[Congressional Record Volume 144, Number 49 (Tuesday, April 28, 1998)]
[House]
[Pages H2394-H2399]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                    HIGHER EDUCATION ASSISTANCE ACT

  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Deal of Georgia). Under the Speaker's 
announced policy of January 7, 1997, the gentleman from New York (Mr. 
Owens) is recognized for 60 minutes.
  Mr. OWENS. Mr. Speaker, today is April 28. Tomorrow will be April 29. 
A major event will take place on the floor of the House of 
Representatives.
  Tomorrow we shall begin the consideration of the Higher Education 
Assistance Act, the reauthorization of the Higher Education Assistance 
Act. I think that I would like to proclaim to the American people, to 
the public, to everybody who cares in this Nation, that this is no 
small event.
  Reauthorization of the Higher Education Assistance Act is a major 
event. We only do it once every 5 years. And the role of the Federal 
Government in higher education has been no small one. It is very 
important. In fact, it is quite unfortunate that there has been so 
little discussion and so little debate up to this point. We should have 
had more dialogue, more interaction with the people who are involved, 
students, faculties, presidents of colleges. It has been a very quiet 
reauthorization process.
  I have been here now for 16 years, and this is the third 
reauthorization I have gone through, and I have never seen it so quiet. 
It is part of the process that has been forced upon us by the 
leadership, the Republican majority leadership here in the House, that 
everything is kept at a low profile, everything important is kept at a 
very low profile.
  This session, this second year of the 105th Congress, the art of 
forcing the low profile, the art of forcing a low visibility for 
important issues has been perfected. Never before have we been in a 
session where we have had as many recesses as we have had this year, as 
short a workweek as we have had this year.
  A decision was made by the ruling Republican majority that the less 
visibility this Congress had, the less the people of the United States 
see their Legistature at work, the better. So we have minimized a very 
important discussion on education, as we minimize all discussions. We 
are in a situation now where we have not even passed a budget. And I 
suppose one is being prepared in secret like everything else. It is a 
process where most things go on behind closed doors, and very little 
participation is encouraged.
  In the case of the Higher Education Assistance Act, I found it very 
difficult as a member of the committee, I am a member of the Committee 
on Education and the Workforce, and I found it difficult to find out 
how things were moving as the preparation of this very important piece 
of legislation took place at the committee level. I have heard my 
colleagues in other committees complain about the same process. Even 
the Members of Congress are not invited to participate. We have to sort 
of force our way into the dialogue. Therefore, it is not surprising 
that the same ruling majority here does not provide opportunities for 
the public to know very much about what is going on, the voters.

  I suppose this is a result of what happened in the 104th Congress in 
terms of a very well-publicized, highly visible agenda in the form of 
the Contract with America. We had maximum debate. The Democratic 
Minority had a chance to answer the proposals put forth by the 
Republican majority. We had out on the table the intentions of the 
Republican party, especially in the area of education. They clearly had 
intentions that were in confrontation with the majority of the American 
people. They wanted to abolish the Department of Education. They wanted 
to drastically cut certain education programs, even cut Head Start, 
school lunches.
  It was a situation where we appreciated the honesty of the majority. 
The majority was honest. They put their cards on the table; and the 
American people, in their wisdom, rejected them. They knew that these 
ideas had been rejected as we approached the election date in November 
of 1996. They knew that with respect to education, they had 
miscalculated, and they ran very fast and used their power to make 
amends.
  At the last minute during the appropriations process, the Republican 
majority increased the budget for education programs by $4 billion. 
Whereas they had been threatening to cut as much as $4 billion in the 
previous year in 1995, in 1996 they increased it by the same amount, $4 
billion increase, instead of a cut. So they understood, they understood 
through the focus groups, they understood through the public opinion 
polls all of the barometers that we use to measure opinions and to 
determine where the voters are. They understood that the common-sense 
wisdom of the American people was not with them.
  Education is a high priority, and anyone who threatens to abolish the 
Department of Education and greatly cripple the involvement of the 
Federal Government in education matters has to pay the price for that 
kind of position. Fortunately for them, and unfortunate for the 
Democratic Minority, they changed radically at the last minute, and 
they went out, after giving us a $4 billion increase in education, they 
went out as the friends of education, as the champions of education.
  Unfortunately, in this 105th Congress, that is not the case. The kind 
of last-minute conversion did not carry over. We are back to business 
as usual when it comes to the Republican majority. First of all, they 
have the old proposals for school vouchers and privatization of 
education on the table with greater gusto than ever before. Block 
granting and vouchers and all of those old items that did not sit well 
with the American people in the last Congress have been resurrected. We 
do not hear any more of the talk of the abolishment of the Department 
of Education. The extremism is not there anymore. They do not put it 
out on the table.
  If they feel the Department of Education should be abolished, then 
that is a covert matter; they do not talk about it in public. If they 
feel that Head Start should be cut, that is a covert matter.
  They actually have been very civil in this process of reauthorizing 
the Higher Education Assistance Act. The Higher Education Assistance 
Act has come forward. It will go to the floor tomorrow from the 
committee. And the Republican majority on that committee is to be 
commended, I suppose, for not proposing any drastic cuts. There are no 
drastic cuts in the previous higher education programs.
  We should rejoice. We should applaud this. Let us give credit where 
credit is due. The jackals of the 104th Congress that wanted to cut 
everything have left, basically, higher education assistance alone. We 
should be rejoicing. And I do rejoice.
  On the other hand, as I said, on the occasion of the markup of this 
important piece of legislation, it is most unfortunate that given the 
fact that we reauthorize higher education assistance acts only once 
every 5 years, in a 5-year period, whatever we legislate tomorrow, 
whatever comes out of our House tomorrow and goes to the Senate and 
conference and signed by the President, that will be in effect for 5 
years.

