The Rant Podcast
A bi-weekly podcast focused on pulling back the curtain on the American higher education system and breaking down the people, the policies and the politics. The podcast host, Eloy Ortiz Oakley, is a known innovator and leader in higher education. The podcast will not pull any punches as it delves into tough questions about the culture, politics and policies of our higher education system.
The Rant Podcast
Negotiated Rulemaking Decoded
Use Left/Right to seek, Home/End to jump to start or end. Hold shift to jump forward or backward.
Negotiated rulemaking is where higher education policy turns into the rules that hit your campus, your budget, and your students. We sit down with higher ed policy expert Kristin Hultquist of HCM Strategists and Dr. Andy Vaughn, president and CEO of Alliant University, to explain how the U.S. Department of Education writes federal regulations after Congress passes a major bill and why the people in the room can shape outcomes that last for years.
We get specific about what each committee tackled, from Workforce Pell and its completion and in-field job placement requirements, to the new accountability floor that asks a simple question: do graduates earn more than a high school graduate a few years after completion? Kristin walks through how negotiators navigate tight statutory constraints, caucus sessions behind closed doors, and the constant push and pull between stakeholder demands and learner-centered consumer protection.
Andy shares what it looks like to “lean in” as an institutional leader when Title IV changes and graduate student loan limits threaten real programs. He breaks down how facts, data, and coalition-building helped influence the professional designation list, and why waiting for politics to change is a losing strategy. We also dig into the next big frontier: accreditation reform, especially for graduate licensure programs where specialty accreditors can drive costs in ways colleges cannot solve alone.
If you care about college affordability, federal student aid, Workforce Pell, graduate student debt, and accountability metrics that define program value, this conversation will help you understand what’s coming and how to respond. Subscribe, share this episode with a colleague, and leave a review so more higher ed leaders can find it.
https://www.alliant.edu/
https://hcmstrategists.com/
eloy@4leggedmedia.com
What Negotiated Rulemaking Really Is
Hi, this is Eloy Ortiz Oakley, and this is another episode of the Rand Podcast. The podcast where we pull back the curtains and break down the people, the policies, and the politics of our higher education system. In this episode, I get to sit down and talk about negotiated rulemaking. What is negotiated rulemaking? Well, negotiated rulemaking at the federal government level basically is the job of the agency, and in this case, the Department of Education, that is responsible for developing the regulations to implement federal policy, or in this case, a new law statute. I'm gonna sit down with two colleagues, two good friends, two great people who really understand the higher education landscape, who were part of recent rulemaking efforts at the Department of Education I get to sit down with Kristin Hultquist, who is the founder of HCM Strategies. she is an expert in higher education policy, and her firm supports and advises clients both at the state level, at the federal level, and at the institution level throughout the country. I know I've worked with her in my previous role as Chancellor of the California Community Colleges, and she and her team do a fabulous job. I also get to welcome Dr. Andy Vaughn. Andy is the President CEO of Alliant University. Alliant University serves several professional graduate programs throughout the country, and they do an amazing job at serving the needs of learners. So both Kristen and Andy recently came off their stints working on negotiated rulemaking. They worked on issues like Workforce Pell, accountability, and the new graduate student loan limits. so we'll hear from them about their experience with negotiated rulemaking, help us better understand what negotiated rulemaking is all about, because I know it's one of those things that a lot of people don't pay attention to, but the people that pay attention to it definitely pay attention to it because it is part of the policies and part of the politics of higher education. Yes, politics. In negotiated rulemaking, the administration, whichever administration is responsible for the rulemaking, certainly has their viewpoint of how the negotiated rulemaking should go. And in this case, in this current administration, This administration has put their emphasis on how rulemaking should go, which is very different than what it's been over the last couple of administrations. So I'll sit down and talk with Kristen and Andy about their experiences, have them break down some of the issues that they were involved in in their respective negotiated rulemaking rounds, and how they think about negotiated rulemaking going forward, and any advice they have for individuals who either become part of a negotiated rulemaking process or who want to respond to what comes out of negotiated rulemaking. It is something that no one should sit on the sidEloynes about, because all these negotiated rulemaking rounds have an impact on the higher education marketplace, and it's up to all of us to engage with the federal government, to engage with the Department of Education or the Department of Labor or the Department of Commerce when issues arise and regulations need to be established that will impact how we serve learners throughout America. So with all that as a backdrop, please enjoy my conversation with Kristen Hultquist and Andy Vaughn as we talk about negotiated rulemaking.
