[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 154 (2008), Part 13]
[Senate]
[Pages 17624-17647]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




          HIGHER EDUCATION OPPORTUNITY ACT--CONFERENCE REPORT

  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Under the previous order, the Senate will 
proceed to the conference report on H.R. 4137, which the clerk will 
report.
  The legislative clerk read as follows:

       The committee of conference on the disagreeing votes of the 
     two Houses on the amendment of the Senate to the bill (H.R. 
     4137), to amend and extend the Higher Education Act of 1965, 
     and for other purposes, having met, have agreed that the 
     House recede from its disagreement to the amendment of the 
     Senate and agree to the same with an amendment, and the 
     Senate agree to the same, signed by a majority of the 
     conferees on the part of both Houses.

  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senate will proceed to the consideration 
of the conference report.
  (The conference report is printed in the proceedings of the House in 
the Record of July 30, 2008.)
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Under the previous order, there will be 130 
minutes of debate: 50 minutes under the control of the Senator from 
Maryland, 30 minutes each under the control of Senator Enzi of Wyoming 
and Senator Alexander of Tennessee, and 20 minutes under the control of 
Senator Coburn of Oklahoma.
  The Senator from Maryland is recognized.
  Ms. MIKULSKI. Thank you very much, Mr. President.
  It is a great honor for me to be able to bring to the floor of the 
Senate the higher education conference report for the Health, 
Education, and Labor Committee. I bring this bill to the Senate on 
behalf of Senator Kennedy.
  What I wish colleagues to know is that this bill is truly a 
bipartisan agreement. It was led by Senator Kennedy and Senator Enzi, 
the ranking member, our colleague from Wyoming, who worked tirelessly. 
This bill has been a work in progress for more than 5 years.
  Early this summer, as Senator Kennedy advanced this bill, we are all 
aware that he received some pretty surprising news. As he went into his 
own treatment regime, he called me and asked me to take over the 
conference report. I viewed it as an honor, I viewed it as a privilege, 
and I view it as an honor and privilege today.
  Before I go into describing the bill and presenting it, I again wish 
to thank Senator Enzi for his work with Senator Kennedy and his 
collegial and civil attitude in working with me to move this bill.
  As I get ready to present this to the Senate, however, I have a 
letter from Senator Kennedy. I have been in touch with Senator Kennedy 
on a regular basis, receiving his advice, his guidance, his caution, 
and his jocular wit. I know he is watching us as we begin this debate 
today. This is a short statement he asked me to read to his colleagues:


[[Page 17625]]

       I'm pleased to express my strong support for final passage 
     of the Higher Education Opportunity Act of 2008. This 
     legislation builds on key measures we've approved this 
     Congress to increase college aid and make loans more 
     available for students. This bill goes even further to assure 
     that a college education is affordable and accessible to our 
     citizens.
       This legislation comes at a time when students and families 
     need more help then ever to deal with the rising cost of 
     college. Average costs at public colleges are more than 
     $13,000 today, and $32,000 at private colleges. Each year 
     780,000 qualified students don't attend a four-year college 
     because they can't afford it.
       Our bill takes major steps to expand college access and 
     affordability. It holds colleges accountable for rising costs 
     requiring the top five percent of colleges with the greatest 
     cost increases to submit detailed reports to the Secretary of 
     Education on why their costs have risen, and what they will 
     do to hold costs down. It simplifies the complex student aid 
     application process by replacing the seven-page Free 
     Application for Federal Student Aid with a two-page ``EZ-
     FAFSA.'' It also expands aid for our neediest students by 
     enabling them to receive Pell Grants year-round for the first 
     time.
       The legislation also responds to the ethical scandals in 
     the student loan industry, which the Committee documented in 
     investigations last year. It bans lenders from offering gifts 
     to college officials, and requires college to adopt strict 
     codes of conduct on student loans.
       I'm particularly proud of provisions that help students 
     with disabilities and veterans.
       It enables students with intellectual disabilities who 
     attend postsecondary transition programs to receive Pell 
     Grants for the first time, and provides support for colleges 
     to expand these programs.
       The bill helps service members by enabling them to defer 
     payments on their student loans--interest-free--while they're 
     on active duty. It also allows service members and their 
     families to receive in-state tuition rates for college when 
     they move to a new state, and enables them to re-enroll in 
     college without delay when their service is complete.
       This bill creates a lasting legacy for students and 
     families, and it wouldn't have been possible without the 
     bipartisan cooperation of the members of the HELP Committee 
     and the House Committee on Education and Labor. I commend our 
     Ranking Member, Senator Enzi, and Chairman Miller and Ranking 
     Member McKeon in the House for their strong support. I'm 
     especially grateful to my friend, Senator Mikulski, for her 
     impressive work in resolving some of the most difficult 
     issues in this bill.
       We can be proud that with passage of the Higher Education 
     Opportunity Act, we're meeting our responsibility to help all 
     our citizens obtain a higher education. By improving their 
     lives, we also strengthen our nation and our future. I urge 
     all my colleagues to support this needed legislation.