                              {time}  2000

  It is unfortunate that a bill which is going to carry us through the 
next 5 years into the 21st century and beyond is really a status quo 
bill. We can applaud the fact that they did not cut anything, we can 
applaud the fact that there was no attempt to roll back history, but we 
cannot applaud the fact that there are no innovations in the bill 
tomorrow, there is nothing new, there is nothing that looks at the 21st 
century and says that our thrust should be different, our commitment to 
higher education should be enhanced, we should meet some of the 
problems that have surfaced and are clear on the

[[Page H2395]]

horizon, we should meet these problems in this Higher Education 
Assistance Act or project a way to begin to deal with them. This is a 
status quo bill.
  I complained at the level of the committee and I will complain again 
tomorrow that it is most unfortunate that at a time when we are 
enjoying the greatest prosperity the Nation probably has ever known, at 
a time when there is no war to absorb resources, at a time when the 
window of opportunity is wide open, we cannot come up with some more 
creative and imaginative proposals as to how we are going to proceed to 
educate the population. We have a lot of problems below the level of 
high school graduation. But certainly we have always committed 
ourselves and always been praised by for the fact that higher education 
in America is exceptional. We are ahead of most of the industrialized 
nations when they begin to make comparisons between the higher 
education systems among the countries. Not so with our elementary and 
secondary school systems. But at a time like this when we are ahead and 
it is clear that our higher education system has played a major role in 
our ability to quickly take advantage of the scientific revolution and 
to apply science and technology in many areas of life, including, of 
course, in the military area where the American people invested 
billions and billions of dollars in the military research and 
development, a situation which is very relevant because right now the 
kind of prosperity we are enjoying is partially fueled and pushed by 
the revolution in information technology. The companies that are newest 
and making the greatest amount of money on Wall Street are information 
technology companies, Intel, Microsoft, you name it, the newest 
companies, by the way who are not dependent on defense contracts or 
government contracts, they are all information technology related. That 
information technology that they have chosen to make great profits off 
of did not happen overnight and it did not happen by magic. It did not 
come directly from God. Everything comes from God indirectly but it did 
not come as a natural resource. It is not like an oil well, striking it 
rich with a diamond mine or a gold mine. Information technology and the 
state of the art right now is a direct result of the investment of the 
American people in great amounts of research and development for 
military purposes.
  Information technology was really developed by the American people 
through their military services seeking ways to accomplish the jobs 
that they have to accomplish. The Internet was created by the American 
military forces. The Internet was created to assist and aid and speed 
up the exchange of information throughout the world, scientific 
information. The Internet is the creation of the American people 
through their military services. Something called the Defense Technical 
Information Center, another way for saying the world's greatest system 
of libraries, was created by the Defense Department. One of the by-
products of that tremendous system for research and for development was 
the Internet. We are the beneficiaries of a system which was produced 
and financed by the American people which was conceived and operated 
and all the details have been put in place by American science and 
technology. Yes, we might have had some foreign scientists participate, 
we will not take that away from them, but basically the technicians and 
the scientists, the theoreticians and the philosophers who put this 
great technological revolution together in terms of information 
technology were products of our education system, mainly our higher 
education system, our higher education system which is still like all 
other higher education systems in the world basically an elitist 
system. Only a small percentage of people go to college. Only a small 
percentage of people totally still enjoy higher education opportunities 
throughout the world. That group and what they do and how they do it is 
critical to the advancement of our society and the continued prosperity 
that we enjoy. So if we are authorizing a piece of legislation called 
the Higher Education Assistance Act, then we ought to look at it in 
terms of this is a critical piece of legislation which will have a 
great impact on what we are doing in the future, how can we make this a 
better piece of legislation.
  My first concern was that the legislation did not take advantage of 
an opportunity to increase greatly the amount of opportunities for 
Americans to go to college. The opportunities need to be increased for 
many reasons. We need more educated people. It is clear that there is a 
correlation between the number of educated people and our progress. If 
that is the case, then there should not be any question about having 
more people who have college education or higher education 
opportunities. Maybe some of them will only go to community colleges 
for 2 years but the principle of the value added, education adds value 
to everybody who participates, higher education adds very extensive, 
very great value to anybody who participates in higher education. A 
person coming out of a higher education institution is going to earn 
income and really pay back the investment that society has made in 
them. The person who comes out of a higher education institution is 
definitely not going to be dependent on subsidies. They will contribute 
to the process instead of absorbing any resources. We know all of this. 
It should not be difficult to conceive of the necessity of increasing 
the number. However, there are some people who balk at the idea that we 
need more college graduates and we need more college students. There is 
some notion that always runs throughout deliberations about higher 
education that, hey, you may get too many educated people and if you 
get too many educated people, you will drive down the standards and the 
salaries and the quality of life of the people who are educated. That 
has been a stream running through decision-making in America for a long 
time. It is not new. Fifty or 75 years ago they were talking about the 
possibility of having too many educated people, but it has never 
happened. We have never yet reached a point where we have too many 
educated people. People with college degrees may have some difficulty 
in the job market nowadays or they may have always had some difficulty, 
but generally they land on their feet, and generally people with 
college degrees do not end up being dependent on society. It is true 
now, it was true 25 years ago, it is going to be true in the year 2010.
  Right now we are seeing an explosion of the need for people in the 
information technology sector. Information technology involves work 
with telecommunications apparatus, computers. It involves a lot of 
things which require higher education. Most people do not know it, but 
it also requires imagination, it also requires people who have some 
conception of spatial relationships, not just in terms of engineering 
but also in terms of artistic presentations. If you look at Web sites 
and you look at the kind of things that they are doing with Web sites, 
you know that these are not just mathematicians, these are not just 
physical scientists. The successful Web sites are being generated by 
people with imagination. They have imagination, they have some 
background beyond math and science or they are working in teams, so a 
person who is in drama and who is in art illustration or in just social 
science, understanding psychology of people, they may be on a team of 
people, some of whom have math and physics backgrounds, to produce what 
has to be produced in terms of software or in terms of Web sites, et 
cetera. We do not know, we cannot pick exactly who is going to be most 
successful in this area. But we should assume that all education can be 
fitted in somewhere. The psychologist may be as valuable as the 
physicist. We should have as much education as possible across the 
whole spectrum. We understood that briefly when the Russians outpaced 
us in space. The Russians put up Sputnik and began to put up one space 
rocket and one space satellite after another. We went to work in this 
country to deal with the fact that you can only compete in that arena 
if you have more and more people in the area of science. They did not 
all have to be geniuses and Einsteins. Some were theoretical 
scientists, some were applied scientists, some were technicians and 
technologists, some were good mechanics. The entire array of people 
needed to produce the kind of military hardware and the military 
processes that matched the Soviet Union and eventually made it spend 
itself to death in the

