Will the BBB Put the Big Chill on Student Borrowing?

0:00:12.2 Speaker 1: Hello and welcome to Office Hours with EAB. Today, we’re focusing on the future of federal student aid with a look at FAFSA 2026 and the sweeping changes introduced by the Big Beautiful Bill. EAB’s Brett Schraeder and financial aid expert Kathy Ruby walk through what these shifts mean for students, families, and institutions. So settle in and I hope you enjoy.

0:00:38.1 Brett Schraeder: Well, welcome to Office Hours with EAB. My name is Brett Schraeder and I lead the EAB financial aid team. And we help higher ed leaders really think strategically about enrollment, financial aid, and how they price. Increasingly, my job and Kathy’s job involves monitoring policy changes, monitoring what’s going on in the Department of Education with the FAFSA, with different rules and regulations, because those directly impact our partners. And so that’s what we’re here today to talk about. So we’re going to dive into two big things. We’re going to first talk a little bit about the One Big Beautiful Bill and some of the financial aid changes that were embedded in there. We’ll do the corollary of some of the budget things that are related to that, but maybe not in the OBBB. And then we’ll finish up talking about the FAFSA because we like to finish with what we count as good news. And so we’re going to finish up with some FAFSA news as well. So, but first, let me have my colleague, who I always love doing these with, Kathy Ruby, introduce herself.

0:01:54.0 Kathy Ruby: Hey, Brett, I’m Kathy Ruby, and I’m a principal in financial aid optimization at EAB. Happy to be here with you today. I’m a longtime financial aid professional, but these days work with a bunch of colleges around the country on financial aid policy and financial aid strategy. So glad to be here today.

0:02:12.0 Brett Schraeder: Great. Well, always great to have Kathy on. She’s just one of the best people out there in terms of knowing what’s going on, but also more importantly, how it impacts colleges and universities as well as students. So why don’t we jump right in. Kathy, so we’re about a month, a little over a month since the signing of the one Big Beautiful Bill. There were lots going on leading up until the final passage of the actual thing. So give us a quick recap of what actually was in there. And you don’t have to do a line by line, but what are the important things in there and maybe a little bit of thought about what each of them mean?

0:02:54.8 Kathy Ruby: Yeah, I think in the end, it turned out to be, I guess, in some way simpler than what we anticipated in terms of what actually changed. So definitely some changes to the Pell Grants, some tweaking of eligibility sort of along the edges. And then who can qualify, a big change there in terms of expanding the programs that can qualify for Pell Grants. Still waiting to hear a lot about that. And then I think the biggest revamp, though, was in the federal student and parent loan programs for graduate students and then for parents. So we can talk about that a little bit more specifically in just a minute. And then an overhaul also of the student loan repayment programs, which as institutions, having been an aid administrator, you don’t often think about those programs as much, but they certainly matter to families. So we’ll talk about that a little bit. And then some new accountability measures for institutions as well, which are going to take a little while to implement, but they’re going to matter, I think, once they roll out.

0:03:56.6 Brett Schraeder: Yeah, I think they’ll matter. And I think maybe what we’ll talk about is, why don’t we start with undergrad, but we’ll also sort of talk about the first few things are really around what directly impacts students in school and then the repayment and some of the other things probably about how colleges should communicate to their current students and maybe recent alumni because it doesn’t directly affect them, but it does affect their students. So why don’t we start with the undergrad side? That seemed to have the least number of sort of changes, kind of business as usual, but not totally.

0:04:36.7 Kathy Ruby: But not totally. So I would say on the undergrad side, first, there were some tweaks to Pell Grant eligibility. There’s now a cap on how high your SAI can be to receive a Pell Grant. So it used to just be driven by the income guidelines, but now they’re sort of, if it’s twice the max Pell amount, then you can’t qualify for a Pell Grant. I think the intention there was to get rid of those Pellionaires that we talk about, the people who might have low income, but high assets who are qualifying for Pell. That’ll have an impact along the edges. We didn’t see that many families in our data that had very high SAIs that were getting Pell, but they changed that. And then the other change I think around Pell has to do with students who are fully funded in grant aid can no longer receive a Pell Grant above the cost of attendance. So you think about the kinds of students that might impact veterans, students who bring in a lot of outside aid, maybe Native American students who are funded through tribal funds, those kinds of things. So that will have an impact for some institutions.