  I ask unanimous consent that a longer statement by Senator Kennedy be 
printed in the Record.
  There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in 
the Record, as follows:

  Senator Edward M. Kennedy, Higher Education Opportunity Act of 2008

       From our earliest days as a nation, education has been the 
     mainstay of our democracy and the engine of the American 
     dream. Our Founders knew that an educated citizenry would 
     strengthen the nation and build the values and character that 
     make us Americans. They believed in the power of education 
     and its ability to create an even greater America over the 
     horizon.
       In our own day and generation, we've seen an excellent 
     example of the fulfillment of the promise of that new 
     horizon, after Congress passed the GI Bill of Rights in 1944, 
     which enabled service members returning from World War II to 
     receive a college education. Hundreds of thousands did so, 
     and they went on to become the Greatest Generation. The GI 
     bill produced 67,000 doctors, 91,000 scientists, 238,000 
     teachers, and 450,000 engineers. It funded the education of 
     three Presidents, three Supreme Court Justices and many 
     Senators who served in this very chamber.
       Over the course of the past year, we've revitalized that 
     vision once again with the passage of two important higher 
     education bills. When Congress passed the College Cost 
     Reduction and Access Act last fall, we renewed our commitment 
     to the idea that no qualified student should be denied the 
     opportunity to go to college because of the cost. It included 
     the largest increase in student aid since the GI Bill--more 
     than $20 billion. We also increased the maximum Pell Grant--
     the lifeline to college for low-income students--from $4310 
     to $5400 over the next five years.
       In addition, the Act provided new relief for students 
     struggling under the weight of their student loans, by 
     allowing loan repayments to be capped at 15 percent of 
     monthly discretionary income. We also included new incentives 
     for students to enter key professions such as teaching, law 
     enforcement, and social work, by providing loan forgiveness 
     to those who commit to public service jobs for 10 years.
       This past spring, we passed a second bill to underscore our 
     commitment. When the crisis in the credit markets appeared to 
     be threatening the ability of students and families to obtain 
     loans for this school year, we approved emergency 
     legislation--the Ensuring Continued Access to Student Loans 
     Act--to make sure that loan funds will be available this 
     fall.
       That bill increased the amount of federally-subsidized 
     loans for college students, in order to reduce their reliance 
     on higher cost private loans. We gave parents greater access 
     to low-cost federal PLUS loans, to provide an alternative to 
     private loans and home equity lines of credit. We also gave 
     the Secretary of Education new tools to ensure that lenders 
     have the funds they need to make loans to students.
       The bill before us today--the Higher Education Opportunity 
     Act of 2008--takes even more steps to ensure that a college 
     education is affordable and accessible to our citizens.
       A college education has never been more important than it 
     is now. Today, 60 percent of new jobs require some post-
     secondary education, compared to just 15 percent half a 
     century ago. Yet the United States ranks only 14th in the 
     college graduation rates of all industrialized nations.
       At the same time, college has never been more difficult to 
     afford. The cost of college has more than tripled over the 
     last twenty years. Today, average tuition, fees and room and 
     board at public colleges is more than $13,000, and it's more 
     than $32,000 at private colleges.
       Each year an estimated 780,000 talented, qualified students 
     don't attend a four-year college because they can't afford 
     it.
       In last year's student aid bill, we made a commitment to 
     American students and families to invest billions more in 
     student aid--especially for those who need help the most. 
     Now, with the Higher Education Opportunity Act, we're asking 
     colleges to do their part to keep costs under control. Our 
     bill requires the Department of Education, for the first 
     time, to make detailed information about college costs 
     available to students and families on its website. It also 
     requires the Department to highlight, on national lists, 
     those colleges that are doing a good job of keeping their 
     costs down, and those that are not.
       By providing greater transparency and enabling students and 
     families to compare the costs of various colleges more 
     easily, we hope to promote an environment where colleges 
     think carefully before they raise their prices. But our bill 
     requires even more. If, over three years, a college raises 
     its prices so much that it ranks among the top five percent 
     of institutions of its type with the highest cost increases, 
     we require the college to submit a comprehensive report to 
     the Secretary of Education, detailing the steps the college 
     will take to bring its costs back under control.
       We're also taking overdue action to rein in the high cost 
     of college textbooks. According to the U.S. Public Interest 
     Research Group, the average college student spends about $900 
     a year on textbooks. Since 1994, textbook prices have risen 
     at four times the rate of inflation, and they continue to 
     increase. Often, students are forced to waste money buying 
     textbooks because they can only be purchased in ``bundles'' 
     with workbooks and other materials that their professors 
     don't use.
       Our bill will reverse this trend by requiring textbook 
     publishers to ``unbundle'' textbooks and supplementary 
     materials, so students can buy only the materials they really 
     need. It will also give faculty members better information 
     about textbook costs, by requiring publishers to provide more 
     detailed pricing information. And it will require colleges to 
     include information about required textbooks in their course 
     catalogs and on their websites, so that students can shop for 
     the best prices.
       In addition to holding the cost of college down, we're 
     doing more to ensure that students receive all the aid 
     they're entitled to by reforming the application process for 
     federal student aid. Today, the process is needlessly 
     complex. The Free Application for Federal Student Aid 
     (FAFSA)--the basic form that all students must complete to 
     determine their eligibility for federal aid--is currently 
     seven pages long. That's longer than the standard federal 
     income tax form.
       Such complexity has unfortunate consequences for students. 
     Each year, an estimated 1.5 million students eligible for 
     Pell Grants don't receive them, either because they aren't 
     aware of federal aid or because they find the process too 
     complicated to navigate. It's time to make the process 
     simpler.
       The Higher Education Opportunity Act will replace the 7-
     page FAFSA with a 2-page ``EZFAFSA'' for low-income students. 
     Within five years, the longer FAFSA will be phased out for 
     all applicants. The bill also includes pilot programs to 
     simplify the federal aid applications even further. To help 
     more of our neediest students understand that college aid is 
     available for them, a pilot program will give low-income 
     students a federal aid determination in their junior year of 
     high school, rather than their senior year.