[[Page H2396]]

area of military technology, that was produced through the education 
process. We understood it then.

  We are facing now a situation where there is a survey that tells us 
that information technology workers are in great shortage. This new 
revolution, these information technology companies that are producing 
such great profits on the stock market, these are the places where we 
have vacancies appearing at a great rate. There is some debate about it 
but some pretty thorough and credible surveys have been done which 
shows we are talking about 300,000 people in this area right now who 
are needed and are not there, 300,000 vacancies exist out there now. 
That will only get worse, because the reading of the survey of where 
students are in college, how many are majoring in the appropriate 
fields, generally what the education pool is in our colleges and 
universities, that survey leads the information technology experts to 
project that you may have a million vacancies 5 or 6 years from now 
trying to cope with an expanded enterprise, not only in business. Right 
now the great investment is in business. Profit-making businesses want 
to be on top of the latest technology, information technology. The 
state of the art is always being sought by these profit-making 
businesses that have lots and lots of money to spend because they are 
making great amounts of profit, so the money is being spent now in the 
business arena. They have not even started yet to really apply 
information technology en masse to higher education institutions, and 
further down the public schools which the President, President Clinton 
and Vice President Gore certainly have seen the vision to include in 
this information technology revolution. The public schools are way, way 
down the chain. Even in some places like California where they led the 
country in showing us how to get schools wired using volunteers and put 
schools on the Internet, even there we are talking about a situation 
where every school that was wired by volunteers on a Saturday 
afternoon, we called them wired if they wired the library and five 
classrooms. The library and five classrooms was the extent of the 
wiring. There is a lot more to be done even in the places where we have 
been most successful. But in my hometown, New York City, and home 
State, the big cities in New York have nothing close to anything like 
10 percent of the schools wired. We have a project going in our area 
where it has taken us almost 2 years to get 22 schools wired using our 
volunteers on Saturday. Even with the cooperation of the Board of 
Education, Bell Atlantic and a lot of private sector people have 
participated, it is a slow process. Of course in the suburbs 
surrounding New York City, they have dealt with the process. They have 
not depended on volunteers. They have wired their schools. They have 
state of the art media in some of those places. Where the largest 
number of poor people go to school in the inner cities, we are way 
behind.
  In this Higher Education Assistance Act, my point is we have not 
taken into full consideration the fact that right now there are 
tremendous amounts of vacancies in the information technology sector, 
300,000 vacancies right now, and a projection that there will be many 
more, these people have to go through higher education even if it is 
only 2 years of college in many cases. We have not taken that into 
consideration. Just to meet that need, we should have special programs 
in colleges and universities at increasing the number of students in 
the pool.

