MSHE Alumni Spotlight: Dave Musser
Disclaimer: David (Dave) Musser spoke with Isabel Tamas, graduate assistant and interviewer, as a private citizen and not a representative or office of the U.S. Department of Education. The views expressed in this interview are Dave's own and do not necessarily reflect the position of his agency.
MSHE Graduate Assistant Isabel Tamas: Could you tell me when you graduated from MSHE and what your career path has looked like since then?
Dave: Sure. So, I graduated from the program in 2009. At the time I was working full-time in Northwestern University’s Financial Aid Office. I had a total of about 5 years of experience working in aid offices. My first experience was at Career Education Corporation, which was an umbrella corporation that had a lot of for-profit institutions that it owned. We were a centralized financial aid office that did financial aid awards and all of the financial aid functions for all of the colleges across the country. After a few years, I decided to transition to Northwestern, where I joined the Undergraduate Financial Aid Office. I got to see two very different sides of higher ed through those two places. After a few years at Northwestern, and after completing the Master’s program, I joined the Chicago Regional Office of the Department of Education as an “Institutional Review Specialist,” or what is often called a “Program Reviewer,” which is essentially an auditor of colleges and their compliance with all of the requirements of all the federal student aid programs. Since then, I have gone various places in the Department of Education. I joined the policy office in Federal Student Aid (FSA) in 2013. In 2020, I was promoted to Group Director for Policy Innovation and Dissemination where I was responsible for the national federal student aid handbook, which is essentially a repository of plain language information about the aid programs. And most recently [in March 2023], I was promoted again to Deputy Director for Policy Implementation and Oversight, where I assist our Director with management of that office.
Isabel: First, congratulations and let me give you your flowers because this is really exciting. I'm so happy to hear that your hard work is being recognized by your organization and you're continuing to be promoted into these really exciting new roles. And of course, speaking of your current role, could you maybe tell me a little bit more about what you do now?
Dave: Sure. The Office of Policy Implementation and Oversight in FSA essentially has the job of translating new laws and regulations into actual practice. So we get information both from Congress and from our colleagues elsewhere in the Department [of Education] about what's changing. We then work with all of our partners, which include schools, students, servicers for schools, and all the other folks who are interested in higher ed to find out what it'll actually take to implement the changes. We then help the rest of our operational teams make all of the changes and the updates they need to make. For example, we have computer systems that need to be changed, compliance procedures that need to be updated, and guidance to colleges and students that needs to be published. We're responsible for kicking off, or explaining all of those things to our colleagues throughout FSA and, and sometimes the rest of the department. So I assist our Director with a lot of our work with leadership in the Department, including FSA’s Chief Operating Officer and our colleagues from the administration, talking with senior leaders about what policy choices might work well and which ones might not work so well based on what their goals are. I’m also responsible for conveying what changes are coming to my colleagues at Federal Student Aid, to help them prepare to make those kinds of changes.
Isabel: In your words, how would you describe the current state of college access and affordability in higher education? I know it's a big concept, but I'm just wondering if you could set the scene and give us some context as to what this is looking like right now.
Dave: I think it's a source of concern for almost all different constituencies in the United States. Students are feeling like they have to make an enormous investment in order to attend college. Colleges are feeling like they are cash strapped and are struggling to generate enough revenue to offer their programs. Policymakers are concerned about the amount of debt taken out for students to go to college. So, I think that it’s an area that a lot of folks are thinking a lot about. But people are struggling to find ways to ensure that students have the ability to attend college without disrupting their financial future. There are a lot of ideas floating around about how we might be able to resolve that, but there's very little agreement right now in policy circles about what that might look like.
Isabel: Absolutely. And could you maybe identify some of the key factors that are contributing to the rising costs of college tuition and fees that we're seeing right now.