[[Page 17626]]

     We also encourage the Secretary of Education to work with the 
     IRS to share income tax data, so the federal aid form can 
     include the data needed to determine a student's eligibility 
     for college aid.
       In addition, to ensure that this aid is directed to 
     students, we must keep them informed about their choices and 
     hold colleges and lenders accountable for giving students the 
     best loan deal possible.
       Investigations by our Committee found that many lenders are 
     entering into sweetheart deals with colleges, offering gifts 
     to college and university employees in order to obtain their 
     students' loan business.
       Lenders who participate in the federal student loan program 
     have offered ``educational conferences'' at luxury hotels and 
     offer free entertainment and free tickets to sporting events 
     to college officials in order to entice those officials to 
     recommend the lenders to their students. The Higher Education 
     Opportunity Act makes these practices illegal, and protects 
     students by ensuring that when a college recommends a lender, 
     it's based on the best interest of students and nothing else.
       The bill also creates a new process with respect to private 
     educational loans--which now account for a quarter of all 
     borrowing for college--to make sure that students know what 
     low-cost Federal aid they're eligible for, and how much more 
     they really need to borrow to cover the cost of college 
     attendance with a private loan.
       The Higher Education Opportunity Act also enhances grant 
     aid for the neediest students, adding to the dramatic 
     increase in student aid Congress approved in last year's 
     student bill. For the first time, we allow students eligible 
     for Pell Grants to receive those grants year-round, so they 
     can accelerate their courses of study.
       But ensuring access to adequate grants and loans is only 
     one component of solving the college access crisis. We must 
     also ensure that more students are graduating from high 
     school ready for college. In 2001, colleges required one-
     third of all freshmen to take remedial courses in reading, 
     writing, or math.
       Because so many high school students are not learning the 
     basic skills to succeed in college or work, the nation loses 
     more than $3.7 billion a year. This figure includes $1.4 
     billion to provide remedial education to students who have 
     recently completed high school, and $2.3 billion that the 
     economy loses because remedial reading students are more 
     likely to drop out of college without a degree, thereby 
     reducing their earning potential.
       To address this problem, our bill includes provisions to 
     maintain the strength of the TRIO and GEAR UP programs, which 
     provide underprivileged students with the support they need 
     to go to prepare for and graduate from college.
       We also strengthen efforts to help students with 
     disabilities enter and succeed in college. For the first 
     time, the bill allows students with intellectual disabilities 
     to receive Pell Grants and Federal Work-Study funds to 
     participate in transition programs at institutions of higher 
     education.
       We create new grant programs to help colleges offer even 
     more of these transition programs, and make course materials 
     more accessible for students with print disabilities. We 
     establish a new center at the Department of Education devoted 
     to helping students with disabilities and their families get 
     the help and assistance they need to prepare for college and 
     go to college.
       These provisions to help students with disabilities will be 
     one of the lasting legacies of this legislation, and I'm 
     proud we've been able to do so much.
       I'm also proud of the steps we take in this bill to help 
     service men and women pursue a higher education. They risk 
     their lives for us every day, and they deserve whatever we 
     can give them to help them build a brighter future. Our bill 
     provides a number of new benefits for servicemembers, 
     including provisions to allow them to defer payments on their 
     student loans--interest-free--while they're on active duty, 
     provisions to help servicemembers re-enroll in college 
     without delay, and a new online clearinghouse for 
     servicemembers to learn about college benefits available to 
     them.
       Our bill also takes other much-needed steps to ensure that 
     all citizens are able to enjoy the benefits of higher 
     education. As we know, discrimination has long limited the 
     opportunities of minorities and women in higher education. As 
     a result, these groups are still under-represented today 
     among graduates of institutions of higher learning, and among 
     professors, attorneys, and other professionals.
       Decades of reports and studies document the under-
     representation of women and minorities in higher education. 
     In 2006, a report, Faculty Gender Equity Indicators by the 
     American Association of University Professors found that 
     women are significantly under-represented among university 
     faculty--they make up just 39 percent of full-time faculty at 
     institutions of higher education, and just 34 percent of such 
     faculty at doctoral institutions. The Department of 
     Education's most recent Digest of Education Statistics 
     indicates that women continue to be underrepresented among 
     those obtaining professional degrees, such as in law and 