0:05:46.7 Brett Schraeder: Scholarship athletes, maybe.

0:05:48.1 Kathy Ruby: Scholarship athletes. Yep, exactly.

0:05:50.9 Brett Schraeder: Let me take an aside on that one, then we’ll come back to the rest of the Pell changes, Kathy. On that one, I have heard some schools worry about when they have a Promise program if this impacts them. But I know most of the partners we work with and the ones we know that have Promise programs, those are for covering tuition or tuition and fees. And this is cost of attendance, so it includes room and board and, well, housing and food. Sorry, we have to use the new terms. And housing and food, as well as some of the other miscellaneous expenses, books and those kinds of things. So it’s not that many students that we’re aware of that get the full amount, but sometimes they’re students who really do need the additional money.

0:06:38.2 Kathy Ruby: Right. And it’s been a way for them to get around what an institution packages up to its cost of attendance, which is usually a pretty conservative estimate of what it actually costs to go to school. So those extra dollars did matter to some students. So that’s going to be an adjustment for sure. I think the other big, I mean, the other big change for Pell is just the expansion to what is it called, short term high value programs. So we don’t know what programs those are yet. That’s going to be figured out in the next upcoming months. But that’s, I guess, otherwise referred to as workforce Pell. And a real, a real enhancement, I think, for a lot of community colleges and then other kinds of programs that, that are out there that want to have access to those Pell funds. So that’s pretty significant. We’ll see how that rolls out.

0:07:29.5 Brett Schraeder: Yeah. And speaking of workforce Pell. So workforce Pell will cost some money. The Pell had a deficit, but the one Big Beautiful Bill seemed to address the deficit, at least in the short term. Is that right?

0:07:44.6 Kathy Ruby: Yes, it did address it in the short term. So we’re good for this year coming up. But I think what’s still in the air has, is next year. I think there was some concern, there is concern for the skinny budget that was proposed to bring the maximum Pell Grant down by a pretty significant amount. I think it was like 1100, $1200. But the Senate has now come out with their version and they are saying let’s fully, let’s continue to fully Fund Pell. So that’s going to be a pretty important thing to watch as it plays out. And that is where, institutions that have these promise programs. We’ve certainly been having lots of conversation with our partners around the fine print that you might need to be thinking about for your promise program, because promise programs work well when federal and state funding is stable. But when it’s not, then you have to be careful as you’re implementing those kinds of programs. I don’t know if you’ve been having those conversations too.

0:08:45.5 Brett Schraeder: Yeah, absolutely. And you know, I think we know that state funds are also, as you mentioned, state funds are sort of tied in there as well. And we were, I think we feel more strongly about Pell being solid, not as strongly maybe about certain state grant programs being fully solid. And I think that’s worrying us a little bit.

0:09:08.8 Kathy Ruby: Yes, definitely.

0:09:10.3 Brett Schraeder: Go ahead.

0:09:12.4 Kathy Ruby: Oh, yeah. The other on the undergrad side, just want to talk a little bit about the loans now.

0:09:17.3 Brett Schraeder: Let’s talk about loans. Yeah.

0:09:19.5 Kathy Ruby: First, before we talk about plus loans, which are the big headlines, but my own soapbox has to do with the federal direct loans. Some summaries you’ll read will say, you know, the annual loan limits didn’t change. Great. Wonderful. However, there was one little piece that says that loans will now be prorated for less than full time enrollment. And that has never been the case in all my gazillion years and your gazillion years. It’s always just been if you’re half time, you can get a full student loan or you can borrow up to that annual maximum unless you’re in the last term of a program. But that’s that’s an aside. So that’s a pretty significant change. And I think one that’s going to impact you think about community college students or students who are enrolled less than half time, both at the undergrad and the graduate level. We don’t know the details yet of how that’s going to play out. But you think about a student who thinks they’re going to qualify for 5500 and turns out they’re only half time. So they I’m making this up. They only get 2750 or whatever it might be. That’s going to be pretty significant, I think.