                              {time}  2015

  We have to replenish the number of doctors and lawyers and MBAs. You 
know, there is a whole society demanding more and more educated people. 
One of our biggest exports is not goods but services, the services 
supplied by experts, and these are experts that come out of our 
colleges and universities that export services around the world. There 
will be a more greater demand for services from highly educated people 
in the future.
  Mr. Speaker, let me just recapitulate. I do not want anybody to get 
lost. I am talking about the fact that there is a great demand for 
people with higher education, and the demand will increase, and we 
should have taken that into consideration when we considered this 
Higher Education Assistance Act.
  The act that we will be considering tomorrow on the floor of the 
House is a status quo bill. It maintains things pretty much as they 
are. And while we applaud the fact that there are no drastic cuts, it 
is unfortunate that we have not taken advantage of a window of 
opportunity to go forward and deal with needs that are obvious in our 
work force.
  I also complained about the fact that, at the time that we considered 
this bill in our committee, about the fact that the great debate right 
now with respect to affirmative action and the problem of trying to 
provide diversity on higher education campuses by taking into 
consideration certain matters that go beyond just the scores on the 
SATs and the averages in courses in high school and that great debate, 
which is escalating, and certainly in California, has led to some real 
disasters in terms of the policy changes made by the board of regents 
of California.
  You have a drastic reduction in the number of Hispanics and African 
American students who are in the higher education freshman class. You 
have an even more drastic reduction in the higher education graduate 
institutions. Texas has had a similar problem, and across the country 
there are more discussions and referendums and policy changes now in 
process with respect to ending efforts to promote diversity by 
considering the ethnicity of a particular student and the need to 
achieve balance in the student body.
  If we are going to go that route, and there are people who argue that 
affirmative action is not good, but if we have proposals and programs 
that seek to provide more help for people who are disadvantaged, people 
who need help because they are poor, well, that is across the board. 
You know, consider race. You do not consider ethnicity, you just 
consider the fact that they are disadvantaged, they need help, that 
that is the way to go.
  I have heard proponents of ending affirmative action. The people want 
very much to end affirmative action, including the Speaker of the 
House. They argue that we do not want any consideration on the basis of 
ethnicity. Let us forget about the 232 years of slavery and the 
descendants of slavery who did not have a chance to accumulate any 
wealth, and if you did not have a chance to accumulate any wealth, the 
whole family structure and the whole supportive atmosphere that breeds, 
that creates, middle-class people who are more successful in the formal 
education structure, forget about that they said.
  Let us just consider everybody equal and take care of those who 
happen to be unfortunate economically all across the board so that 
white poor and the African American poor and the Hispanic poor are all 
treated equally.
  I do not concede that affirmative action is not important. I do not 
concede you should forget about 232 years of slavery and the impact of 
that on the descendants of slaves, the impact of a hundred and some 
years of oppression as second-class citizens that followed the 
Emancipation Proclamation and the 13th, 14th and 15th amendments. I do 
not concede that, but let us for a moment lay it aside. Let us consider 
the arguments that are made by these people who want to get rid of 
affirmative action. They say they are ready to be fair to everybody.
  If you are honest about that assertion, then you will create more 
opportunities. We should be considering how the Education Act, which 
had a tremendous increase in the amount of money available in order to 
create more opportunity for more people regardless of their race, creed 
or color.
  We should have the Pell grants greatly increased. They are increased 
somewhat, but the Pell grants should be greatly increased in terms of 
the number of people covered. The amount for Pell grants, the number of 
people covered should be greatly increased.
  We should have great increases in all of the loan programs, in the 
TRIO programs and every program that is designed to promote higher 
education. Because we should anticipate a great increase in the number 
of students coming in who have been denied an opportunity because of 
the fact that they are poor.
  That requires money, that requires appropriations and commitments. In 
the authorization of this bill, we have not dealt with that.