     business.
       As the National Center for Education Statistics states in 
     its Enrollment in Postsecondary Institutions, Fall 2006 
     report, minority students are underrepresented at every level 
     of higher education, with numbers dwindling further in 
     graduate and professional education. Likewise, law school 
     enrollment surveys by the American Bar Association show that 
     minorities are underrepresented among students at those 
     institutions, and among law school tenured faculty and deans. 
     This legislation takes needed steps to address this under-
     representation of women and minorities and to help make the 
     goal of equal educational opportunity a reality for all our 
     citizens.
       The bill also provides new support for educational 
     institutions that serve minority groups historically denied 
     access to higher education because of prejudice and 
     discrimination. These institutions--many of which were 
     founded in direct response to the refusal by other colleges 
     and universities to admit minority students--have long had an 
     indispensable role in overcoming the legacy of discrimination 
     in education that has led to under-representation of 
     minorities in academia and in legal and other professions.
       These institutions help ensure a diverse pool of qualified 
     professionals in the nation's economy. They're particularly 
     important because they provide postsecondary educational 
     opportunities specifically tailored to students--especially 
     low-income students--who have been denied access to 
     adequately-funded elementary and secondary schools, or have 
     been educated in schools marked by racial and ethnic 
     segregation. As documented by studies and described in the 
     Committee reports, these institutions have a proven track 
     record of educating minority students. They graduate a 
     disproportionate number of the nation's minority doctors, 
     lawyers, teachers, and other professionals. They offer 
     affordable, high quality college education and job training 
     to tens of thousands of students every year.
       In addition to these measures, the legislation includes 
     several provisions to help colleges and universities improve 
     student and campus safety. More than a year ago now, the 
     nation was shocked by the worst shooting rampage in history--
     a shock made worse by the fact that it occurred at an 
     institution of higher education. What happened at Virginia 
     Tech was a wake-up call for Congress and the Nation--that 
     tragedy can strike anywhere, including college campuses.
       The bill takes steps to apply some of the lessons learned 
     from that overwhelming tragedy, and ensure that students are 
     safer in the future. It helps colleges upgrade their safety 
     and emergency response systems with the latest technology, 
     and requires them to have specific procedures to deal with 
     serious situations on campus, including informing students 
     immediately when such situations erupt. These steps are 
     essential parts of the responsibility of colleges and 
     universities in protecting the students entrusted to their 
     care and we can help them do better.
       This bill is the product of many months of hard work, and 
     it couldn't have completed without the bipartisan cooperation 
     of every member of the HELP Committee and the House Committee 
     on Education and Labor. I commend our Ranking Member, Senator 
     Enzi, for his strong support for moving this bill forward, 
     and Chairman Miller and Ranking Member McKeon in the House 
     for their enormous contributions to this legislation.
       I'm especially grateful to my friend, Senator Mikulski, for 
     going above and beyond the call of duty to help resolve some 
     of the most difficult issues in this bill over the past 
     several months.
       I also commend Senator Dodd and Senator Shelby for the 
     assistance the Banking Committee has provided on the private 
     loan provisions in the bill, and all the Members of both 
     committees for their individual contributions.
       We owe an immense debt of gratitude as well to the many 
     staff members on both sides of the aisle who have dedicated 
     hundreds of hours to working on this legislation. I'm 
     grateful for the efforts of Dvora Lovinger and Robin Juliano 
     on Senator Mikulski's staff, and Ilyse Shuman, Greg Dean, 
     Beth Buehlmann, Ann Clough, Adam Briddell, Lindsay Hunsicker, 
     Aaron Bishop and Kelly Hastings on Senator Enzi's staff.
       From Chairman Miller's office, I'm grateful for the efforts 
     of Mark Zuckerman, Alex Nock, Gabriella Gomez, Julie 
     Radocchia, and Jeff Appel. From Ranking Member McKeon's 
     office, I thank Sally Stroup and Amy Jones.
       I also thank Mary Ellen McGuire and Jeremy Sharp with 
     Senator Dodd; Rob Barron with Senator Harkin; Michael Yudin 
     and Michele Mazzocco with Senator Bingaman; Kathryn Young 
     with Senator Murray; Seth Gerson with Senator Reed; Mildred 
     Otero, Latoya Johnson, and Chelsea Maughan with Senator 
     Clinton; Steve Robinson with Senator Obama; Huck Gutman with 
     Senator Sanders; Will Jawando with Senator Brown; Allison 
     Dembeck with Senator Gregg; David Cleary and Sarah Riffling 
     with Senator Alexander; Celia Sims with Senator Burr; Glee 
     Smith with Senator Isakson; Karen McCarthy with Senator 
     Murkowski; Juliann Andreen with Senator Hatch; Alison Anway 
     with Senator Roberts; Jon VanMeter with Senator Allard; and 
     Elizabeth Floyd with Senator Coburn.

