Ohio University is already ahead of the curve when it comes to complying with the Higher Education Act.  

The Higher Education Act, which became law Aug. 14, aims to simplify financial aid forms, to encourage transparency in relationships between lenders and colleges and to provide additional data on students to the federal government.

Ohio University is already compliant with many of the act’s provisions, according to Craig Cornell, vice provost for enrollment management

“The good news is Ohio University has always been pretty proactive when it comes to the issues that have been expressed in the bill,” he said. “I don’t want to say that we don’t have any issues, but we will continue to look through the bill and see what else we need to do (to become compliant).”

The act does not specify how schools should make the financial aid process easier; it just calls for a system families can understand more readily. One option the government has piloted recently, Cornell said, is connecting the FAFSA to IRS databases so families don’t have to fill out their tax information again when applying for aid.

Included in this reform is a push to make a school’s relationship with student lenders more transparent.

Cornell said OU is in a good place for that requirement, too, because the university is a direct loan school and does not have revenue-sharing agreements with private lenders. Direct loan schools receive money to give to students from the federal government instead of from a bank. OU students received $100,600,000 in the 2006-07 school year in federal loans and only $30,600,000 from alternative, or private loans, Cornell said.

The Higher Education Act also calls for schools to submit more student data to the federal government, such as more detailed information on student characteristics.

Michael Williford, associate provost for institutional research and assessment, said there weren’t really any surprises in the act, but that he is concerned about overburdening his department as well as divulging too much information about students.

“The concern is that these guys always want more rather than less, so it takes more work,” he said. “It’s important to be accountable and provide good data for their system, but it’s always something more. They rarely get rid of something.”

As it worked on the bill, Congress removed some reporting requirements because it was concerned about student privacy rights, Williford said.