[[Page H2397]]

  Oh, yes, there is a lot of money involved here, but it is status quo, 
you know. It is taking into consideration the fact that we are throwing 
out affirmative action programs and, therefore, the affirmative action 
programs ought to be replaced with greater opportunity programs. There 
should be more opportunity programs.
  You know, consider the constellation that we are dealing with here. 
In America now, there are roughly about 15 million students in college 
and universities, 15 million students in colleges and universities. 
That includes the community colleges and senior colleges. In America 
right now, there are about 3,688 institutions of higher learning, 
community colleges, senior colleges, et cetera.
  Right now, the expenditures of the State and local governments for 
higher education is approximately $89 billion per year. These may seem 
like big numbers, but the cost, the amount we are spending per student 
in our public institutions supported by State and local governments and 
by the Federal Government, the Federal Government expenditure I think 
is around $38 billion for cash, programs receiving cash directly, and 
another $40 billion if all the tax credits and various new programs 
that have been established are utilized.
  You are talking about $38 billion, $40 billion. That is a lot of 
money, a lot of commitment. $38 billion, $40 billion, you know you are 
talking about nearly $80 billion of federal assistance, $89 billion is 
expended by State and local governments. I suppose that comes to, you 
know, $169 billion, a lot of money.
  But what is our defense budget? How much money do we spend on 
defense? It is way, way up there at $200 billion, almost $300 billion. 
Combined events in intelligence, you are talking about $300 billion on 
defense and intelligence.
  So you can only compare. These figures will drown you. You will get 
lost quickly if you do not make comparisons. You can only compare, 
determine the value of what is being spent and get some perspective if 
you look at what modern costs are in other areas. What are we spending 
in defense? Close to $300 billion. $89 billion at the State and local 
level for higher education and another $80 billion probably at the 
Federal level.

  It seems like a lot of money, but in terms of modern costs it is not 
a very great expenditure.
  How much does the cigarette industry make in billions of dollars per 
year? I mean, in terms of modern costs, our commitment to higher 
education is, I assure you, nothing staggering.
  City University in New York, City University of New York, which 
probably has one of the best bargains in education, we educate students 
in City University for less than $20,000 per year. I think that the 
recent budget cuts, they have had steady budget cuts for the last 20 
years. This is a university that has been squeezed and pushed and 
manipulated and very badly treated by the people who appropriate funds 
over the last 20, 25 years.
  City University, the cost of educating one student is about $20,000, 
and you might say $20,000 per year to educate a student. Well, Harvard 
and Yale is the Ivy League. Students are above $30,000 and climbing, 
and you might say those are large amounts of money, but compared to 
what?
  The taxpayers of America spend $120,000 per student to educate 
students who go to West Point. Let me repeat that figure so you will 
understand what I said, and I had it checked and double checked, and 
this is not the military training. Military training takes it up to the 
$200,000 range. Just the academic training of every student that goes 
to West Point costs the taxpayers of America $120,000.
  Now get the perspective in place. I would say that we are spending 
much too much to educate a student at West Point, but I would say at 
the same time we are spending much too little to educate a student at 
City University, or maybe it is not relevant unless you look at how the 
money is being spent.
  City University has 200,000 students. You know, the economies of 
scale would allow you to do things cheaper, but City University also 
has students jammed into classrooms and college classes with 40 and 45 
students; you know, are not conducive to learning.
  City University has an antiquated infrastructure. Only recently, last 
10 years, did some of the colleges get phones, push-button phones. You 
know they had rotary phones. In many cases the buildings have, the 
academic buildings, have only a few phones, let alone lines that could 
connect computers to the Internet.
  The higher education establishments and City University are way, way 
behind the state-of-the-art higher education institutions in respect to 
computers and information technology. They need a great infusion of 
capital just for that purpose.
  I am not saying that New York State and New York City should spend 
$120,000 per student as they do at West Point. But I think that, 
instead of the present rage that is being promoted by certain 
editorials in certain papers and certain of our political figures, the 
rage against City University for trying to educate too many students 
and having too much remediation and needing to raise its standards by 
locking out large numbers of students from the opportunity in higher 
education provides all of that is going in the direction which is 
counter to where we ought to be going as we move toward the 21st 
century.
  So I want to reemphasize the fact that it is probably one of the most 
important bills that we consider in this Congress. The Higher Education 
Assistance Act that we will be considering tomorrow is probably one of 
the most important bills that we will consider. We only do it once 
every 5 years.
  There are very real problems out there related to affirmative action 
and the way opportunities for higher education are being cut off, 
smothered in our various States, the Hopwood decision in Texas and the 
City University of New York.
  If they end remediation, they would be accomplishing what California 
has accomplished through a back-door means. They do not talk about 
affirmative action, but it is large numbers of poor students, beginning 
with the poor students who are African American, the poor students who 
are Hispanic, but large numbers of white students also who are poor 
will be cut out of the opportunity to go to a higher education 
institution, that kind of opportunity provided by City University.

