Washington — The White House supports student-loan legislation that the U.S. House of Representatives will vote on tomorrow, but shares for-profit colleges’ concerns that raising federal loan limits could cause some institutions to lose their eligibility to award student aid, the Bush administration said in a statement released late today.

The statement, which is the administration’s official policy on the bill, HR 5715, says President Bush backs provisions that would allow the Education Department to purchase loans from cash-strapped lenders and to designate lenders of last resort on an institution-wide basis, rather than a student-by-student basis.

But the president asks that the education secretary’s authority to designate lenders of last resort be “temporary” and says he fears that raising loan limits, as the bill proposes, would cause some institutions to run afoul of the 90-10 rule, which requires that colleges receive at least 10 percent of their revenues from non-federal sources in order to participate in the federal student-aid program. For-profit colleges have long opposed the rule.

The bill passed the House education committee just last week. —Kelly Field