Meet Kristen Hultquist And Andy Vaughn
eloy-ortiz-oakley_1_06-08-2026_093619Kristen and Andy, welcome to the Rand Podcast
squadcaster-5ib9_1_06-08-2026_093619Great to be here
eloy-ortiz-oakley_1_06-08-2026_093619It's great to have you both. I know both of you have got a million things going on, so I really appreciate you taking the time to be on the podcast. I know that you both have been very engaged lately at the federal level, and we'll jump into that. A lot of our listeners have had lots of questions about what's going on in Washington, DC, what's going on with that one big beautiful bill how are all these impacting higher education? But, most people don't get behind the curtain to ask: how did we actually get here with these regulations? And, the federal government, particularly the Department of Education, goes through this rulemaking process every time that a new bill is passed and signed or there's major changes that need to happen. And so we're gonna jump into that, given both of you have recent experience with negotiated rulemaking. But before we get into that let me ask you both a question. Kristen, I'll start with you. You've both been in and around higher education for a long time. What are you doing right now, and how did you get sucked into negotiated rulemaking?
kristin-hultquist_1_06-08-2026_103619That is the operative action verb, sucked in. I received apparently in late November an invitation from the department to be the primary negotiator for public colleges and universities. I opened it and ignored it for three and a half weeks until they came knocking on my door
eloy-ortiz-oakley_1_06-08-2026_093619That's what I usually did with Department of Education letters.
kristin-hultquist_1_06-08-2026_103619Are you gonna respond? And I said, "Oh." And I had worked for about 18 months in the role of senior advisor for a prior administration, so I knew enough about neg reg to, like I said, lay it aside. But a couple people said I should take advantage of this opportunity, that this was pretty important legislation. And so I said yes. And it turns out that my MSU Denver, Metropolitan State University Denver, which I'm privileged to serve on the board of, I'm a trustee appointed by the governor and confirmed by the Senate nominated me. And the department thought that the public four years should have the primary seat, and so the alternate seat to, for our sector was given to the two years. And that became a little bit of a drama, but it all got worked out. We negotiators got along fabulously in the public sector and generally, and that's how I got to be at the table, and it was a party in two parts, December and in January
eloy-ortiz-oakley_1_06-08-2026_093619And quickly describe I, I know all these negotiated rulemaking sessions have fancy acronyms and titles. What was the negotiated rulemaking that you participated on, and what was its aim?
kristin-hultquist_1_06-08-2026_103619Sure. We were called AHEAD.
eloy-ortiz-oakley_1_06-08-2026_093619All right
kristin-hultquist_1_06-08-2026_103619don't know what it means, something about accountability. And essentially it tackled two parts of the legislation, that July 4th legislation from '25. One was the workforce Pell, and they separated that out and said, "We will only deal with those issues in a week. If we come to consensus before that week's up, you can go home." We came back in the new year and we tackled another set of issues, and those are the accountability provisions. And those are the accountability provisions that related to direct loans and what's now known as a new kind of common sense floor across all institutions Eloygible public and nonprofit, two and four, for-profits. So we worked on that in the second week in January.
eloy-ortiz-oakley_1_06-08-2026_093619And remind us all, Kristen, what is your day job? 'Cause you have a day job.
kristin-hultquist_1_06-08-2026_103619I do have a day job. I have to pay the bills. I have four kids, three are in out-of-state colleges. Egads. I am the founder and CEO of a public policy and advocacy consulting firm that's largely focused on post-secondary education and career competitive learning. It's called HCM Strategists, and we were founded during the Great Recession right at the tail end of the Bush administration and the last time that our Higher Education Act, our federal accountability, federal financing, federal policy framework was last authorized by Congress. That's when HCM Strategists was founded
eloy-ortiz-oakley_1_06-08-2026_093619And in my humble opinion, one of the best strategy firms in the country,
kristin-hultquist_1_06-08-2026_103619Oh, thank you. We are a bunch of first-gen scrappy staffers, and so we think our model works.