0:10:25.5 Brett Schraeder: Yeah. Yeah. I think that’s an interesting one. And we’ll get to the grad space as well. But, you know, so many grad programs are part time. Are those on purpose? And so, yeah, on purpose. So well, because they’re working professionals. So we’ll we’ll get to that. I think I’m worried about that, particularly at the community college level, I think is super important. But even a good number of our four-year schools have have sizable numbers of part time students. You know, it’s not a small number on some of these campuses. So I think that’s a little bit worrisome. And it doesn’t really appear yet. We don’t really have guidance yet on exactly how is it going to look like Pell, where it’s each credit closer to 12. You get more money or is there going to be sort of something like the old where it’s a quarter, 50%, 75% full? I think we’re we’re still in the dark on that.

0:11:17.7 Kathy Ruby: Yeah. And you think about the systems that have to be changed, packaging parameters. I mean, not necessarily on the institutions, but they’ll be waiting for their systems to update those kinds of criteria.

0:11:30.4 Brett Schraeder: And we know from new FAFSA, updating systems is no walk in the park, right?

0:11:35.6 Kathy Ruby: No, not necessarily.

0:11:37.8 Brett Schraeder: All right, well, let’s talk about Parent PLUS Loan, and then we’ll jump over to Grad and roll through that fairly quickly.

0:11:43.2 Kathy Ruby: Yeah, so I think on the parent side for dependent undergrads, essentially the PLUS Loan now has limits. So for new borrowers, a parent can borrow up to $20,000 per year, and then they can only borrow $65,000 for each of their students. So you think about that math doesn’t work if you borrow $20,000 in your first two years, then you’re out of money in your third and fourth years. So institutions are really going to have to think about how they approach the PLUS Loan. There are many schools who package PLUS Loans. That’s a whole new question to answer in terms of how that will work. And the real danger there, or the danger, the challenge there is that those families will have to turn to private lending if they need to borrow more. So that’s a pretty huge change.

0:12:34.0 Brett Schraeder: Yeah, and not everyone, as we know from, I think the technical number of years we’ve both been in the business is a bazillion. As we know from a bazillion years ago, not everyone qualifies for private loans. So that’s going to be a challenge.

0:12:49.8 Kathy Ruby: And they’ve gotten harder to get. I mean, at least in my time, and I really have been doing this a long time, there was a time when they were pretty easy to get. But then we went through sort of the Great Recession and the housing crisis and all of those things, and credit got really tightened up. So for a dependent undergraduate student to borrow without a cosigner became impossible. When I first started, it was possible, but no longer. So we’ll see what the private lenders come out with. But it’s a challenge for sure.

0:13:18.8 Brett Schraeder: I think so. And I know we’re hearing a little bit about maybe schools trying to think about starting their own institutional loan programs or expanding the ones they currently have. It can be an expensive proposition and gives you something else to manage that maybe isn’t your core competency. So I think those are hard. And we just don’t know. I mean, we know that there’s always space for private lenders, but the appetite for them going into sort of not the top-rated credit scores into the more middle and lower credit scores, I think, is an open question. Do you think. I have to hope that at some point Congress figures out that 20,000 times four is 80,000 or 16,000 to 250 is 65,000, that they’ll fix one of those two so that you can borrow even amounts for all four years. I would hope that happens.

0:14:15.6 Kathy Ruby: You would hope, yeah, because you think about, I mean, how complicated financial aid already is and how institutions are already challenged to communicate how things work. And that’s just a weird iteration, right, to have to communicate. Well, if you need 20,000 this year, you can have it, but you won’t be able to borrow in senior year. So, yeah, hopefully they will figure that out because it should have the same impact. And, in fact, in some ways makes sense from a risk perspective. Maybe it’s safer to have someone borrow 16,250 in their first year instead of 20, right? So it’s a logical kind of argument.

