Washington — Colleges got a chance today to make their case for a share of the billions of dollars in economic-stimulus legislation at a hearing on Capitol Hill.

Sandy Baum, a professor of economics at Skidmore College and senior policy analyst at the College Board, spoke for colleges at the House Appropriations Committee hearing, which also featured three governors, a food-bank administrator, and the chief executive of Michigan’s Community Action Agency.

Ms. Baum argued for additional Pell Grant aid and more money for the states, many of which have been forced to scale back their spending on education and infrastructure as tax revenues have dropped.

“I urge you to make higher education a clear focus” in crafting a stimulus bill, Ms. Baum said. Lawmakers are expected to vote on the multibillion-dollar economic-stimulus bill in January, after President-elect Barack Obama takes office.

In her testimony, Ms. Baum argued that expanding access to higher education was a “good economic policy” because it would temporarily reduce the supply of excess labor, while helping unemployed workers gain the skills needed to land 21st-century jobs.

“Our economy will reap the benefits for a long time,” she said, and if the United States doesn’t expand access to higher education, “we will feel that pain far beyond the time the economy begins to recover.”

In a question-and-answer session that followed the testimony, the committee’s chairman, David R. Obey, a Democrat of Wisconsin, played devil’s advocate, asking the panelists if they were using the recession as an excuse to secure money they had sought before the economy soured.

Ms. Baum answered that it was “certainly a reasonable question because everyone has been saying all along that we need more money for student aid.” But she argued that it was “obviously in the short-term and long-term interests of the economy to have [unemployed workers] using their time constructively” by furthering their education.

At the end of the hearing, Mr. Obey said Ms. Baum and the other speakers had “made it quite clear” that an economic-stimulus bill must deal with economic recovery, but also with the “human fallout” from the crisis. —Kelly Field