Dave: I can give you an opinion. I think that's another area that is hotly debated in the policy and the research community. But, I think there are some things that are, at least, largely agreed upon that are driving forces here. One of those is that for public higher education, state governments fund public colleges and provide general subsidies to those colleges. But state governments also have to fund all of their other priorities, which include a whole host of things that they that they must get done: everything from ensuring that they are providing regular services to their citizens, keeping up infrastructure, funding prisons, etc. Higher education is one area that actually has the ability to generate its own revenue by charging tuition. So in many cases, what happens is if the state becomes cash strapped and needs to cut somewhere, higher education is often the first place that gets cut because the schools have the ability to find the money elsewhere. But that has meant is tuition has had to correspondingly increase in order for the schools to maintain enough revenue to offer programs of the quality that they feel they should. That's on the public side. On the nonprofit side of higher ed, there has been an ongoing competition among colleges as colleges seek to demonstrate to potential students that they are the right fit, and have programs and amenities that students might want when they go to those colleges. But what that has meant has been not just increasing sticker price/tuition, but also increasing institutional aid offered. You'll find that a lot of nonprofit institutions, especially less selective institutions, are really struggling with what's called the discount rate, the amount of aid that they provide students. So we see the total tuition go up and up. But what's really happening at nonprofits is, at least at the less-selective nonprofits, is an intense competition to get your price right at the level that students and their families are willing to pay while still maintaining the revenue that you need to keep running. So those factors together have caused tuition overall – that is, sticker price – to increase quite a bit at nonprofit colleges, and it's increased a lot faster than all other sectors. For-profit colleges have always been somewhat expensive compared to what I would consider to be their counterparts serving the same kind of groups of students, which are community colleges. Their tuition has gone up somewhat, but is more in line with inflation and is not tied as closely to some of the other factors that I mentioned. Community colleges also are experiencing some of the same challenges that four-year flagship and regional colleges are experiencing. Although, because they have always run on a budget, I would say their increases in tuition have gone up more slowly. Those are some of the things that are causing the price increases. And the last thing I would say is that that it's very difficult for colleges to keep their costs down because educating students is something that can only really be done with highly educated staff over time. There are no efficiencies that you can create by doing it at scale. You can educate a lot of people online in a class of a thousand, but you will see a significant decrease in the quality of that education, because you just won't have the one-on-one interaction that you get elsewhere. To maintain quality, schools have to hire people who are highly educated. And even in that circumstance, there’s still the ongoing issue of adjunct instructors who aren't on the tenure track and aren't making the same amount as some as a full-time instructors, but they all still need to pay people. So that's really something that is not going to change anytime soon. The more people that go to college, the more that colleges that want to maintain their standards, the costs are going to keep increasing over time. In order to change that, you would either have to decrease demand for college by coming up with other alternatives to a college degree that are feasible and will actually help people get to a middle-class lifestyle. Or you'd have to find ways to significantly cut costs within colleges, which doesn't seem viable at the moment.
Isabel: I've had the opportunity to interview someone else who brought to my attention that the rising cost of administration is also contributing to this problem. As someone who is an aspiring college administrator, I myself contribute to this process. That was definitely really eye opening for me, and I appreciate you highlighting that as well.
Dave: Yeah, you know, that's an interesting factor and it's true. Administrative costs have gone up. But I think if you ask most students whether they'd like to attend college in the seventies when a lot of the services that they're used to were not available, I think they probably would say, “I don't think I'd want to go to that college.” There's a recognition now that there's a lot more needed to really make sure that students’ needs are cared for while they're in college. And that comes with the cost of making sure that those programs are available and run well. That's another area that is very difficult to cut without cutting really important services that we think students need.
Isabel: Absolutely. Thank you again for highlighting that. One thing I want to talk about next is the FAFSA (Free Application for Federal Student Aid). I know that the FAFSA is something that can impact college affordability. Could you share any experiences you have with working with the FAFSA?
Dave: My part of the Department of Education, Federal Student Aid, is responsible for maintaining the FAFSA system. We keep it running. We work with contractors who ensure that it's available to students 24 hours a day. And we're responsible for making all the changes to it that are happening in the upcoming academic year. It's a big part of our work, and there has been a recognition for a long time that the FAFSA is a complicated form that families often find challenging to fill out. And there has been widespread agreement among policymakers that there are ways that we can improve on that. FSA has already done a lot over time without any prompting to try to improve the FAFSA by making it a smarter form that takes information that students fill out in one section and uses it to omit other questions as they go through the form. But there's only so much that can be done, given what the law requires. So recently, Congress changed the law to limit the number of questions that are asked on the FAFSA. This is to help limit the obstacles and challenges that families experience when they complete the form, in the hopes that they'll get through the form more quickly and easily, [and so] that won't be a barrier to the student actually enrolling. Those changes are all going into effect for the next academic year, and the plan is to roll out that new FAFSA in December 2023.