0:14:52.0 Brett Schraeder: I think that’s a worthwhile, it’s a fair point. I think one of the conversations I’ve had a lot with my partners is you probably want to at least communicate this with families. If a family takes more than 16,250 or wants to take the full 20, you probably want to at least let them know, like, hey, if things stay the same, you will.

0:15:18.4 Kathy Ruby: This is what…

0:15:19.4 Brett Schraeder: You will be there. And then why don’t we jump over to graduate, and then we’ll come back to one thing that I want to ask you about related to PLUS, both for undergrad and grad together. They sort of have the same question. But let’s jump over to the grad changes.

0:15:30.2 Kathy Ruby: So for grad, a huge change. They eliminated grad PLUS loans, which are essentially the loan of second resort for federal borrowing for graduate students. And then the current limit on the direct unsubsidized loan is $20,500. They increased that limit to $50,000 for students who are in professional degrees, which we have a little bit of definition but not full definition yet on who’s actually in a professional degree. So that’s really pretty significant. So for our listeners who may not be in the weeds of how PLUS loans are approved, essentially whether it’s a grad PLUS or a parent PLUS loan, the government just checks to make sure you don’t have any adverse credit. They don’t care about your credit score. They don’t care how much debt to income, what your debt-to-income ratio is. They’re fairly easy to get as long as you don’t have adverse credit. So now we’re going to be asking essentially graduate students, some of them have come right from undergrad, so they don’t have income. They don’t have credit scores or credit history. We’re having to say to them, you’re going to have to go into the private

0:16:41.1 Kathy Ruby: Market now if you need more than $20,500. And there are, quite frankly, just even the limit on the $50,000 limit and the overall $200,000 limit on federal borrowing for graduate students will create some challenges for law students, medical students, all kinds of health professions where the program may actually cost more than that, and they’ll have to turn to private lending. So it’s a pretty huge shift in graduate borrowing.

0:17:09.5 Brett Schraeder: Big shift. And just to clarify, we have 50, for professional programs, $50,000 a year, $200,000 cap, and for non-professional programs, whatever those are, we’re still waiting for definitions. We have $20,500 and $100,000, I believe.

0:17:27.6 Kathy Ruby: Yes, I think that’s the cap, right.

0:17:30.0 Brett Schraeder: Right, and yeah, I think you’re right. And, you know, what we’ve heard a lot from on the professional program side is some are obvious, like law school, you know, MBA, medical school, but colleges have been very thoughtful about the market, and they have these programs that do require licensure, but maybe not traditionally a professional program, specialized medical type things, some psychology and sociology and other social work type things that do require certification, but may or may not be classified as professional. So I think there’s, I think.

0:18:12.2 Kathy Ruby: It’s really open. Or you even think about a master’s in education and master’s in special education as you’re getting further certified in your teaching degree. Like, what is a professional?

0:18:22.5 Brett Schraeder: Right, what does it mean?

0:18:24.0 Kathy Ruby: What does it mean?

0:18:24.9 Brett Schraeder: Right. Right, and I don’t think they’ve really clarified that. And I know some schools are trying to essentially write their own documentation that says, hey, these are professional programs, and here’s why, but it doesn’t seem like there’s a lot of clarity around that, and I think there’s still lots of open questions.

0:18:50.0 Kathy Ruby: Yeah, plenty.

0:18:53.2 Brett Schraeder: Let’s talk about the loan proration thing on the grad side, and then I have a question for you on the PLUS.

