House Panel Moves to Raise Pell Grant and Block Accreditation Changes

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House Panel Moves to Raise Pell Grant and Block Accreditation Changes

By KELLY FIELD

Washington

A Congressional panel has moved to block the Education Department from making changes in the accreditation process, approving a spending measure that would cut off funds for such changes.

The bill, which would finance most higher-education programs for the 2008 fiscal year, would also raise the maximum Pell Grant by $390, the largest increase since the end of the Clinton administration, and provide $750-million in additional money for the National Institutes of Health.

An appropriations subcommittee of the U.S. House of Representatives approved the bill this month, one week after Sen. Lamar Alexander, a Tennessee Republican, warned Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings that he would seek to stop her department from using its regulatory authority to transform the way colleges are accredited. The department is considering regulations that would introduce new measures of "student-learning outcomes" into accreditation and prohibit colleges from denying the transfer of academic credits solely on the basis of the sending college's type of accreditation.

In a floor speech late last month, Mr. Alexander, who served as education secretary during the administration of President Bush's father, said he would offer an amendment to legislation to reauthorize the Higher Education Act that would prohibit the department from issuing any final regulations on accreditation until after Congress passes the much-delayed reauthorization bill. The Senate is expected to take that bill up later this month.

"Congress needs to legislate first," Senator Alexander said. "Then the department can regulate."

Cheryl Smith, an aide to Rep. David R. Obey, chairman of the appropriations subcommittee, said the spending limitation in the education appropriations measure was also meant to signal that the department should wait for Congress to act. Mr. Obey, a Wisconsin Democrat, added the spending restriction to the bill at the request of college lobbyists and presidents.

The measure still needs the approval of the full Committee on Appropriations before heading to the House floor for debate.

Outspending the President

Over all, the subcommittee's bill would provide $151.5-billion for federal labor, health, and education programs, an increase of nearly 5 percent over this year's spending levels and $10.6-billion more than President Bush proposed. The largest single increase in the bill would go to the Pell Grant program, which would receive $2-billion — or 14.6 percent — more in the 2008 fiscal year, which begins October 1.

The proposed $390 jump in the maximum Pell Grant would come on top of a $260 increase enacted this year. Combined, they bring the maximum Pell Grant to $4,700, $100 more than President Bush proposed in his most recent budget, released in February.

The bill would also restore funds for several education programs that the president had sought to eliminate, including the Leveraging Educational Assistance Partnership program, or LEAP, which matches each dollar that states commit to need-based aid, and Supplemental Educational Opportunity Grants, which augment Pell Grants for needy students. Another campus-based program, Federal Work-Study, would see a gain of $138,000, to $980.5-million.

The federal TRIO college-preparation programs, which the president has proposed abolishing in the past, and for which he proposed level funds in his latest proposal, would get $40-million more under the House panel's bill, rising to $868.2-million. Gear Up, another college-preparation program for which the president proposed no increase, would get $20-million more, or $323.4-million.

Hispanic-serving institutions and historically black colleges and universities would both receive an increase of almost 5 percent — $4.6-million and $11.4-million more, respectively.

Standing Pat With Perkins

Lobbyists for higher-education institutions said they were relieved that the House panel's proposal would increase the maximum Pell Grant without raiding other programs. President Bush's budget would have paid for the Pell Grant increase by slashing subsidies to student-loan companies and killing the Supplemental Educational Opportunity Grant and the LEAP programs.

"This is the direction we need to be going in," said Stephanie Giesecke, director of budget and appropriations for the National Association of Independent Colleges and Universities. "We hope the Senate will at least match it."

The bill did not appear to provide any new money for "capital contributions" to the Perkins Loan program. Such contributions — along with institutional matching funds and proceeds from repaid loans — go into a pool of revolving funds from which colleges make new Perkins Loans to students from low- and middle-income families.

However, the bill would provide $65.5-million for Perkins Loans forgiveness, the same as in the current fiscal year. President Bush had proposed abolishing that program.

For the National Institutes of Health, the House's bill includes $29.65-billion, $1-billion more than the president's request, and a 2.6-percent increase over the current fiscal year. Mr. Obey called that the largest increase in four years, saying it would allow the agency to finance 545 more grants than it did this year. The NIH is the largest single source of funds for academic research.

The Association of American Universities, which represents leading public and private research universities in the United States and Canada, said it was pleased that the committee had proposed a second straight increase for the agency after three years of flat federal support levels and despite the administration's proposed $511-million cut. "We need to restore momentum to NIH," said Robert M. Berdahl, the association's president.

But the Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology, which has called on Congress to increase spending on the agency by 6.7 percent in each of the next three years, expressed disappointment that the proposed increase was below the rate of inflation. "The flat funding we have experienced over the past several years has had a devastating effect on the scientific enterprise," said Leo T. Furcht, the federation's president.

The bill rejects the president's plan to all but eliminate funds for the Health Professions program, which trains students from minority groups and disadvantaged backgrounds to be physicians, dentists, and other health professionals and encourages them to work in poor and rural areas. Instead it would provide a 24-percent increase for the program, to $228.3-million.That money would help offset a deep cut passed two years ago, when the program's budget was halved, to $145.2-million.

The panel also approved an 11-percent increase for a related program that supports nursing education, which Mr. Bush proposed reducing in 2008.

http://chronicle.com
Section: Government & Politics
Volume 53, Issue 42, Page A21

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