eloy-ortiz-oakley_1_06-08-2026_093619Yes, it does work. It does work. All right, Andy. First let's just reverse it. Let's start with your day job, Andy, 'cause you also have a day job, and then we'll jump into how you got sucked into negotiated rulemaking
How Andy Fought For Program Inclusion
squadcaster-5ib9_1_06-08-2026_093619Yeah, some of these jobs are actually two or three X, so I think we're both in that cate-- all three of us are in that category. So I serve as president and CEO of Alliant University. Have done that for the last 11 years. And Alliant is primarily a graduate-level university professional practice programs, most of which lead to state licensure. We're a niche university that turned a niche into a larger group of students. We have about 5,000 students. We serve mostly mental health licensure, K-12 teacher licensure, and soon occupational therapy. We just started nursing licensure programs as well. We're the largest provider of licensed clinical psychologists in the entire United States, and about half of mental health workers in California come from Alliant and our California School of Professional Psychology. So that's my day job. How I got sucked into neg reg, a slightly different story. I actually leaned into it and wanted to be on there. I think some very close friends of mine, especially those in DC, thought I was crazy, tried to talk me out of that, and I really wanted to serve, and I'll tell you why. This actually dates back to the Biden administration during gainful employment. And let's face it, when neg reg, whether it's legislatively driven or it's executive level driven, doesn't always get it right on the first tranche or draft. It's just not the way it works. That's why they do neg reg, is we get it as right as we can. And I worked for 18 months with some colleagues from Alliant and a couple of attorneys from Duane Morris, and we really worked hard to get gainful employment to include exclusions for clinical psychology and mental health licensure programs, which are oftentimes overlooked as not as important as phys- as physical health. And we're a mental health university. We certainly understand how important mental health is, and I think more Americans are understanding that, and we advocate strong for mental health rights, and we advocate strong for mental health inclusion in legislation and regulation. And what I learned through the neg reg process is with the right facts and data and the right level of tenacity with respect, you can get things done. We did get gainful employment rewritten to include mental health licensure programs and extra time to measure income for those graduates based on the needs of licensure being completed post-graduation So Gameful Employment finally got published with the inclusion of mental health programs, and I got a taste of that activity and moving mountains, not gravel, in DC, and that was quite enjoyable. When the Title IV changes were being discussed in one big beautiful bill, we were early on that. We could clearly see as early as February of '25 that this was gonna be major impact. I think a lot of schools were in denial that this was gonna happen. So I started taking trips out to DC back in February, March, April, trying to see if we could impact some additional language in the one big beautiful bill about these changes. Some of that worked, most of it didn't, and that's fine. So at that point, when the bill was signed on July 4th by the president, I decided to jump in headfirst and see if I could get a nomination for the committee, and did. Became the pri- one of the primary negotiators for the RISE Committee, which we helped rewrite 17 federal regulations, mostly around Title IV, but not all. Probably the most important one and the one that gets the most notoriety is which programs are in the professional designation list. You've heard those stories over and over, even today, and that was probably the one that got the most attention. We had some full rooms with media every day at our committee sessions, and that's how it all happened, though I-
eloy-ortiz-oakley_1_06-08-2026_093619That's an interesting comparison of the two, two different ways that people wind up in negotiated rulemaking. Andy, let me pull on a couple of threads that you mentioned. The changes that were happening were a direct impact to your university. So I think that's a great lesson for college leaders right now that, denial is not a strategy. That you actually got up and got over to DC and started asking questions, and fortunately were invited into the conversation around the rulemaking. So before rulemaking started, the initial regs, the draft regs, excluded many of your programs from that professional designation. How did the conversation go in negotiated rulemaking and what do you think led to your success? Because there's other programs, particularly in, I get questions all the time about, nursing being excluded. H- how were you successful?