0:18:56.2 Kathy Ruby: Yeah, so the loan proration on the grad side in many ways is even more significant, because if you are in, let’s say you’re a student who’s in a non-professional program, and let’s just say it’s that master’s in special ed, right? You’re just doing the things you need to do to become a more qualified teacher, but you’re going to be part-time. And so you go in thinking you’re going to be able to get a loan of $20,500, but in fact maybe you can only get $10,000. So I think it’s even more significant on the graduate side, because those kinds of programs, they’re maybe not as expensive, so you can cover them, because you’re working full-time and you’re really just trying to cover your tuition, but maybe you won’t be able to get enough federal borrowing now to cover your tuition, and that’s pretty significant. And again, it comes back to how are they going to define what’s full-time, what’s half-time, and then it’s different at graduate versus undergrad.

0:19:47.8 Brett Schraeder: Right, right. I have plenty of grad programs that, you know, they offer them in sort of, you know, eight-week or six-week stints, and taking one class is considered full-time in those stints, and you can sort of do the math in your head and see why. But you wonder if there’s going to be more scrutiny now on what’s full-time, what’s part-time, because before it really didn’t make a huge difference at the grad level. Yeah, that’s helpful. Okay, so let me ask you about PLUS loans. In both PLUS undergrad, parent PLUS, and in graduate PLUS, students who have a current loan for this academic year or before, so 25, 26, or before that, are going to be grandfathered in under the old rules for up to three years or the completion of their program, whichever is less.

0:20:40.5 Kathy Ruby: Yes.

0:20:41.0 Brett Schraeder: So, okay, so if I’m a parent, I’m about to drop, I am a parent of a college student. I’m about to drop my son off. You know, he’s not a freshman, but let’s say he was a freshman, and I’m thinking, you know, I can probably afford this year I’ve saved up, but, you know, I’m not sure by the time we get to junior, senior year, I might need to borrow a little bit. I may need some help. Should I take a PLUS loan today? And because so then I can make sure that I have access to a full amount three years from now? And same on the grad side.

0:21:20.0 Kathy Ruby: Right. I think it depends, but to be safe, that, I think, is going to be the challenge for all institutions this year is what do you communicate to your current students? Because, of course, you don’t want to be seen as encouraging borrowing, but on the other hand, you want to make sure they’re well informed about what their options will be. And I will say when I worked with families figuring out how to pay for college, that was probably one of the more most common questions we got was I’ve saved for college. How do I spend it? But I know it’s not enough. How do I spend it? Do I spread it out over four years, or do I spend it all in the first year and then borrow later on? And so that’s fundamentally, that’s not an uncommon situation, and I think institutions will need to find a way to communicate that gently to say things are changing, and this is something for you to consider if you were planning on using a PLUS loan.

0:22:11.8 Brett Schraeder: Right, right.

0:22:14.1 Kathy Ruby: In the coming years, or especially for grad students as well.

0:22:15.1 Brett Schraeder: Right. And it does strike me that it puts institutions in a little bit of a difficult spot because you don’t want to encourage your families or your grad students to take a loan. You’re not saying you should do this, but it does make me feel like you don’t want to be the institution next July when a student comes to you and says, hey, now I need to borrow $40,000 to make this work, or a parent saying, hey, now I need to borrow $40,000 to make this work, where you say, oh, gosh, well, if you would have just borrowed $500 last year, you could borrow $40,000 now. And they say, why didn’t you tell me? Right. And so I do think maybe there’s a space for schools to just maybe lay the two next to each other on a website and then communicate that to families like, hey, here’s two different ways that this is happening, and you need to make the best decision for you. I don’t know. Do you have any advice?

0:23:11.6 Kathy Ruby: Yeah, I mean, I’m thinking there’s a way to do it where you’re educating, you’re essentially educating about what your financing options will be in the upcoming years. So that because there are also some families who are perfectly happy with private loans, they have strong credit, that’s what they intend to use. They’ve done their due diligence on all the whatever the terms are of those private loans, and they’re comfortable borrowing private loans. Although, and so I think there’s a way to present it as just need you to know that your options for financing going forward will be changing, here’s how they’re changing. And if you’re interested in this one more than this one, then in order to get into that option, you’re going to need to borrow a little bit this year. So I think there’s a way to do it without encouraging borrowing. More along the lines of if you’re thinking that you’ll need to borrow, here’s what your options are going to be.

