The Education Committee of the United States Senate introduced its version of the Higher Education Act this week, an act which will determine federal education policy for the next six years.
The Senate's bill differs from the corresponding legislation passed by the House of Representatives in July of this year on multiple points, including interest rates for federal student loans, college reporting requirements and the recommended maximum Pell Grant.
The Senate Committee's bill seeks to lower the interest rate on student federal loans to a fixed rate of 6.8 percent from the current variable rate of 8.25 percent.
The Senate legislation also includes numerous reporting requirements for colleges, requiring that they report the costs of tuition and attendance, the amount of financial aid awarded to students and teacher training, among other things. Unlike the House's proposed bill, the Senate's bill includes no provisions for punitive measures against colleges which raise their tuition to more than twice the inflation rate.
The differences between the House and Senate's bills make the Senate's bill more advantageous to colleges as institutions and to college faculty, University Politics Prof. James Savage said.
"From the higher education institutional perspective, the Senate's bill is certainly preferable," he said.
The Senate's bill also seeks to make changes to the awarding of Pell Grants, or need-based federal financial aid, raising income cutoff for automatic eligibility from $15,000 to $20,000.
The bill also will raise the maximum amount that can be awarded in a Pell Grant to $5,100 from the current rate of $4,050, and the maximum award will increase by $300 a year for the next five years. The House's equivalent bill seeks to raise the maximum Pell Grant to $6,000 dollars.
"The higher education community would like to see higher appropriation levels for Pell grants," Savage said.
The House's bill allows for a much faster raise in Pell grants, which gives more immediate flexibility to students who depend on federal aid and makes the House bill more advantageous to students, Savage said.
The Federal Relations Advisory Committee at the University, which advises University President John T. Casteen, III, will meet to more fully evaluate the two bills Monday, Savage said.
"As always, we watch this process within the House and Senate very closely and with great interest," University spokesperson Carol Wood said. "There are good things in each of these bills, and some things that we will have to study more closely."
The Senate Education Committee's bill has yet to pass on the floor of the Senate and is set to be discussed in a Senate hearing today.
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