Publication Date: April 20, 2007 Author: William Leith, Acting General Manager, Application, Operations and Delivery Services, Federal Student Aid Summary: Release of the report, Analysis of the Experimental Sites Initiative: 2004-05 Award Year Posted on 04-20-2007 The U.S. Department of Education is pleased to announce the release of the report, Analysis of the Experimental Sites Initiative: 2004-05 Award Year. This report is available from the Experimental Sites website at https://experimentalsites.ed.gov.The Experimental Sites Initiative was authorized by Congress under section 487A(b) "Regulatory Improvement and Streamlining Experiments" of the Higher Education Act of 1965, as amended. Since 1996 the U.S. Department of Education, Federal Student Aid, has overseen the Experimental Sites Initiative. This Initiative - or the "experiments" - provides Federal Student Aid with 120 laboratories to test the effects of statutory and regulatory flexibility for selected institutions participating in Title IV student aid programs. Each of these laboratories is a postsecondary institution granted special permission to waive specific statute and the implementing regulations. The Initiative grew from concerns that Federal requirements sometimes placed unnecessary burdens on postsecondary students and institutions and that the outcomes of some of these requirements could run counter to the goals of the Higher Education Act. The Higher Education Reconciliation Act of 2006, Public Law No. 109-171 made permanent the flexibilities tested in two experiments - waiver of multiple disbursements for single-term loans and waiver of the 30-day delay for disbursements of loans to first-time, first-year borrowers. This is the final year that participating institutions will report data regarding these two experiments. As a condition for participation, institutions in the Experimental Sites Initiative provide data concerning the outcomes of the experiments in which they participate. This report compiles performance outcomes on all 10 of the experiments conducted during the award year 2004-2005. These experiments involve:
|