Isabel: Absolutely. And as you mentioned, changes are coming. I'd love to hear some of your perspectives on what changes are happening to the FAFSA and how they'll impact students moving forward?
Dave: Sure, and some really significant changes are coming. Currently, when you fill out the FAFSA, you have an option to have your tax information from the IRS automatically transferred into the FAFSA. You go in, and you acknowledge that you would like to do that, and the IRS sends us that information. That helps a lot because it means you don't have to have your tax forms handy. The big changes that are coming essentially make that process mandatory and not optional. All applicants will have their information taken from the IRS directly, unless it's impossible. So once a student and their and their family have given consent, all of that information will come over automatically. And they'll have to fill out a small number of fields that can't be taken from IRS data about their assets and a few other things. So once that happens, we think it will mean a faster and more streamlined experience for students that isn't going to involve as much complexity, and that hopefully we can explain better to families as they're getting used to the process. It will mean a lot of work on the part of financial aid offices, however. It's going to be a big transition. I think there's been quite a bit of work already [done to] get prepared for it and learning what will be different in the upcoming academic cycle.
Isabel: How will [the changing December release date of the FAFSA] this impact students and what, is the reason for the change?
Dave: The reason for the October release date, under normal circumstances, is to give students the ability to complete the FAFSA and apply for college early. [This is] to ensure that they can get their federal aid application in for college early, to ensure that they can get their federal aid application in for early access and early decision admissions, and all the other ways that students can apply long before the normal admission cycle. In this cycle, the number of changes that are coming required the Department to delay the release of the FAFSA for a few months. The reason for the later implementation date is the significant overhaul that had to happen internally to the Department in order to get the FAFSA ready for the upcoming cycle. We want to be confident that we deliver a stable and secure FAFSA in a predictable way.
Isabel: Okay, excellent. I also had another question that I wanted to ask you based on a discussion that I had in my enrollment management class. Specifically, my professor raised a concern that some of the changing FAFSA requirements might negatively impact middle class families and rural families. Are you familiar with this at all? Have folks raised this concern?
Dave: I can't speak for the Department or for Congress, who signed those changes into law. But, there are going to be changes that are being made and for the upcoming cycle that will affect the groups that you've described, including middle-class families and rural families. I believe the changes that you're referring to are primarily that the FAFSA will no longer consider a family's other students in college automatically and another change that will include the value of a family farm in a family’s assets on the FAFSA. Financial need is determined using the FAFSA and is used to determine whether a family qualifies for federal student aid. What used to happen is that, if you had more than one student in college at the same time, the amount that you were expected to pay was essentially cut in half and divided among those students. That had a big effect on families who had multiple students in college at the same time. That's no longer going to be the case. It’s unclear why it was changed – it may have been for budgetary reasons or because that was just one more question that was asked on the FAFSA that couldn't be drawn from tax information, or some other reason. So now we have one less question, but we also have families who have the same costs of multiple students in college are not having some of that reflected automatically on their FAFSA. Families can still bring this information to their college’s financial aid office and request special consideration for the additional costs. If the financial aid office can make what we call a “professional judgement,” they can amend the family's financial need based on those additional costs. But it won't be automatic anymore, which will mean that some families won't ask for it, and that could mean that they will end up paying a little bit more. The other change I mentioned is that the value of a family's farm used to be excluded from consideration on the FAFSA if they lived on that farm. But it is no longer going to be excluded as part of the changes to the FAFSA Simplification Act. Their actual home will still be excluded from consideration on the FAFSA, but that change is still going to have an impact, in certain cases, on families who have farms and where those farms have some value. The family is going to be required to calculate the net value of the farm and include it on the FAFSA. That will mean that the FAFSA interprets that the family has greater assets and correspondingly less financial need because of the value of their farm. But as you know, many of those families can't take any of that money out of the farm itself, or it would be very difficult for them to. That could result in financial challenges for families in rural areas who keep a lot of their wealth in their farms.
