Our View – Congressional act kisses college student ‘boo boos’

Behaving almost like a parent tending to a child’s scraped knee, the U.S. Congress recently acted to put a bit of remedial transparency in the college and university medicine cabinet.

The Higher Education Act Congress passed on July 31 — a rare lopsided display of bipartisanship — is the first major overhaul of higher education in more than five years. The House adopted the bill by a 380 to 49 vote, while it cleared the Senate with a vote of 83 to 8 earlier that day.

Dissent was probably low because it’s a good package that might help many realize the American dream of a college education. As part of the new congressional bill’s major obligations, colleges and universities will be incumbent to be more visible with the public about rising costs and fees.

The top 5 percent of institutions with the highest cost increases will be forced to explain price spikes such as tuition increases to the Education Department, which in turn will post the information on easy-to-read lists available to the public. The red-flagged institutions also will be required to inform the department and public how they will work to keep costs down.

Pulling the shroud on potential student loan fraud was another concern tackled by the congressional action.

Following in the wake of several national student loan scandals exposed during the past two years, institutions will be required to disclose all relationships with student lenders. The new law places federal bans on all gifts and revenue-sharing between colleges and private or federal loan providers.

All college students should realize more affordability with Congress’ decision, now pending President George W. Bush’s signature, to hold textbook publishers accountable.

For much of the past decade publishers have more than doubled textbook prices by “bundling” them with companion workbooks and DVDs. The practice holds student budgets hostage because A) teachers require the entire bundle, and B) the expensive packages are not resalable once opened.

Through the new law, publishers would be forced to sell unbundled versions of textbooks and disclose full pricing information, sort of like the nutritional content label on food packages.

Hundreds of thousands stand to benefit from other aspects of the measure, including low-income, minority and disabled students. The added boost will come in the way of year-round Pell grants, the main source of federal financial aid to low-income students, rather than those currently offered only during the regular academic year.

Another section of the voluminous 1,100-page proposal includes making federal financial-aid applications simpler. Concerned that the current seven-page Free Application for Federal Student Aid practically requires families to hire an accountant to wade through, Congress decided to condense the appliance into a less complicated, two-page Fafsa-EZ form.

Active-duty military personnel also will be able to defer student loan payments without worrying about amassing interest while serving, and their Pell grants will increase by $2,000 from $6,000 to $8,000 during the next five years, as part of the deal.

The major hurdle in passing the bill, according to The New York Times, was in how to deal with states like California that attempt to balance budget shortfalls by cutting contributions to higher education.

That obstacle was cleared when Congress accepted the Maintenance of Effort amendment reported in the July 31 Summer Forty-Niner.

Under the amendment, states that lower funding to public higher education will face the prospect of losing federal funds. When states opt to do so, and the federal government chooses to “withhold federal Leveraging Educational Assistance Partnership funds from states until they raise education funding to a certain level,” students can face higher tuitions.

As Cal State Long Beach President F. King Alexander commented in the Forty-Niner article, “When the federal government puts more money into the system, it needs to go on top of what the states do, not to substitute for what the states do.”

Legislators on the flipside, citing the amendment as mostly symbolic, are optimistic that the federally-mandated caveat will be an incentive to maintain state funding or face a public backlash, consequentially resulting in lower tuitions.

While this bill is considered to be the most student-friendly law attempted in years, it falls short of completely healing the financial wounds afflicting today’s students. The lollipop to soothe those injured knees hasn’t been invented, yet.