squadcaster-5ib9_1_06-08-2026_093619Firstly, I think it's understanding what the undersecretary is driving and the secretary are driving to their alignment to the legislation passed by Congress. And let's face it, the RISE committee was very rare. It's not often that negotiated rulemaking is dictated by legislation passed by Congress. That's almost unheard of. And so we had severe bumpers to work with and constraints. There are things we could not negotiate. When Congress speaks, you can't change the will of Congress and the president. There were very few things we could impact, and we really got to work on maybe about a dozen areas we could impact, maybe softening language in some places, and the professional designation list was probably the most important work we were doing. And you go in with facts and data. You go in thinking you've got the strategy that might turn the key turn the lock with a key, and you get a lot of schools on board. You certainly listen to a lot of schools. In my role, I probably talked to no less than four or five dozen different school presidents and financial aid officers, you name it. I had my phone and email wide open, texting wide open for input. It's probably the busiest three or four months I've ever had in my career trying to do our day jobs as we talked about earlier, and then running interference and also being open and inclusive to calls and, we were trying to make sure all the schools got their voices heard, and I think we did that pretty well. What we learned, though, is that you don't always have the right strategy when you go into neg reg. It's not until you're sitting in the room, which is why I wanted to be there, that you understand the dynamics and the nuances of what either Congress wanted or what the department where they're trying to steer. And also it's clear that consensus is not often attained, and we were able to do that, and so were the next couple of committees. And I think we're very proud of that because you have so many different opinions and different people in the room representing different constituencies, it's really tough to get consensus. And we had to work a lot of hours together. I think most of the work was done outside of session. We'd go to dinner, go to drinks. We'd have conversations early in the morning at breakfast over coffee to try to get there as best we could. But I think the biggest lesson is, yeah, dive in headfirst. If something's gonna impact you, it may not work, but dive in headfirst because at the end of that process, I wanted to make sure that we said we did everything that we possibly could do. And even if it didn't work, I wouldn't have been satisfied if I could've not told my board and our university and all the universities we represented, "Hey, we tried everything we could," and and we certainly dove in that way
eloy-ortiz-oakley_1_06-08-2026_093619I know that the learners and the faculty and the team at Alliant should be very appreciative of all the work that you put in here because it definitely made life a little easier, particularly for graduate students at Alliant University. Kristen, let me jump to you. You heard Andy's experience in rulemaking and I know that you were appointed as the public member, public institution member. How did you go into this? What was your thinking going into this and your experience in the rulemaking process?
Kristen On AHEAD And Workforce Pell
kristin-hultquist_1_06-08-2026_103619I was expecting to go in and just exercise my professional judgment. And as you said, I went to a AASCU institution in California and have about 30 years of experience in the field. And so I thought I would just go in and apply my skills of understanding, how does the undersecretary work? H-what, how does Congress express its wishes? What's the role of the general counsel? How are other people showing up? What do I think is the right policy solution here? How can I-- So I thought I'd bring all those skills. Turns out that a lot of stakeholders early on when they got the l- they s- there was a lot of gossip around who's gonna get appointed to a head. And people started calling saying, "We think we see you're on the list." And so I ended up, I and Dr. Tanja Williams, who is the president of St. Pete College in Florida, we got deluged by the stakeholder group saying, "We would like you to join a conference call, and we will tell you what we want to have happen." And about after the fifth or sixth of those stakeholder calls, Dr. Williams texts me. She's "I have a day job. I can't help out anymore." And so at that point, we just kept saying, "Send us your letter." And so that began to give me a window into how much was I gonna listen to and confer with the constituents versus just exercise my best judgment. It helped that both the policy and government affairs teams at Association of Community Colleges and AASCU attended all, every day. They made themselves available. There were also friends in the community who put their own policy teams to to practice. So they, I was able to text my friends at the Data Quality Campaign in the middle of the session on Workforce Pell and say, "How many states can really do provide data to the secretary on this one metric?" For instance, it's placement in a job six months after completion of a program, and that job needs to be in field. How many can do that? And so they quickly said, "Here's, here's what the answer is." So I was able to engage that way. And so I would say for me, it was more of me being a policy wonk than me being a government relations person for state colleges. At the end of the day, I found our, as I mentioned earlier, we were a p- a play in two acts, a party in, in, in two sessions. They were very different rulemaking. One, it was very, AHEAD was very different than RISE. know, I think you guys were getting spammed by students in professional fields. My daughter's one of them. She's an aspiring physician assistant. But you were getting spammed with video. We didn't have any controversy in our Workforce Pell, our first one. We were creating something new. People were excited. People have been advocating for this for 15 years. Iowa has been at short-term credentials since the '70s. So people were really excited. And I would say in that session, I played the r- role more as we just described, as reminding people what can't be done in rulemaking And that is if Congress has