[[Page 17627]]

       As I mentioned, the Banking Committee provided special help 
     during this process and I thank Shawn Maher, Amy Friend, and 
     Roger Hollingsworth with Senator Dodd; and Jim Johnson with 
     Senator Shelby.
       As always, we're grateful for the hard work of our 
     Legislative Counsels, the Senate Budget Committee, and the 
     Congressional Budget Office for helping us prepare this bill. 
     I thank Mark Koster, Kristin Romero, Amy Gaynor, and Laura 
     Ayoud from the Senate Legislative Counsel's office, Steve 
     Cope and Molly Lothamer from the House Legislative Counsel's 
     office, Debb Kalcevic and Justin Humphrey of the 
     Congressional Budget Office, and Robyn Hiestand with the 
     Senate Budget Committee.
       And from my own staff, I thank Michael Myers, Carmel 
     Martin, J.D. LaRock, Erin Renner, Missy Rohrbach, Emma 
     Vadehra, Jennie Fay, Shawn Daugherty, Roberto Rodriguez, 
     David Johns, Michael Zawada, and Jane Oates.
       As President Kennedy said in 1961, ``Our progress as a 
     nation can be no swifter than our progress in education. Our 
     requirements for world leadership, our hopes for economic 
     growth, and the demands of citizenship itself in an era such 
     as this all require the maximum development of every young 
     American's capacity. The human mind is our fundamental 
     resource.''
       President Kennedy was speaking then about the aspirations 
     that gave life to the original Higher Education Act of 1965. 
     His words rang true then, and they still ring true today. We 
     can all be proud that with passage of the Higher Education 
     Opportunity Act, we're recognizing our responsibility to help 
     all our citizens obtain a higher education, not only to 
     improve their own lives, but also to strengthen our nation 
     and our future. I commend all my colleagues and their staff 
     members on both sides of the aisle for coming together to 
     make passage of this vital legislation possible.

  Ms. MIKULSKI. Mr. President, I wish to add to this. I won't repeat 
what Senator Kennedy reminds us are the good things in this bill.
  In addition to our empowerment opportunity, which was expanding Pell 
grants from $4,800 to $6,000, we are also making sure Pell grants are 
available all year long, not just during the academic year, as well as 
getting rid of the cronyism in private lending where there were 
kickbacks going on between lenders and those at colleges who were 
offering it.
  In addition to that, one of the things I am very proud of is how we 
met two major shortages in our country. Right now, there are the issues 
related to the nursing shortage. This bill recognizes the fact that 
though there is a nursing shortage, there are now several thousand 
people who want to go to nursing school but can't get in because the 
nursing schools either have no room, no labs, or no faculty.
  Working together, we have been able to pass in this bill a very 
significant empowerment opportunity that will expand faculty and 
laboratory capacity so that we can crack the nursing shortage code by 
making sure all who want to go have the opportunity to go. By the way, 
there are 40,000 qualified applicants who could not get into nursing 
programs. They were smart enough. They were good enough. There was even 
financial aid to help them, but there just wasn't room. But we are 
making room for them.
  Another issue that we were able to deal with was promoting innovative 
and effective teacher preparation programs. Our Nation faces a shortage 
of high-quality K-12 teachers, and new approaches are needed to make 
sure that every child has an effective teacher. In this legislation, we 
create a pipeline for high-quality teachers to teach in high-need 
schools by promoting partnerships with teacher education programs in 
higher need districts. We hold institutions of higher education 
accountable for the quality and progress of their teacher preparation 
programs as well as encouraging them with substantial help to develop 
alternative certification programs.
  The Presiding Officer would be interested to know that on this 25th 
anniversary of Sally Ride going into space, neither Dr. Ride nor I 
could teach in a Baltimore high school. Dr. Ride has a Ph.D. in 
astrophysics, two undergraduate degrees--one in physics and one in 
Shakespeare. I have a master's degree in sociology. I think I am 
qualified to teach current events but couldn't do it. That is OK. We 
should be qualified, but it would be darn hard to get into an 
alternative certification program.
  I think there is a lot of talent coming out of our military, retired 
people who are looking for second careers--an experienced core. We need 
to give them an opportunity to come into our college classrooms, 
bringing knowledge, expertise, and the kind of mentoring that goes on. 
This is what is in this bill. It is not a laundry list of programs. It 
is about helping those young people who want to get into school, making 
sure we deal with some of the critical shortages facing our country, 
and at the same time having empowerment opportunity where we help 
important historic institutions, such as our Historically Black 
Colleges.
  I am going to speak about this bill in more detail, but for now I 
wish to yield to Senator Enzi, who has been such an able partner and 
who has a particular area of expertise, because of his accounting 
background, in the fiscal reforms we did and a real passion for the 
community college.
  Mr. ENZI. Mr. President, I rise to express my support for the 
conference agreement of the Higher Education Opportunity Act, which 
would reauthorize the Higher Education Act. This conference agreement 
represents a major victory for America's students and families. I can't 
say enough about the tremendous role that Senator Mikulski has played 
in getting this wrapped up. I often say, on bills it takes 90 percent 
of the time to get the 90 percent done, and the other 10 percent also 
takes 90 percent of the time. I think she did a significant job of 
cutting that other 90 percent to get the 10 percent done.
  My only regret is that Senator Kennedy isn't here to share in this 
great moment. He has been working on this with me for 3 years. We 
actually worked a little bit on it before that. Without his able help 
on this bill and the superb help of his staff, who have continued to 
work on it, we wouldn't be in this position today. I will be eternally 
grateful, though, that he asked Senator Mikulski to step in and help 
out. She has been tireless and has done a phenomenal job. Without her 
leadership, we also wouldn't be here at this moment.
  This is an important step, and it will have an impact on the lives of 
students of all ages for years to come. It is much like the launch just 
over 50 years ago of the Sputnik satellite that sparked a great debate 
about our place in the space race. The success of Sputnik sent 
shockwaves through the Nation. Russia was getting the better of us 
technologically, and we couldn't allow that to happen. It sparked a 
change in our education policies, and it sparked America to do what it 
does best, which is to rise to the challenge with innovation and a 
marked determination to be second to none. No longer could we rest on 
our past triumphs as a nation. We met the challenge of Sputnik through 
the National Defense Education Act.
  Today, we are again being challenged but in a different way.
  Now, instead of a race for space, it is a race for knowledge and 
skills that confronts us. It is a race we dare not lose, for the stakes 
this time are even higher. What is at risk is our strong economy. The 
solution to this difficult problem is to make a college education more 
accessible, more affordable, and more accountable for more Americans. 
It is more important than ever to make sure students and their families 
have good information to use on making decisions about college.
  We find ourselves at a time when 200 of the 230 highest wage, highest 
paying, and in-demand jobs require some college education. In this 
environment, it is necessary for America's students to be able to 
access the tools and assistance they will need to complete their 
college education and acquire the knowledge and skills that will enable 
them to be successful in the 21st century economy.
  Institutions of higher education and employers have expressed their 
dissatisfaction with the fact that our high school graduates need 
remediation in order to do college-level work or to participate in the 
workforce. Each year, taxpayers pay an estimated $1 billion to $2 
billion to provide remedial education to students at our public 
universities and community colleges. The cost to employers is even 
greater.
  The legislation before us will take historic steps to provide 
students with

