Congress is gearing up to “reauthorize,” or renew, the Higher Education Act, the major law that governs federal student aid. The following is a guide to reauthorization, with information about what’s at stake for colleges and resources to help make sense of the process.

The Higher Education Act is a law almost 50 years old that governs the nation’s student-aid programs and federal aid to colleges. It was signed into law in 1965 as part of President Johnson’s Great Society agenda of domestic programs, and it has been reauthorized nine times since then, most recently in 2008. It’s up for renewal again in 2014, and lawmakers have begun holding hearings and soliciting input to inform the process.

The Higher Education Act is the law that covers how federal dollars are awarded to colleges and students. It touches on everything from loan limits to accreditation, determining who gets money, how much, and when. What it doesn’t do is actually finance programs—that’s up to the Appropriations Committees in Congress.

It’s true that major changes in student-aid policy are now being made outside of the reauthorization process, in spending bills and federal rules. That shift has made the act’s renewal less momentous than it used to be. Still, reauthorization remains a major legislative event, with consequences for all of higher education.