0:24:02.2 Brett Schraeder: Well, I like that. As always, you put it better than I could. So I appreciate that. It’s a good suggestion. All right, let’s, if we haven’t forgotten anything, let’s touch just for a few minutes on the slight changes in repayment and then the accountability measures. I think we’ve covered the big things on the sort of what’s happening on the ground for students, grad and undergrad.

0:24:25.1 Kathy Ruby: Yeah, and I think the slight changes, well, on the repayment side, essentially, I mean, they have simplified the income-based repayment programs and eliminated, there were several of them, and they’ve essentially rolled them into one. There’s still one out there, the income-based repayment plan that’s still out there, but they’ve essentially consolidated them all into this repayment assistance program. And then they’ve also expanded the standard loan repayment options so that your standard loan repayment is based on essentially how much you’ve borrowed, and then you’re given your terms based on that, which always existed. It just always had more complicated naming than that, I think. So that’s changing. I think the issue for most institutions, it’s good to get acquainted with those programs and understand what the differences are and what it means. I think the concern right now, the immediate concern, is a lot of the headlines have been student loan payments are going up, and they are going up. The repayment assistance program is a bit less generous than the most generous of the other programs. But I think the concern is that those kinds of headlines just scare students more than they already are about borrowing.

0:25:41.2 Kathy Ruby: So I think I’ve been talking a lot with my partners about just thinking about how they talk about student loan borrowing and thinking about it as an investment and being upfront about borrowing as a part of a financial aid package and what it means to you later on and all those kinds of things. We know those things happen in conversations one-on-one with families, but colleges aren’t always great about communicating upfront.

0:26:05.3 Brett Schraeder: Yeah, about being in there. Yeah, that’s helpful. And I do think the income-based repayment, the old one, is students need to get enrolled in that before next June.

0:26:17.3 Kathy Ruby: Yes, or they lose it.

0:26:19.0 Brett Schraeder: Or they go automatically into the new R18 RAP program, right? So I was thinking I’ve had several conversations with folks, and there’s lots going on on campuses, but that is one thing that as a service to your recent graduates and your seniors, you’re about to be graduates, you should probably communicate that, that you have this sort of deadline to look into income-based repayment programs.

0:26:47.6 Kathy Ruby: Which is often a difficult thing for, I mean, undergrad graduates, they often don’t have enough federal debt to actually qualify for much of an income-based repayment program, depending on what they’re doing. But anyway, it gets super complicated, but I think colleges are going to have to be more proactive about this. And I think that’s actually, it’s all being there. I mean, my understanding is everyone just got a list of who of their graduates are in repayment, and certainly schools are, I heard a lot of conversation around that when I was at NASFA earlier this summer. So institutions are starting to do what they have to do with those students. Yep, they’re having to think about it.

0:27:27.4 Brett Schraeder: Well, that’s super helpful. Let’s talk quickly about accountability, and then we’ll come to the good news, which I think is almost all good news on the FAFSA side.

0:27:41.2 Kathy Ruby: Yes, absolutely.

0:27:45.2 Brett Schraeder: So let’s talk about accountability. I know that largely some of the really onerous accountability stuff kind of got tabled.

0:27:47.7 Kathy Ruby: Yes. And then, so essentially what’s left is some new accountability measures where institutions are going to have to track the earnings of their completers and then compare the median earnings of the students who completed against other populations, which I’m still not completely clear, but essentially if you provide an undergraduate degree, you’re going to compare your graduates to people in your area without an undergraduate degree. I think, right.

0:28:18.1 Brett Schraeder: The level before the level that you’re comparing to.

0:28:26.1 Kathy Ruby: Yes.

0:28:26.3 Brett Schraeder: So graduates to high school diploma, I think is the, right.

