Washington — The U.S. House of Representatives education committee voted unanimously today to approve a bill that would set federal higher-education policy for the next five years.
The bill, which would reauthorize, or renew, the Higher Education Act, the major law governing federal aid to students and colleges, now heads to a floor vote in the House and on to a conference with the Senate, which passed its version of the legislation in August.
Before approving the bill this morning, the committee adopted two of seven amendments that members had offered during Wednesday’s debate.
The first, an amendment by Rep. Jason Altmire, a Democrat of Pennsylvania, would provide grants to colleges that team up with local employers to align their programs with labor needs.
The second, an amendment by Rep. Robert C. Scott, a Democrat of Virginia, would allow TRIO grantees to challenge the Education Department’s decision not to renew their grants. The amendment, which was prompted by recent complaints from some Talent Search grantees, would allow applicants to argue to an administrative-law judge that the education secretary had improperly scored their applications.
The committee rejected five proposals by Republicans, including a pair of amendments by Rep. Ric Keller of Florida. One would have required colleges in the direct-lending program to certify loans from lenders participating in the competing guaranteed-loan program. The other would have authorized the education secretary to penalize institutions that raised their tuition in direct response to Pell Grant increases.
Today’s vote followed 10 hours of debate on Wednesday, in which the committee considered some 30 amendments and approved more than 20, including several dealing with accreditation and college costs.
Among the most controversial was an amendment by Rep. Robert E. Andrews, a Democrat from New Jersey, that stripped language from the bill that would have given colleges the primary responsibility for developing the measures of student learning that accreditors use to judge them.
The Bush administration has sought to impose those assessment guidelines more directly, through the accrediting organizations, but colleges have resisted that effort.
The change in the bill was supported by regional accreditors but fiercely opposed by college lobbyists, who had not been notified that Mr. Andrews planned to offer the amendment.
“Accreditors ambushed colleges and universities with the Andrews amendment last night, which unravels months of hard work to get language into the Higher Education Act acknowledging the right of institutions to establish their own student-learning-outcome measures,” said Becky Timmons, assistant vice president for government relations at the American Council on Education.
Before voting on passage, the committee did not modify, or even discuss, a provision that would order colleges to combat illegal file sharing.
The House is expected to take up the bill in the coming weeks, perhaps in December. —Kelly Field
