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Student Aid Fraud Oversight and Accountability Act of 2026
To amend section 498A of the Higher Education Act of 1965 to require the Secretary of Education to prioritize program reviews of institutions of higher education that disburse Federal financial aid under title IV of such Act without verifying the identity of a student whose FAFSA presents a reasonable suspicion of identity fraud.
Summary
This bill would require the Secretary of Education to identify colleges and universities that have distributed federal financial aid to students whose FAFSA applications flagged reasonable suspicion of identity fraud. Institutions can avoid being identified if they demonstrate they verified each student's identity through in-person or live audiovisual verification before disbursing aid and maintained records of that verification. The identification of institutions would be used to inform program reviews, audits, and oversight activities conducted by the Department of Education. The bill clarifies that being identified does not by itself mean an institution has violated federal requirements.
AI-generated plain-language summary of the bill text — neutral, and may be imperfect. See the full text below for the exact wording.
Sponsor (1)
- Sen. Husted, Jon [R-OH] (R-OH)
2 cosponsors
- Sen. Cassidy, Bill [R-LA] (R-LA)
- Sen. Tuberville, Tommy [R-AL] (R-AL)
Actions (2)
- May 14, 2026 Read twice and referred to the Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions. · senate
- May 14, 2026 Introduced in Senate
Similar bills (6)
Bills with similar text or summary — includes reintroductions across Congresses. Ranked by semantic similarity of the bill text (computed locally); a neutral discovery aid, not a claim the bills are duplicates.
Full text
IN THE SENATE OF THE UNITED STATES
May 14, 2026
Mr. Husted (for himself, Mr. Cassidy, and Mr. Tuberville) introduced the following bill; which was read twice and referred to the Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions
A BILL
To amend section 498A of the Higher Education Act of 1965 to require the Secretary of Education to prioritize program reviews of institutions of higher education that disburse Federal financial aid under title IV of such Act without verifying the identity of a student whose FAFSA presents a reasonable suspicion of identity fraud.
Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled,
SECTION 1. SHORT TITLE.
This Act may be cited as the “Student Aid Fraud Oversight and Accountability Act of 2026”.
SEC. 2. PROGRAM REVIEW PRIORITY CATEGORY.
(a) Program Review Priority Category.—Section 498A(a)(2) of the Higher Education Act of 1965 (20 U.S.C. 1099c-1(a)(2)) is amended—
(1) in subparagraph (E), by striking “and” at the end;
(2) by redesignating subparagraph (F) as subparagraph (G); and
(3) by inserting after subparagraph (E) the following:
“(F) institutions identified under paragraph (4); and”.
(b) Identification of Institutions.—Section 498A(a) of the Higher Education Act of 1965 (20 U.S.C. 1099c-1(a)) is amended—
(1) in paragraph (3), by striking the period at the end and inserting “; and”; and
(2) by adding at the end the following:
“(4) shall identify each institution that has disbursed, on or after October 1, 2026, Federal financial aid under this title for an award year to any student whose application under section 483 for such award year presented a reasonable suspicion of identity fraud, as determined by the identity fraud detection system used by the Secretary, except that the Secretary shall exclude from such identification any institution that demonstrates to the Secretary that, with respect to each such student, before the disbursement of Federal financial aid to the student, the institution, in accordance with procedures established by the Secretary, determined that a reasonable suspicion of identity fraud was not present by confirming the identity of such student using in-person verification or live, synchronous audiovisual verification and notified the Secretary that the identity of the student has been verified, and maintains a record of such identity verification.”.
(c) Special Considerations.—Section 498A of the Higher Education Act of 1965 (20 U.S.C. 1099c-1) is further amended by adding at the following:
“(f) Special Considerations.—Identification of an institution under subsection (a)(4)—
“(1) may be used to inform program reviews, audits, investigations, and other oversight activities authorized under this title; and
“(2) shall not, by itself, constitute a determination that an institution has failed to meet the requirements of this title.”. <all>
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