary no interim-final-rule authority for title IV either.
- Action
- repeal
- Object
- HEA negotiated rulemaking requirement
- ID
- 854