[[Page 17628]]

the tools, the means, and the power to get a higher education.
  We can all appreciate the complexity of the Federal student aid 
system. Filling out the Free Application for Federal Student Aid, or 
FAFSA, prevents many of our students from even considering college. We 
have taken that from multipages down to three pages--incidentally, that 
is both sides. One of the significant things is that it has kept people 
from even applying for financial aid, and without the financial aid, 
they cannot go to college. In 2004, an estimated 850,000 individuals 
who would have been eligible for Pell did not file a FAFSA. Completing 
bureaucratic financial-aid forms should not be a barrier to thousands 
of students who need financial aid to attend college.
  This bill breaks down FAFSA to just those necessary questions to 
determine a student's financial need. In addition, Federal agencies 
will be required to examine and reduce the amount of information needed 
to establish eligibility for student aid. We also have included 
sunshine and transparency requirements for institutions, lenders, and 
guaranty agencies to restore confidence in student loan programs and 
eliminate the appearance of inappropriate arrangements.
  As important as it is to increase the number of first-time college-
going students, the fact is that nontraditional students are the 
students of the future. With seven community colleges in Wyoming, I 
know the value of serving adult learners who are returning to college 
for additional education and training. This agreement provides Pell 
grants for year-round education. You can think of it as 9 months and 3 
months off, but people who are in this position need to be able to go 
continuously until they get the certification or degree they are 
working for. Again, this agreement provides Pell grants for year-round 
education, so students can complete their programs more quickly.
  One issue I have concerns with is the maintenance of effort 
provision. I am worried that it may serve as a disincentive to States 
to reasonably allocate resources to higher education. I expect that we 
will find the provision unworkable, and we will be back in the future 
to make technical changes to fix it. We will leave that for another 
day.
  For students today, a higher education is no longer optional. Without 
a lifetime of education, training, and retraining opportunities for 
everyone, we will not meet the 21st century challenges. This historic 
piece of legislation goes a long way toward meeting our commitment to 
all Americans.
  This conference report is not a perfect bill, but it is a good bill 
and an important accomplishment because we followed the 80/20 rule. We 
focused on the 80 percent of the issues we could agree on, not the 20 
percent we disagreed on. We also followed the regular order to craft 
this bill. It went through committee and was considered on the floor. 
The House did the same. Then we met with the House to draft a 
conference report. This process takes time, but the result is an 
important accomplishment for America's students and their families. 
What we are doing today will make a great difference in the lives of 
our children and our grandchildren for many years to come.
  I thank all of the members of both the Senate and the House 
committees, and in particular Senator Kennedy for working toward this 
goal for years and keeping his commitment that we would get this done. 
Senator Kennedy has long been a champion for education in our country. 
He shares my determination that the education we provide to students of 
all ages will be second to none. That is a difficult challenge. When he 
and I started on this challenge to reauthorize the Higher Education Act 
3\1/2\ years ago, we knew there would be many bumps along the way. I 
believe we hit every single one of those bumps, but he provided the 
kind of leadership in committee, in the Senate, and in the Congress 
that made it possible for us to reach this agreement today.
  I also thank Senator Mikulski for the key role she played in assuring 
that we reached agreement on the bill.
  In addition, I acknowledge the tremendous work of Chairman Miller and 
Ranking Member McKeon of the House Education and Labor Committee. There 
were a tremendous number of meetings between us to work in a very 
positive way toward getting to this point.
