[Congressional Record Volume 151, Number 111 (Thursday, September 8, 2005)]
[Senate]
[Pages S9815-S9816]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
FEDERAL SUPPORT FOR COLLEGES AND UNIVERSITIES
Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, I wish to say a word about something
important that happened this afternoon that is good news for the men
and women in this country who go to college.
We have the best system of colleges and universities in the world. I
can remember Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison from Texas and Senator Frist
arranged for a group of us to meet with the former President of Brazil,
Mr. Cardoso, who had been at the Library of Congress for a while and
was going back to Brazil. Senator Hutchison said: Mr. Cardoso, what
will you take back to your country about your stay in the United
States? He did not hesitate for a moment. He said: Senator Hutchison,
the excellence of the American University. He said: There is nothing in
the world like it. It is one of the greatest strengths of your country.
There are many reasons for this. I believe it is because we have
created an environment in which we can bring out the best. We have
6,000 autonomous for-profit, nonprofit, State-supported, not-State-
supported institutions, and we have generous Federal funding that
follows students to the college or university of their choice. That
market environment has permitted us to surpass the world. We do not
just have some of the best colleges and universities in the world, we
have most of them, and several of those are in the home State of the
Presiding Officer, in Virginia, and some of those are in my State as
well.
Today the committee upon which the Presiding Officer and I serve, the
Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, reported out
legislation that has to do with Federal support for colleges and
universities for the next 4 or 5 years. The importance of that is this:
60 percent of the students in our country attending universities,
community colleges, technical institutes, or for-profit institutions do
so with the support of Federal grants or Federal loans. Sixty percent
of the college students are affected by this legislation.
While the details of this legislation will come out over the next few
weeks, it is important to say two things about it. One is the
remarkably effective job by the Senator from Wyoming and the Senator
from Massachusetts, Senator Enzi and Senator Kennedy. This is a complex
bill. There are lots of opinions on it. There are more than 20 of us on
the committee. At a time of great difficulty around here, they produced
legislation that we unanimously supported and agreed upon and will
bring to the Senate floor. It is almost certain it will go to
conference with the House of Representatives and result in a final bill
that we will then send to the President. It was a first-class job of
leadership by Senator Enzi and Senator Kennedy, and I salute them for
it, and I am glad to have been part of their committee.
The second thing to say is the bill is good for students. For
students, it increases the amount of Pell Grants from $4,050 to $4,500
over 5 years. The bill gives students who want to use their Pell Grant
during the summer the opportunity to do so for the first time, making
Pell Grants available year round.
We have a lot of working people who go to colleges and universities
today. They may want to go four straight semesters. Right now they
cannot do that if they are eligible for Federal support. Now they can
under this bill when it passes. In addition, Pell Grants will be larger
for students who are majoring in math, sciences, or critical foreign
languages, thereby encouraging students to pursue these fields.
Someone told me in Tennessee last week that we only had one new
physics teacher who graduated and came into our classes. They are going
somewhere else. We need more homegrown scientists in the United States,
and this is one step to help with that.
The bill is also good for universities as well as students because it
begins to relieve the oppressive paperwork burden the Federal
Government places on colleges and universities, freeing up scarce
dollars to spend on improving quality teaching, research, and public
service rather than paperwork.
For example, this legislation creates an expert panel to review,
evaluate, and streamline the 7,000 Federal regulations that govern
grants and loans to college students. I made a speech on the floor of
the Senate a few months ago, and I stacked up in several boxes the
7,000 regulations that every single one of the 6,000 colleges and
universities has to go through before they can admit students with a
Federal grant or a Federal loan. That is ridiculous. The President of
Stanford said they were spending 7 percent of their tuition on
complying with Federal grants and Federal loans. Universities should be
able to focus more on teaching and research, and less on complying with
reporting requirements.
In addition, for the first time, the Federal Government will be
required to develop a compliance calendar, making it easier for our
6,000 colleges and universities to comply with Federal rules and
helping them with institutional planning and avoiding inadvertent
errors in meeting these requirements. In other words, we are saying to
the U.S. Department of Education, if you are going to have 7,000
regulations--and we in Congress are guilty of causing that to happen,
let me admit that--at least somebody in the Department of Education is
going to have to put on a single calendar all of the deadlines when
someone at George Mason University or Vanderbilt University or some
small college in Iowa has to comply with each particular regulation.
That will make it easier for the colleges, and it might discourage the
number of new regulations.
Finally, universities doing a good job of keeping down the rate of
loan defaults will be given more flexibility in how they use Federal
dollars in grants and loans to students.
I am especially delighted the bill includes Teach for America
legislation that I introduced with the Democratic leader, Harry Reid.
Expanding Teach for America will not only build a corps of young
college graduates who spend 2 years teaching in schools in lower income
areas, but a corps of expanding influential alumni who support quality
public education. I actually believe that corps of expanding
influential alumni of these tremendously talented young people who
graduate from the finest colleges and universities and go into the
inner city and teach for 2 years will produce for us a corps of
thousands of Americans who know what they are talking about when the
issue of quality public education comes up. We have the best colleges
and universities in the world, but they need to continue to be the best
in order to maintain our standard of living.
The Federal Government is doing its part. Over the last 5 years,
Federal spending on higher education has increased 71.8 percent. At the
same time, State funding for higher education has increased on average
by only 6.8 percent, partly because of the big increase in Medicaid
costs to States, which have increased over the same time by 35.6
percent. This lower amount of State funding has meant that college
tuition at public 4-year institutions has increased 38.2 nationally.
In Tennessee, the situation is equally pronounced. As I stated,
Federal spending on higher education has increased 71.8 percent over
the past 5 years. In Tennessee, spending on higher education has
increased about 10 percent while Medicaid spending has increased by 71
percent. That is why during the same period the tuition at the
University of Tennessee has increased by 33.4 percent.
I raise this because I hope in our discussion of the higher education
bill that we will come to an understanding that one of the principal
reasons for the big increases in tuition is the out-of-control State
spending for Medicaid. Governors--and the Presiding Officer and I were
both Governors--constantly have to fight to keep Medicaid spending
under control so we will have enough money left for quality education.
And if we do not have quality colleges and universities over the next
[[Page S9816]]
10 years, we will not be able to keep our standard of living as we
compete with Japan, China, Germany, India, and Great Britain--all who
recognize the superiority of American higher education, and are taking
significant steps to keep their brightest students home and to improve
their institutions.
I am delighted to be able to salute Senator Enzi and Senator Kennedy.
I know they each will have longer statements to make about the bill and
all of its parts. But it is a good piece of legislation for students,
it is a good piece of legislation for colleges and universities, and it
is an excellent piece of legislation for our country.
I yield the floor.
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