                              {time}  2030

  At a time when we ought to be considering how to have more of a pool 
of people upon which we can draw to meet the challenges of the 21st 
century, we are going in the opposite direction. There are some midget 
minds at work; there are some timid spirits that are moving things, and 
people that have power do not have any vision about where we are going.
  Governor Rockefeller, who was a Republican, laid out a vision for the 
university systems of New York's SUNY and CUNY, which catapulted them 
into a whole new stratosphere in terms of the kind of activities they 
are involved in now. Now we are under a Republican Governor going in 
the opposite direction in terms of that vision and understanding of the 
role of higher education at a time when we should be going in the 
opposite direction.
  Consider the history of higher education in this country. Consider 
the fact that if we had not had visionaries who understood the 
importance of education in the overall achievement of prosperity in 
this country, in the establishment of circumstances which would allow 
our people to pursue happiness, if that vision had not been there, we 
would be in serious trouble. We do not realize how much education and 
the initiatives taken by a few legislators, people in power, has meant 
over the years.
  First, Thomas Jefferson and the University of Virginia. It probably 
did not become the model he wanted it to become, but it certainly 
planted the seed at the University of Virginia as a State institution 
and as one of the first of its kind in terms of being established and 
run with public funds, not being burdened with the necessity to heavily 
weight its courses, courses related to theology and philosophy, et 
cetera. There is nothing wrong with theology and philosophy, but the 
mission of the University of Virginia was to learn everything that they 
could learn about everything that was useful. Maybe it did not achieve 
that, but it planted a seed.
  A man named Justice Smith Morrill, M-O-R-R-I-L-L, the Morrill Act, 
people

[[Page H2398]]

who have tossed off that term, the Morrill Act, the land grant 
colleges, Justice Smith Morrill was a Congressman from Vermont, first 
as a Member of the House of Representatives, and then he became a 
Senator in 1862. He was here during the period of the Civil War and the 
period shortly after the Civil War. He served in the Senate until 1898, 
and he came forward several times with proposals to establish 
institutions that would go beyond the usual parameters of education at 
that time, the agricultural and the mechanical colleges which would 
deal with a scientific approach to farming, a scientific approach to 
the practical matters of our Nation, and eventually Morrill was able to 
prevail, and we established land grant colleges in every State in the 
Union.
  The land grant colleges came out of the Morrill Act. It was later on 
improved and doctored by other actions by Congress, but the whole 
conception that the government should participate in the process of 
educating the population was institutionalized in the Morrill Act and 
the land grant colleges that flowed from that action.
  The kind of education provided by the land grant colleges proved to 
be the greatest thing that ever happened to America in terms of the 
production of people who understood how to apply learning and knowledge 
and science to farming, to engineering, and a whole core of people were 
created who moved us forward. In the area of agriculture in particular, 
they moved us forward in a way that no other industrial power, none of 
the leading nations in the world, have ever been able to match. We are 
way ahead in terms of production of food at low cost for the population 
as a result of the Morrill Act and the land grant colleges.
  Mr. Speaker, we need that kind of vision now. We need an innovation, 
an initiative now which would match the Morrill Act initiative. It has 
to go in a different direction, but it is not so different. Information 
technology alone offers a challenge just to move so that our colleges 
and universities are the premier agents for the development of the 
human capital. Information technology demands human capital. We do not 
have to have oil or gold or natural resources, coal, but we must have 
human beings who have been very well-educated. We should have some 
initiative which understands that and applies it across the board to 
all of our institutions of higher learning so that they can begin in a 
systematic way to meet the needs.
  Mr. Speaker, we had another innovation that took place in 1944. The 
GI Bill, which established the right for every returning GI, every 
veteran of World War II, to receive an education, was signed first by 
Franklin D. Roosevelt on June 22nd, 1944, called the Serviceman's 
Readjustment Act of 1944. During the past five decades the law has made 
possible the investment of billions of dollars in education and 
training for millions of veterans. The Nation has in return earned many 
times its investment in increased taxes and a dramatically changed 
society. The law also made possible the loan of billions of dollars to 
purchase homes for millions of veterans and helped transform the 
majority of Americans from renters to homeowners.
  But the education part of it, the fact that returning veterans were 
able to go into colleges and universities and come out with the kind of 
training and know-how put us in a position after World War II to mount 
the kind of industrial revolution that we have now, the information 
technology revolution, the research and development revolution, and the 
military which led the way, allowed us to bring the competing Soviet 
empire to its knees. All of that could not have happened if we had not 
had a Morrill Act, a GI Bill of Rights, and the subsequent 
opportunities that that provided.
  The American Legion is credited with designing the main features of 
the GI Bill. These ideas are not radical, they are part of a consensus 
that has been developed in America, and Republicans and Democrats have 
participated. The American Legion is credited with designing the main 
features of the GI Bill and pushing it through Congress. The Legion 
overcame objections that the proposed bill was too sweeping and could 
jeopardize veterans getting help at all. At the time Congress had 
already failed to act on about 640 bills concerning veterans.
  Members of the American Legion met first in Washington on December 
15, 1943, and by January 6 had completed the first draft of the GI 
Bill, and on and on the story goes. The bill was another one of those 
landmarks in American history that produced a great leap forward, a 
great leap forward in our society. The GI Bill, the Morrill Act, they 
are the kinds of actions that have propelled us forward, and they ought 
to be celebrated and understood.
  It is a pity that at a time like this, when probably the Members of 
Congress are better educated than ever before and understand more about 
the dynamics of our society and the need for some kind of comprehensive 
approach to where we are going in the next century, it is a pity that 
those forces are all, for the moment, either paralyzed or oppressed or 
lulled to sleep or blocked, and that we have the Higher Education 
Assistance Act which makes no great steps forward.