  As well, I thank Congressmen Hinojosa and Keller of the subcommittee. 
They helped to shepherd this bill through the House so we could take it 
up on the Senate floor.
  There are many congressional staff who worked on this conference 
report. The breadth and importance of the issues, not to mention the 
length of the legislation, requires many people working on it to get it 
done.
  I have always said that I have a staff worthy of gold medals and my 
staff who worked on this bill have shown their gold medal status once 
again. I must first acknowledge and thank Beth Buehlmann, my education 
policy director. It is no exaggeration to state that without Beth there 
would be no Higher Education Act reauthorization bill today. She truly 
was the force to start the reauthorization 3 \1/2\ years ago. She 
worked tirelessly to ensure that we drafted a bill to reflect the 
changing nature of our student bodies as well as to ensure that we, as 
a Nation, will maintain our status as having the best education system 
in the world. Her team of Ann Clough, Adam Briddell, Kelly Hastings, 
and Lindsay Hunsicker is comprised of remarkable individuals who 
brought their talents and knowledge to the forefront in this bill. I 
would also like to thank my staff director, Ilyse Schuman, and Greg 
Dean, Amy Shank, Randi Reid, John Hallmark, and Ron Hindle who also put 
in many hours and added invaluable input into the bill as well as the 
overall process.
  I would also like to thank members of Senator Kennedy's staff for 
their hard work--Michael Myers, Carmel Martin, JD LaRock, Missy 
Rohrbach, Erin Renner, Roberto Rodriquez, and Emma Vadehra.
  Additionally, I would like to thank all of the other HELP Committee 
staff for their hard work throughout this process, especially David 
Cleary and Sarah Rittling of Senator Alexander's subcommittee staff. 
Also deserving thanks are our Republican members' staff, including 
Allison Dembeck, Celia Sims, Glee Smith, Karen McCarthy, Juliann 
Andreen, Alison Anway, John van Meter, and Elizabeth Floyd, as well as 
their Democratic staff counterparts. Also, I would like to thank Scott 
Raab from Senator McConnell's office for helping us work through some 
of the more difficult issues in the negotiations.
  Also deserving my gratitude is the House staff including Mark 
Zuckerman, Alex Nock, Gabriella Gomez, Julie Radocchia, and Jeff Appel 
with Chairman Miller's staff and Sally Stroup, James Bergeron, and Amy 
Jones with Mr. McKeon's staff.
  Also, with any piece of legislation that we draft, we should not 
forget the legislative counsels in both bodies who worked tirelessly to 
put this 1,000 plus page agreement together--Steve Cope, Molly 
Lothamer, Mark Koster, Kristin Romero, and Amy Gaynor--who all deserve 
to be recognized.
  I look forward to getting the conference report to President Bush for 
his signature soon so that students and their families who are making 
plans to attend college this fall will have the benefits of this bill 
to help them.
  I yield the floor and reserve the remainder of our time.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Who yields time?
  Ms. MIKULSKI. Mr. President, I yield time to the distinguished 
Senator from New Mexico, a member of the HELP Committee, who played a 
significant role in crafting this bill as it moved through our 
committee.
  Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, I wonder if I might ask, through the 
Chair, the Senator from Maryland if I might speak after the Senator 
from New Mexico.
  Ms. MIKULSKI. If I may say to the Senator two things. One, I believe 
the agreement is that we have from----
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Under the order, the Senator from Maryland has 
50 minutes and the Senator from Wyoming has 30 minutes. The Senator 
from Tennessee has 30 minutes.

[[Page 17629]]


  Mr. ALEXANDER. I thank the Chair.
  Ms. MIKULSKI. Mr. President, our order of agreement was that after 
Senator Enzi spoke, we would take 10 minutes for Senator Bingaman and 
Senator Reed. If Senator Reed is not here, we can then see how we can 
accommodate the Senator from Tennessee. The Senator from Tennessee was 
to go after the Senator from Rhode Island.
  Mr. ALEXANDER. Thank you. I can wait until there is available time.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from New Mexico is recognized.


