A suggestion in the latest draft of the much-anticipated report by the Commission on the Future of Higher Education—that students take more advantage of private loans—is coming under fire from a group led by a former senior education-policy adviser in the Clinton administration.

In the draft, released on Friday, a section on lending noted that private lenders provide “a variety of competitive lending products offering many options for funding expenses” and suggested that “wider recognition and wider utilization of these options by many families” would free up “scarce public funds to focus on aid for economically disadvantaged students and families” (The Chronicle, August 4).

But Robert M. Shireman, executive director of the Project on Student Debt, wrote in an August 6 letter to the commission’s chairman, Charles Miller, that the recommendation “would have disastrous consequences, leading to dramatically increased debt burdens for many of the nearly five million students who currently take out unsubsidized Stafford loans.” Among other disadvantages of private loans, Mr. Shireman wrote, they do not include caps on interest rates and do not limit how much students can borrow.