• Release Date:
• Friday, June 26, 2009
• Dateline (city):
• Washington, D.C.
• Contact:
• The Chronicle for Higher Education
  Author: Austin Wright

Congress has approved a bill to patch holes in the Higher Education Act, including a glitch that would have forced thousands of veterans to return federal student aid they had been awarded for the coming academic year.

The glitch stemmed from a discrepancy between two pieces of legislation enacted last year: the Post-9/11 GI Bill and the reauthorization of the Higher Education Act. The House of Representatives passed legislation correcting the error in March, but the Senate did not vote on the measure until yesterday.

The House passed the measure for a second time yesterday because the Senate version of the bill added a scholarship program providing the maximum Pell Grant award to any student who had a parent die while on active military duty in Iraq or Afghanistan. Both the House and Senate approved the measure unanimously. 

—Exerpt from Austin Wright's article

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