0:28:27.8 Kathy Ruby: And so lots and lots of details to figure out there, but essentially if you don’t meet a certain measure, you’re going to have to either issue warnings or in extreme cases, not be allowed to participate.

0:28:39.8 Brett Schraeder: Got it. Yeah. This one’s a little tricky and challenging. And I think the bottom line, the good news is I think the original proposals, it was going to affect maybe 20, 30% of certain programs and now we’re into the single digits of programs who might lose access to federal loans. But my take is probably more to come on this one, right?

0:29:07.8 Kathy Ruby: Absolutely.

0:29:09.8 Brett Schraeder: There’s probably some new stuff. Okay. Let’s, I think probably for another webinar, we can talk about all the other things like we got things this week on, gosh, rapid fire. We got things this week on how we’re going to collect race and ethnicity data. We got some more information about a bigger, better NCES and IPEDS. There’s a lawsuit about early decision out there. Gosh, what am I missing? There’s about five or 10 other things. We’ll probably put those in a next podcast. But let’s end on something positive, the FAFSA. So Kathy and I both got to go to NASFA this year and we heard some actually largely really positive things about the FAFSA. You want to hit those real quick?

0:29:54.4 Kathy Ruby: Yeah, absolutely. And they are playing out now that we’re in August. I saw a post recently that they are indeed playing out. So most importantly, so the goal of the department this year, and they have committed resources to the FAFSA people, like the people who are putting all that together. And their goal was to make sure that students could fill it out in one sitting. Like when they go to a college goal Sunday night, or that’s dating myself, but when they go to a FAFSA completion night, that everything can happen quickly enough. And so they’ve streamlined the contributor process, so made it much simpler for a student to invite their parent. Social security matching is going to start happening in real time. So many people won’t have to wait for their FSA ID. And then they made a couple tweaks to need analysis. So that’s all great. Where they’ve gotten rid of…

0:30:43.8 Brett Schraeder: Business and farms are back out.

0:30:44.8 Kathy Ruby: Business and farms are back out, and so are commercial fishing organizations or commercial fisheries.

0:30:51.5 Brett Schraeder: Thank you, Alaska.

0:30:53.0 Kathy Ruby: Absolutely. They put foreign income back in. But I think the most important thing is, and this was already in place, the income protection allowances, all of the numbers now get updated for inflation every year. And that was actually part of the original FAFSA Simplification Act. It’s one of the good things that came out of that, because it does mean it’s keeping up with inflation, which is great news. So I think we can all maybe start to agree that now that we’re over the worst of the FAFSA transition, that it really has become a better FAFSA. We saw great completion rates this year, and I imagine last year and this year will be even better. The pilots are rolling out in August and September. We’ve been told… I haven’t had an institution who’s gotten an ISER yet, but institutions will definitely start getting some ISERs, and it looks like it’s on track to open on October 1st. So we’re headed back into a normal year, as much as it’s normal.

0:31:49.9 Brett Schraeder: Get ready for an old normal. Yeah, and I think even the beta testing will be open to everybody maybe in the next few weeks. So you may start seeing and hearing students completing the FAFSA. Well, this has been super helpful. Kathy, if there’s maybe one takeaway on all of this, one or two, what would you say? And then we’ll wrap it up.

0:32:12.3 Kathy Ruby: Yeah, I think one or two. Pace of change is certainly unrelenting, and I try to think about what would I be doing if I were in a financial aid office right now? And I think I’d really just try to segment each part of all of these changes and figure out how it impacts my institution and sort of keep a running document of what matters, what doesn’t matter, and then wrap in the people above you as much as you possibly can as you’re estimating the impact on your own institution.

0:32:42.7 Brett Schraeder: Well, I think that is very good advice, and I think we’ll call it a day there. But thanks, Kathy, as always. Always great to talk to you about these things. And thank you, everybody, for visiting us at the Office Hours with EAB. And all of this will be posted in a blog post soon, so you can look out for that. And maybe another session with Kathy and me here again soon. Thanks, everybody.