stipulated, and they did, that in order to be Eloygible for this new program, 70% of your learners have to complete the program, and 70% of those completers have to go get jobs within six months, and s- those jobs need to be in field. We couldn't say we like 55," or "We don't like, we don't the placement metric. As, as long as students complete, that's enough, 'cause it's not colleges' jobs to be concerned about placement into fields." None of those positions had any ground because the Congress had already spoken. So I found I spent a lot of time saying, like holding my tongue because I didn't need to publicly grandstand and because I knew that the department had no room to give there. So that's the first act. The second act of the play when we were doing the one accountability framework, that new basEloyne for all sectors. Again, bipartisan progress. My role was to be that person I probably represented my m- less states and more my sector in that one, and it was in closed doors, they call them caucuses. And they close the doors, and we negotiators, primary and alternates, as well as the department staff, c- go behind closed doors and they basically iron out some real disagreements that, that probably can't be ironed out in, in, in front of cameras and stakeholder groups. And I spent a lot of time there. Y- Eloy, you mentioned the expression, "Denial is not a strategy." I actually said, "Please don't give us more time. Please don't give us more exceptions. Let me tell you how simple this basEloyne is." And for-- Just to remind people, three years after you finish your program, could you make $1 more than a high school graduate? And it doesn't account for your lost wages, and it doesn't account for your direct costs. It doesn't account for your time. It's $1 more. We've made all this progress. Let's not get this tied up in the courts. And frankly, I said, we need to move forward. We need to turn the page and start working on what does it look like to reassess our low-value programs. Can they be redesigned or do they need to be phased out?" And you are exacerbating that denial phase that my faculty are gonna hit July 1 of 2026 when they realize, oh, this is real. And they're gonna really want the next Congress to be Democrat, and they're really gonna want this to go away, and it needs to not. We need to be able to provide this assertion of value, and we need to build public confidence. So I spent a lot of time saying "Everyone take a beat. This is not bad." And so that was how I showed up in the second round.
The New Accountability Floor Explained
eloy-ortiz-oakley_1_06-08-2026_093619So let me ask you one additional question to what you just mentioned. This whole notion about accountability, when it was first coming up in public when there was actual talk about accountability and I know you can pull the through line all the way back to the Obama administration that began talking about accountability. But it wasn't until recently that things actually started to happen, and I know a lot of my colleagues express the notion that you just mentioned, which is, this will all go away. How do we make this all go away? But in, in my view, this began as a bipartisan issue before this administration. And talk to us about how you were able to, and how you're still able to talk to people about what happened and why this is important for higher education and not just something that we should try to figure out how to get away from as soon as we can.
kristin-hultquist_1_06-08-2026_103619So I think we've mentioned a couple times in this conversation, how do you really put the learners at the center of what we do in post-secondary education? If you think about a first-generation learner whose parents have no prior experience with the system, whose children don't have any, you-- this is your first experience. You're a working adult. You wanna know what's good. Not being Eloygible to borrow direct loans is a pretty clear signal. I don't need a lot of economic sophistication. I don't need to know how to navigate a fancy portal. I just need to know that this hasn't met a standard. And we've already seen some excellent data that's coming out of the department in a something called a scorecard that happened in the Obama administration. and FAFSA simplification, which I was part of that, that effort. Now, when I apply for my FAFSA as a first-generation student, I immediately get, I immediately say where I wanna send my s- my results, right? And it immediately, it tells me that program at that college doesn't have minimal economic value. Warning. You can still apply. You can still borrow money. But buyer beware. I just feel like that's a very common sense consumer protection, and I think that's a bi- consumer protection is a bipartisan interest. Then you pull back the data, and we were able to see the data. Our friend Preston Cooper, who was with us on the negotiating rulemaking, and he's at the American Enterprise Institute he showed us some data. The department showed us some data. To be honest with you, this really ensnares the accountability floors, really ensnares some of our cosmetology programs that probably have gotten too long over time and are not related to industry demand anymore. That's a huge signal to a broken part of the sector. You gotta reform, and they knew that. They were very honest at the table. In the two-year sector, there's a lot of programs that we've always kinda scratched our head at don't know if general studies has any labor market value. Sure enough, they're the programs that are caught up in this. It's time to look at whether that is really in the best interest of students to give them a general studies degree. In my sector, in the public four years, it's the fine arts. And the reality is, is that we need to do a different job embedding career experiences in our fine arts programs, career coaching, and maybe encourage our fine arts majors to not borrow too much because their lifetime earnings are going to be lower as they pursue their passion in the arts. Or maybe they need a secondary credential to help pay the bills. But all these things are healthy conversations. So just even looking at the data like, "All right, what does this mean for you? What does this mean for you?" All those things were, it's about time we had that conversation.
eloy-ortiz-oakley_1_06-08-2026_093619No, that's a great point. And uh, back to you, Andy.