Isabel: I would love to hear more about what changes you would hope to see in the coming years for the future of college access and affordability. Are there any policy changes that have yet to be implemented that you'd like to see come to fruition?
Dave: There are a lot of different things happening right now. One of the big efforts by the Biden administration has been to make loan repayment more affordable. That doesn't address college costs, of course; students are still borrowing the same amounts, but the administration has made the income driven repayment system more generous. Starting this July, actually. The new system, which has the acronym SAVE [Saving on a Valuable Education], is what we call an “income-driven repayment plan,” meaning that a borrower’s payments will be based on their income. Compared with the most generous income-driven repayment plan previously available, the SAVE plan will cut in half the amount of most borrowers' payments and increase the amount of income that is protected from consideration for each monthly payment. For borrowers that borrow less than $12,000 over the course of their college attendance, all of their debt will be forgiven within 10 years automatically. That's a very significant change that will likely mean that many students attending community college, which costs a lot less than other colleges, will have all of their debt forgiven within that 10-year period. Those are very significant changes that make repaying loans much more affordable for undergraduates. It will help a lot of struggling borrowers afford their day-to-day expenses. But as I mentioned, those changes really only help in students who are repaying their loans. The loan debt hasn't gone anywhere. I would like to see a little more focus on policies that are designed to ensure that colleges are thinking very carefully about the tuition that they charge and how well their students are doing after they graduate. That's a very difficult thing to do, and would require a big investment both by colleges and by the federal government to track that and see how well students are doing over time. But I think tracking student earnings after graduation would help schools identify programs that aren't doing as well and where they might need to offer new career services to help students, for example, by helping get them internships or other job experience before they graduate. And it would result in more information for colleges about how well their students are doing financially after they graduate. On the other side of the coin, I think we could really stand to benefit by having alternatives to a traditional college education or college degree for students who are in more vocational fields, that will lead to jobs that that result in strong, stable wages over time. Those alternatives could reduce some of the demand for college education. But on a national level we don't have anything right now that most policymakers, students, and their families are comfortable with because college is still, and has been for a long time the most effective way of reaching, that stable middle class lifestyle. At some point in the future, I would like to see that alternative pathway develop and become better accepted throughout the country. There are some possibilities that are cropping up, [such as] apprenticeship programs where students work with employers to get trained, and have that turn into a real job or a promising area.
Isabel: I've heard about something called the negotiated rulemaking process. I don't understand what it is. Can you help me understand what this is and what we're trying to do with this?
Dave: You've dug into one of the most esoteric parts of the federal regulatory process. The Higher Education Act of 1965 is the originating law for all of the federal student aid programs. It's what authorizes the Pell Grant, the Direct Loan program, all of those kinds of things. Any time that the Department of Education decides to regulate on one of the student aid, [that law requires us] to go through a process called negotiated rule making (which is actually explained and established in a separate law). What it means is that we work with negotiators from all of the constituencies that we're regulating. Let's say we're making a change to how we verify students’ financial information. If we were to do that, we would have a representative from students, from financial aid offices, from every sector of higher education, maybe from third party servicers that perform some of those functions. We would get around the table, the Department would offer its proposal, and those negotiators and the Department would work together to try to reach consensus on the right approach for regulations. What happens is if we all reach consensus, if all the negotiators (including the Department) agree, then the Department will agree to stick with the framework that was agreed upon among the negotiators. If even one negotiator says that they can't agree, then the Department will do whatever it wants. You can see that the Department still holds a lot of the cards during this process, but it does provide policymakers with a lot of really useful information from those constituencies as we work through that process. Negotiated rulemaking has to happen before we propose any substantive regulations. And we are actually working on that process for student debt relief right now, I'm sure that's probably where you heard the term most recently. We have put out the call for negotiators and that's the first step in that process.
Isabel: Excellent. That's really exciting. Thank you so much again for your participating in this. I really, really enjoyed speaking with you and hearing a lot of your insights.