As the Education Department prepares to issue new regulations governing its student-loan programs, the chairman of a higher-education commission created in 2005 by the secretary of education, Margaret Spellings, is urging the agency not to neglect the rest of the federal student-aid system.

“The recent focus on various practices by certain parties in the financial-aid system creates a need to see the bigger picture,” wrote Charles Miller, chairman of the now-defunct Commission on the Future of Higher Education, in a letter sent to the secretary in mid-April.

In the letter, Mr. Miller reminded Ms. Spellings of his panel’s recommendation that the department completely restructure the federal student-aid system. “The commission understood that piecemeal attention to various parts of the financial-aid system would not be effective,” he wrote, adding that “efforts to focus only on regulation or oversight of this confusing, complex, inefficient, and duplicative system will not produce the necessary reforms.” —Kelly Field