Grad Loan Caps And The Accreditor Role
eloy-ortiz-oakley_1_06-08-2026_093619I think something very similar was going on with graduate student loans. I think when there was first talk about capping graduate student loans, I got several calls from colleagues, "Is this real?" And my first reaction was, "Absolutely real." Again, this is something that I was hearing in the Senate well before this administration came into office. There was just a lot of frustration with programs, graduate programs that had no ROIs. A few famous examples, particularly one for Southern California private university here that was just mind-blowing, the cost versus the return on investment for that program. So there was a lot of frustration already brewing. How did-- how were you thinking about it, Andy? Obviously, you jumped into negotiated rulemaking wanting to get out in front of it. But when you're talking to your colleagues about graduate programs and accessing loans and this whole notion about accountability, how do you think about it for Alliant and how do you think about it for the field?
squadcaster-5ib9_1_06-08-2026_093619My job as a negotiator was to think about it for not just the field or Alliant, but for all of the private sector universities. And you mentioned an example, tax status does not dictate whether a program is affordable or has good outcomes, and I think that was the primary abuse. You hit it right on the nail there. So I think it's important that the negotiators I can speak only for the RISE Committee, but I think all the committees have been that way in the last couple of years, did a nice job of really opening up to represent the entire higher education sector of over 5,000 schools and colleges. And that was really our primary goal is to make sure all voices were heard, and we got to weigh a lot of different opinions and different different inputs from all kinds of different schools. And so you're right. I think the problem with the Grad PLUS loan, it was to the full height of the cost of attendance, which any school could come up with their own. Even if a program had bad outcomes, it really didn't matter to a lot of people. They just didn't see that message, or they didn't do the research. And if it was just signing a signature loan with no collateral required, no credit check in most cases, then that's just too easy. So part of our job was to figure out how to be fair and transparent but also how to help bring in and rein in the cost of college. Now, our job, I view, as just step one of two steps. Accreditation reform has got to be the second step in that. Colleges cannot do this alone, and one of the things I'd like to see come out of, I think it's the AIM Committee, the Accreditation Committee for Accreditation Reform, is to get the accreditors to sit at the table with the universities, especially for graduate-level licensure programs that have specialty accreditation that are very prescriptive about instructional cost and what has to be dEloyvered. This is 2026, not 1826, and it's time that everyone came to the table to use today's innovations to do just that. We still have a long way to go to lower the cost of college tuition. I view the RISE Committee and the work we did as step one, and that's to limit, especially on the graduate side. Undergraduate wasn't so much touched. It was really focused on graduate level. That's really where most of the impact is and was as of July 1st of this year. But again, we still have some work to do, and I really want to see the accreditation reform come in as step two to get the accreditors to understand they can't just say that's up to the colleges," because it is not in some cases. Not so much for institutional accreditation, but for programmatic or specialty accreditation, they have to work with the universities now in step two to lower the cost of college. So I think that the underlying goal, and it mostly bipartisanness to lower the cost of college tuition, to lower student debt, we all fully support that, and most universities do too. But the accreditors now have to have an active seat at that table to do that. And so I just wanted to make it clear that, hey, look, we represented 5,000 different schools, and not everyone got what they wanted. That's not the goal of negotiated rulemaking is to understand the different opinions and inputs and to try to come to the best possible solution where you can receive consensus.
eloy-ortiz-oakley_1_06-08-2026_093619you mentioned something important along the way there, which is, this notion of accountability going forward and the role of the accreditors. A lot of people think about accreditation as just this broad accreditation, being able to access Title IV, but they forget about these very specialized programs like the ones that you have at Alliant, which require specialty licensure, specialty accreditation, and people forget about those because many of those requirements from those accreditors require a university like yours to limit the size of the class, limit the ratio between the instructor and the s- and the learners, and that for good reason. I just think about my time wrestling with the Board of Registered Nursing here in California. There is good reason for that. But the challenge is it doesn't seem to evolve with changing nature of teaching and learning, the changing nature of technology the need. I can't tell you how many times I wrestled with the Board of Regi- Registered Nursing during the pandemic, trying to get them to understand that if we don't do something different about c- clinical placements, we're not gonna have nurses in a couple of years. So all of that has to be in, in the mix and like you I hope that we can get there as well. Kristen, let me turn
What Surprised Kristen About The Law
eloy-ortiz-oakley_1_06-08-2026_093619to you now. You've served in the department. You've served at the federal level. You've worked with state government. What surprised you about your recent experience with negotiated rulemaking or any of the negotiated rulemaking efforts that have been making their way through the process?