  This Higher Education Assistance Act, as I said before, is at least 
not a bill that is going to take us backwards, but it really is 
pathetic in terms of its understanding of the need for the next 5 years 
as we go into the 21st century.
  The bill that we will be considering on the floor tomorrow 
reauthorizes Federal student loans, Pell grants and other student 
financial aid programs for 5 years. It resolves a controversy over 
cutting interest rates on student loans, which took us a lot of time. 
Banks were accused of trying to make a killing off student loans, and 
that was resolved.
  Pell grants in this bill, the bill authorizes an increase in the 
maximum Pell grant award. It stands at $3,000 in the current academic 
year, and it will go to $4,500 in the year 1999-2000 academic year. It 
is a slow, incremental set of increases, not keeping pace with the cost 
of living, but at least nobody proposed that we cut it out or back. It 
authorizes annual increases of $200 until the 2003-2004 academic year 
when the authorized maximum amount would be up to $5,300. So it is an 
incremental movement forward in the area of student aid, which is the 
hallmark of the bill in terms of providing opportunity for the poor, 
the Pell grants.
  The bill makes a number of changes to the formula used to calculate 
how much financial aid students receive. The bill denies Federal 
student aid to those convicted or possessing or selling illegal drugs, 
an amendment which had a great deal of discussion. I do not approve of 
cutting off opportunity for young people so early in life. There is one 
factor that must always be considered is that children are children. 
They are not adults. The aging process, anybody who is as old as I am, 
I am almost 62, one understands that one just could not know at age 18 
or 20 or 22 what one knows later on. One cannot make the same 
judgments. And practically every young person is in danger of at some 
vulnerable moment making a mistake of some kind that is quite serious, 
but we should not set up situations where that mistake becomes a trap 
that is eternal for that person. Not to be able to get a college 
education because one made a mistake is a little too harsh, but that is 
part of the legislation at this point. Of course, I think it will be 
debated on the floor to some extent, but the majority has prevailed 
thus far on that matter.
  It has many other good features before I talk about the negative. It 
does have loan forgiveness for people who teach in low-income 
communities; it does have a number of features that are improvements, 
slight improvements over what was there before. There is a provision 
related to the whole matter of affirmative action that will be on the 
floor tomorrow. Again, we will have to debate this whole matter of no 
efforts whatsoever can be made to diversify campuses, and we will have 
to deal with the fact that more stringent national standards will be 
applied; there will be an attempt to apply stringent national standards 
that are similar to the California antiaffirmative action program.
  Of the amendments that have been noticed, there will be an amendment 
offered by the gentleman from California (Mr. Riggs), an amendment to 
prohibit any institution of higher education that participates in any 
higher education program from discriminating against or granting 
preferential

[[Page H2399]]

treatment to any person or group in admissions based on, in whole or in 
part, on race, sex, color, ethnicity or national origin. The amendment 
exempts from its ban any private institution of undergraduate higher 
education that traditionally and continually from its establishment 
admitted students to schools on the basis of sex. The amendment also 
specifies that it does not prohibit or limit any institution from 
encouraging or recruiting qualified women and minorities from seeking 
admission, provided that such recruitment and encouragement does not 
involve granting preferential treatment in selecting any person for 
admission based, in whole or in part, on race, sex, color, ethnicity or 
national origin.
  This is an amendment which, in very nice language, coats the fact 
that what it is saying is that we do not want any effort to encourage 
and promote diversity on a campus. The world is diverse. The United 
States is diverse. The number of people who are minorities, the 
proportion keeps increasing. To have diversity on campus, of course, is 
only to have students live on campus in a world that is very similar to 
the world outside. But this language, however civil it may seem on 
paper, seeks to wipe all of that out in one stroke. It would do what 
the University of California has done across the Nation. Because 
practically every higher education institution does receive some 
Federal funds, every higher education institution would have its hands 
tied in terms of promotion of diversity through its own affirmative 
action programs.

