Washington — Bush-administration officials spent five years working with Congress to renew the Higher Education Act, the major law setting federal policy toward colleges. They now plan to spend a few more months traveling the country to draft the regulatory language that will carry out the law.

The administration, in a notice published today in the Federal Register, said it would begin the regulation-writing process by holding hearings at five colleges around the country over the next six weeks.

The Higher Education Act, signed into law by President Bush on August 14, runs 1,158 pages, creates dozens of new grant and assistance programs for colleges and students, and imposes hundreds of new reporting requirements on the institutions.

As with many new laws, the administration must now conduct the line-by-line process of writing regulations that will provide the details of how the provisions contained in the new law will actually be carried out.

The process will begin with a daylong public hearing on September 19 at Texas Christian University, in Fort Worth. Other hearings will be held on September 29 at the University of Rhode Island, in Providence; October 2 at Pepperdine University, in Malibu, Calif.; October 6 at Johnson C. Smith University, in Charlotte, N.C.; and October 15 at Cuyahoga Community College, in Cleveland. One other hearing will be held, on October 8 at the Education Department offices here in Washington.

Despite the long process, which will include a subsequent set of advisory discussions with affected groups, department officials ultimately hold the right to draft the regulations as they see fit, and are not required to accept any suggestions they hear along their travels.

The process of writing the regulations isn’t likely to be finished in the current administration, although department officials may try to identify elements of the legislation that require more immediate attention because of factors such as deadlines in grant and loan programs. —Paul Basken