kristin-hultquist_1_06-08-2026_103619What surprised me in this bill, and then it played out in rulemaking, is just how enamored with time as a proxy for quality we are in federal policy. And it was you could start to see that there was no way to unbundle this besides take it head on. And we did it in 1 BBB. Again, the 1 BBB is, was budget reconciliation. It was how to pay for federal tax extensions. And we moved a package of higher ed policies in that package, but it had to be with-- It had to find savers and had to be within the existing policy framework. What surprised me is how, what are the painful consequences of having a federal accountability framework that's essentially federal government is co-equal investors with states in this proposition of affordable, equitable access. And we've got to blow up Higher Education Act. It's entirely too institution-centered. I'm sorry, I represented institutions proudly at the table. It's not learner-centered enough. It's enamored with ti- with time as the only proxy for quality. And as you both have said, the research around learning, the evidence around effective models like Align, the, it is not brought to bear at all. And so you'll you come to the table, you wanna make good policy, you can't when the framework is so outdated. And so I just-- I was surprised at the extent to which the matters that we need to reconcile really are not yet in statute and need to be because as we said, you can't do rulemaking until you get the statute. And so I really think it's time, and I wanna commend the Commission on American Workforce and Eloy was on it as one of the commissioners. It's a-- it calls for a national talent strategy, and its natural conclusion will not only be a higher priority in investing in talent, but doing it quite differently with a different intentional partnership with states. The other thing I was surprised by is the relative ease by which the Department of Education and the Department of Labor came together to co-design these regs, to collaborate with us negotiators. That is an-- that was uncommon in the day when I was at the Department of Education, so that's real progress about integration. And then what was surprising is how much people easily took that governors would have a central role in defining what a pathway of value would be. Nowhere else in Title IV do states have that kind of opportunity to really align what we do in the classroom with what is gonna help learners get good jobs and improve their lives. So that was major change that people accepted pretty easily. Now it's in a small program called Workforce Pell that'll roll out very slowly, I think, for learners, but it is transformational
eloy-ortiz-oakley_1_06-08-2026_093619It is transformational and it's the first step toward, really transforming the way we think about credentialing in America. And it puts states in a different role, really in the driver's seat as you mentioned, which I think people don't really realize what this will lead to. Yes, we can argue that there's not a whole lot of money in Workforce Pell. We have a Pell shortfall. We're concerned about where we go from here, but this drives every governor to think about short-term credentials, but that's a topic for another podcast, and maybe we'll have you back for that one, Kristen. let me ask you both one last question as we begin to wrap up, and I'll start with you, Andy.
Advice For Leaders: Move Fast
eloy-ortiz-oakley_1_06-08-2026_093619As an institutional leader somebody who's directly involved in running a university day-to-day, what is your advice for leaders in the field on how to approach negotiated rulemaking or more broadly, any proposed changes that the department or administration wants to make that impact higher education?
squadcaster-5ib9_1_06-08-2026_093619That answer is really informed by my experience in 2025. I was surprised how many school leaders really didn't jump into action until it was pretty much too late. I think there's the denial phase, and the denial phase happened for many months. And then there was, "Oh we'll just hope for a new White House or a new Congress eventually, and we'll erase this." And, the way the department did it this time and this administration did it was written in stone, not on paper. You've got several layers, including legislative backing of these regulations, which is not always the case. Matter of fact, that's usually not the case. And so th- we're gonna live with these for a very long time, if not forever. This is not a White House change in a few years y- to either party where these get cha-- th- this is-- We're living with this, and I think a lot of schools are still in denial about that. So my advice is to lean in fast, and it doesn't matter if you don't have public policy experience. I had none. It doesn't matter if you don't have any experience in D.C. or don't know where to start. You start knocking on doors, making phone calls. I made a list of 100 people, and I knew that 50 wouldn't even take my call or email. Fine. I knew the 50 that would, maybe 25 wouldn't wanna help or couldn't help. Fine. And so you just-- It's a numbers game. You just start somewhere. The most effective way to overcome anxiety is action, so you just act and you go, and you-- even if you don't know what you're doing. I certainly didn't. I'm still an amateur. I don't know what I'm doing on that front. But you just make it happen. You go in with authenticity, your facts and data, and you do the best you can. But do something. Don't just sit back and assume someone else is gonna do it, because no one is gonna come rescue your school. No one. You have to do it. You gotta jump in. And we got down to about five, six, seven people that were just golden in getting what we needed to get done. We found we found the right law firm. We found the right connections. I-- You'd be surprised how many people in Congress will actually take your meeting if you ask. And you go talk to people, and you're not always gonna agree. It's not the point. But you come with respect, you come with tenacity, and you come with the facts and data, and the rest just takes care of itself
eloy-ortiz-oakley_1_06-08-2026_093619That's great advice, Andy, and I'm sure that's gonna serve you well for the rest of your career. Kristen, you give advice to lots of leaders all over the country. What would be your advice?
