Government Relations Archive

For FY 2007, the Senate Appropriations Committee has set the education subcommittee's spending limit at $142.8 billion -- this is $5 billion more than the President's request and $1.6 billion more than last year.

The interim final regulations for two new federal grant programs -- Academic Competiteness and SMART -- were published on July 3, and will go into effect on August 2, 2006, for this coming academic year. These regulations provide challenging aspects to administering both grant programs, including verifying student eligibility and in the timing of awards.

For a description of the new grant programs, see the entry below on May 16.

At the end of June, President Bush signed an extension of the HEA through September 30, 2006.

It looks like there is little hope that Congress will take up the HEA reauthorization before this fall's elections. Time is running out for consideration of HEA, which must compete for floor time with other legislative priorities, such as stem cell and appropriations measures. At this time, it is expected that in the coming months lawmakers will continue work on the FY 2007 appropriations bills, and focus their efforts on legislation to address the Supreme Court's recent ruling against the administration's policies for suspected terrorists and, possibly, immigration reform.

The latest draft report of the Spellings Commission on the Future of Higher Education is now available through the American Council on Education's web site at:
http://www.acenet.edu/AM/Template.cfm?Section=Clear_Cache&TEMPLATE=/CM/ContentDisplay.cfm&CONTENTID=17361.

Yesterday, the National Association of Independent Colleges and Universities (NAICU of which Goucher College is a member) held a press conference on the issue of a national student unit record tracking system. In late June, the Secretary of Education's Commission on the Future Education issued a draft report which called for the development of such a system, which has been pushed by the Department of Education for the last two years.

During the press event, NAICU shared the results of a recent public opinion poll which showed:

-Sixty-two percent of respondents oppose the proposed federal data collection effort while 33 percent supported it.

-Sixty-eight percent of Americans (compared to 27 percent) believe that enough information is already collected at the college and university level, and believe that collecting more data could infringe on students’ privacy and lead to the misuse of personal information.

-Sixty percent of Americans believe that collecting individual student data is â costly, intrusive, and does not address a pressing public policy issue while 34 percent support the proposal.

The summary of the polling results can be found at: http://www.naicu.edu/HEA/StudentPrivacyPollData6-06.doc.

For more information on this issue, please visit the NAICU brief on it at: http://www.naicu.edu/HEA/IssueSummary-StuUnitRecData.pdf.

Following the Memorial Day Recess, the House Appropriations subcommittee responsible for funding the core student aid programs voted to:

-Increase the Pell Grant maximum to $4,150 – an increase of $100;

-Level fund the SEOG (Supplemental Educational Opportunity Grants) and Work-Study programs;

-Restore Perkins loan forgiveness, LEAP, TRIO and GEAR-UP, which the president had targeted for elimination; and

-Add approximately $3 billion more than the administration’s request for discretionary spending and another $1 billion more for member earmarks.

This is just the start of the appropriations process, but we will keep you up-to-date as events unfold.

Interest in Math and Science Initiatives Gains Momentum on the Hill

A series of bills have been introduced recently that would revise and expand programs administered by the NSF (National Science Foundation) and the Department of Energy. These bills include initiatives that would focus on encouraging students to major in science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM), and providing training for math and science teachers.

A recent GAO (Government Accountability Office) report found that "officials from 13 federal civilian agencies reported spending about $2.8 billion in FY 2004 for 207 education programs designed to increase the number of students and graduates or to improve education in STEM fields, but agencies reported little about their effectiveness."The report led to the creation of the Academic Competitiveness Council, which is charged with evaluating the effectiveness of federal STEM programs. The council is expected to publish its final report sometime in early 2007.