                              {time}  2045

  So the Riggs amendment will be debated, and I hope that we will 
prevail and not have the Federal Government participate in the blocking 
of opportunities for large numbers of deserving students who need to go 
to college.
  Unfortunately, as a New York City resident, a New York State 
resident, I will be participating in the argument knowing fully well 
that an effort is being made in my own city and my own State to 
accomplish the same action, to accomplish the same ends through the 
back door. We are going to close off opportunity to large numbers of 
people.
  And whereas I started by saying this Higher Education Assistance Act 
fails to increase opportunity by increasing the amount of funds and 
resources available so that poor people, no matter what color, race or 
creed they may be, will be able to take advantage of the higher 
education process, we do not have that. Yet we are going to have to 
debate an attempt to throttle even further that which exists already.
  At City University of New York proposals are being made that they 
raise the standards of the senior colleges using SAT scores and cut off 
the admission of large numbers of students who cannot measure up to 
those SAT scores, although they are graduates of the schools in New 
York City. They also want to greatly reduce the amount of remediation 
done in the senior colleges and in the community colleges, two-year 
colleges. What this will do, if we reduce remediation, if we require 
students to make remediation before they enter college, we will greatly 
reduce the number of students because remediation is needed by large 
numbers of students. Eighty percent of the students have some form of 
remediation that they participated in during the course of their time 
in college.
  Remediation are courses in effect across the country. Most colleges 
and universities have some remediation programs. What we have learned 
about the human mind and the learning process ought to tell us that 
remediation is a natural thing to have in higher education, because 
genius and talent is not comprehensive. It is not across the board that 
every student who is very good in English is also going to be good in 
math; those who are good in science are also going to be good in 
foreign languages. Remediation helps to balance out a process that 
nature has started, and we only rule out genius if we start insisting 
that remediation courses should be eliminated.
  Mr. Speaker, I made the following statement, and I want to close with 
this statement. I did want to talk a bit about one other amendment that 
we will have on the floor tomorrow connected with information 
technology, the need for information technology workers.
  I will have an amendment to provide for information technology 
partnerships between colleges and community-based agencies in order to 
provide more opportunities for young people to get exposure to 
computers and be able to determine whether or not they want to go into 
computer technology. They will have a chance to practice and a chance 
to get excited by it, and then apply it to a community college and a 
college to go into a program. The college would run these local centers 
where students would have these opportunities.
  Mr. Speaker, I just want to close with my statement before the City 
University Board of Trustees. I thanked them for the opportunity to 
testify and then I mentioned that all over the world the education of 
masses of youth emerging from educationally deprived backgrounds is a 
vital challenge to the process of building a new global society with 
abundant supplies of indigenous leadership. If we meet this challenge 
of educating those who arrive in our college classrooms with inadequate 
preparation in the City of New York, in the City University, if we can 
take freshmen from impoverished backgrounds with enormous skills 
deficits but who have normal brains and great potential, if we can take 
this kind of raw material and create productive and independent 
citizens able to take care of themselves and also serve as leaders, if 
we can seize the situation which we presently confront, then we will 
have a system that produces a priceless global product.
  Using this method, the methods established in New York, with our 
great and enormously diverse population, we will have developed a 
blueprint, a model for higher education which would be applicable 
anywhere in the world. The world market for such a service is almost 
unlimited. It would be a product of highest value. In other words, the 
challenge is to take the people who have the deficits educationally for 
whatever reason. The New York City public schools are inadequate now 
and they have gotten worse over the last 10 years, so students with 
good brains and great potential may have skills deficits, and the only 
way to deal with those skills deficits is when they get to college.
  What is happening in New York City is a tragedy, however. At a 
pivotal point in the life of the city, as we approach the dawn of the 
21st century, there are confused but powerful forces in the city which 
are turning a time for triumph into a time for tears.
  President Clinton has rightfully referred to America as an 
indispensable nation. It is not exaggerated to state that in this 
indispensable nation, New York City is the indispensable city. In order 
for this city to maintain its rightful place and fully realize its 
destiny, an open, thriving, creative City University of New York is an 
indispensable institution. City University of New York is the jewel in 
the crown of our unique urban civilization.
  This is a moment at which we must truly rally our better instincts, 
our common sense. We must rally our well-cultivated logic and our 
receptivity to the evidence provided by well-known studies. Such 
studies show that the record of CUNY is a laudable one. City University 
of New York has a laudable record.
  Consider the fact that the cost to educate a single student is so 
much greater in Harvard, and even greater at West Point, $120,000 per 
year per student. Despite the shoestring budget of the City University 
of New York and repeated fiscal harassments, City University of New 
York has endured over many lean years. City University of New York 
still stands in the ranks of the greatest in its production of 
outstanding scholars, Nobel laureates, scientists and international 
prize winners.
  The City University, as I said before, is indispensable to the life 
of the city. Any university anywhere in the country, all of our public 
institutions, following the tradition of the Morrill Act, following the 
tradition of the GI Bill, all of these have a great deal to offer as we 
go into the 21st century.
  We should look at the Higher Education Act tomorrow as being 
inadequate but at least a start, and find ways to improve and expand on 
the Higher Education Assistance Act which will come before us for 
deliberations on the House of Representatives floor tomorrow morning.




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