kristin-hultquist_1_06-08-2026_103619So I'm gonna harken back to my favorite political scientist, John Kingdon, who wrote about agendas and alternatives in public policy, and he described that process that I've made a living on as windows of opportunity opening. Absolutely, negotiated rulemaking is a window of opportunity, and do not let the technical nature of its process detract you from being honest about the set of issues that you as an institution, you as a, member of our community see. Because as issues are laid on the table, just like a p- imagine a coin purse, and you empty it all out, and you're gonna sort your coins, and some are going to be handled in this rule package and some aren't. And I would say in both sessions, 70% of our coins were not dealt with in the final package. That doesn't mean that we now don't have increased departmental and congressional and community awareness of a couple things. We need enhanced UI wage records, and the feds should probably pay for part of it. We need money for state capacity implementation. Again, what does the evolving role between the feds and states look like? We need to look at seriously about transfer. Are we serious about transfer, or do we just want job placement? I think we're gonna probably see some course corrections in this legislation over time. So again, get all of your issues on the table, even if they don't seem technically related. That's how this wonderful Kingdon process goes. Once they're on the table, folks like me know how to pry open the next window and know how to try and advance change that way
Public Comment That Changed The Outcome
eloy-ortiz-oakley_1_06-08-2026_093619Great advice as well. And let me ask you one, one last question about that. If they're not able to get their thoughts and opinions in before rulemaking, do you see the role of public comment as an important part of this as well?
kristin-hultquist_1_06-08-2026_103619Oh, absolutely. So we negotiators were told no by the department on excluding students who can... We love stackable credentials, right? What a wonderful concept about how to approach opportunity in this country. It's in the legislation not defined. We tried to make it real by saying, "If someone finishes one short-term credential and gets another one, whether it's a horizontal or a vertical, get another one, can you be excluded from the denominator of placement? Can you be res- excluded from the denominator of wages?" They said no to both of us, to both of those issues, and that really frustrated all of the public and private nonprofit four-years. Come on. You don't you want us to build these stackable pathways, but students can't avail themselves of it? And they said, "Nope. That's not what, that's not how we interpret the law." But r- but the public comments were so strong in reaffirming what we negotiators had said, they gave us half. Congress, I think, will give us the other half. The first half was you can exclude those students who can, who re-enroll from the wages. That's important because they may not necessarily be making great wages if they're re-enrolled. They did not in the placement stat, and I think that's just going to take congressional clarification of intent because if you read the statute, boy, are they clear they wanna see transfer happening and short-term credentials not being the end of a person's learning journey.
eloy-ortiz-oakley_1_06-08-2026_093619Yeah. That's great advice from both of you. And look, I really appreciate you both taking the time out of your busy schedules. There's a lot going on in both of your organizations. So Andy and Kristen, thank you both for being on the Rant podcast
squadcaster-5ib9_1_06-08-2026_093619pleasure. Thank you for having us
kristin-hultquist_1_06-08-2026_103619Thank you. Appreciate you
eloy-ortiz-oakley_1_06-08-2026_093619All right, folks. You've been listening to my conversation with Andy Vaughn, who leads Aligned University, and Christian Holquist, who heads or one of the founders and heads the HCM Strategy Group. They've been talking to us about their experience with negotiated rulemaking. I'll put information about both their organizations in the comment section of this podcast. If you're watching us on YouTube, please hit subscribe, continue to follow us. And if you're listening to us on your favorite audio podcast platform, please hit subscribe, download this episode, and share it with your friends. Thanks for joining us, everybody, and we'll see you all soon.