                             Gregory Simon

  Mr. BINGAMAN. Mr. President, I rise today to speak about the 
devastating loss that Bob Simon and the Simon family suffered today 
with the loss of their beloved son and brother Gregory. Bob has been 
the staff director of the Energy and Natural Resources Committee for 
nearly 10 years, and worked with me in other capacities for a number of 
years before that. During that period, Bob has gone through harrowing 
times both personally and professionally. He has always handled these 
times with grace, strength, and his own personal brand of dry humor. 
Bob, his wife Karen, and their three other children--Stephen, Cathryn, 
and Anne-Marie--have spent countless hours at Gregory's bedside since 
Gregory fell ill on July 10, exactly 3 weeks ago, and throughout that 
time, they have shown extraordinary courage. Their devotion to Gregory 
reflects their devotion to one another as a family.
  Greg was a really inquisitive, artistic, creative individual. He 
always drew cartoons and comics. He didn't like math. He looked exactly 
like Bob except with blond hair. He had Bob's temperament--he was such 
a positive young man.
  Gregory was always small for his age, but he refused to let his 
stature get in the way of anything he wanted to do. He was a fighter, 
and he fought valiantly for the last 3 weeks. In the end, though, the 
odds were too great to overcome, and Gregory died at the age of 16.
  Mr. President, there are no words that can properly capture the pain 
the Simons must feel now, and no words we can say that can truly 
provide comfort. The best we can do is be sure that those who are 
bereaved know that they have our love and our prayers, and so we send 
both in great measure to the Simon family.
  Mr. President, I would like to speak briefly about the legislation 
that is before the Senate.
  I urge my colleagues to adopt the conference report on this Higher 
Education Opportunity Act. The title to the legislation indicates that 
the bill is about providing greater opportunities for families to send 
their children to college and greater opportunities for students to 
succeed in and graduate from college.
  I particularly thank Chairman Kennedy and Senator Enzi for their 
untiring commitment and dedication to the college students of this 
country. Of course, I thank Senator Mikulski as well for her leadership 
in getting this legislation to the Senate floor for a vote this 
evening.
  Only 1 year after passing the largest student aid package in more 
than 50 years, this body is poised to pass legislation that will take 
the next step to make college more affordable and accessible to 
students and their families. There are many important provisions in the 
bill, but I will highlight just one provision in particular.
  Native American enrollment in postsecondary education more than 
doubled between 1976 and 2002, with almost 166,000 Native American 
students enrolled in higher education. Student enrollment in tribally 
controlled colleges and universities has increased in recent years to 
almost 16,000 students in 2002.
  It is important to note the critical role tribally controlled 
colleges play in educating Native American students and the unique 
educational opportunity these schools offer Native American students. 
We need to continue to do all we can to strengthen and support those 
schools. But that means that approximately 150,000 Native American 
students are enrolled in higher education in non-tribally controlled 
colleges.
  We know, unfortunately, that Native American students are still much 
less likely to enroll in college than their peers. Only 18 percent of 
Native American students have enrolled in college, as compared to 42 
percent of other students. We also know, however, that Native American 
students are less likely to persist once in college. And 77 percent of 
Native Americans did not have a postsecondary certificate or degree, as 
compared with 37 percent of others.
  The Higher Education Opportunity Act, the bill before us today, 
addresses the reality that the overwhelming majority of Native American 
students are being educated in non-tribally controlled colleges and 
universities and that we need to do a better job to support these 
students within these schools. This legislation authorizes the Native 
American-Serving Non-Tribal Institutions Program to enable such 
colleges to improve and expand their capacity to serve these Native 
American and low-income individuals.
  Right now, there are 43 colleges and universities that serve large 
Native American student populations. In my State, we have three such 
schools that serve large Native American student populations. In fact, 
the student population at the University of New Mexico at Gallup, NM, 
is close to 80 percent Native American.
  Native American students in New Mexico would not be the only students 
to benefit from this provision. Colleges and universities around the 
country would also qualify in other States, including schools in 
Alaska, Wyoming, Colorado, North Carolina, and Utah. Out of the 43 
schools that could be eligible to benefit from the provisions in this 
legislation, 24 of the schools are located in the State of Oklahoma.
  I am very pleased this provision has garnered strong bipartisan 
support. It is a part of this very important legislation.
  I am also pleased that the bill includes funding for a long overdue 
graduate program for Hispanic-serving institutions.
  I thank the chairman and Senator Enzi for their strong support of 
these provisions. I urge my colleagues to support the conference 
report.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Whitehouse). The Senator from Maryland.
  Ms. MIKULSKI. Mr. President, following our agreement and time 
allocation, I yield 5 minutes to the Senator from Rhode Island--the 
other Senator from Rhode Island, the senior Senator, Senator Jack Reed, 
also a member of the HELP Committee. He is a very persistent person in 
engaging in the content of this bill.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The senior Senator from Rhode Island is 
recognized.
  Mr. REED. Mr. President, I thank Senator Mikulski for not only the 
time to speak about this important measure but for her leadership. I 
particularly wish to recognize the extraordinary contribution of 
Senator Kennedy who has been the architect of this legislation and many 
previous reauthorizations. And I wish to give particular thanks to 
Senator Enzi whose quiet, thoughtful, and determined approach made a 
contribution to this legislation. I thank him for his hard work.
  I rise in strong support of the Higher Education Opportunity Act of 
2008. It will be an important way in which we fulfill our obligation to 
the American people, and keep opportunity and hope alive throughout 
this country. Education is truly the engine that pulls people forward. 
It allows individuals and families to move up the economic ladder, and 
not only for their own progress, but also for the benefit of the 
communities in which they live.
  This might be one of the most important pieces of legislation we ever 
considered on this floor. I am proud it has been so well handled and so 
meaningful that today we are debating legislation which I believe will 
get overwhelming support. I am particularly pleased it is being 
reauthorized at this time. We have seen an economy in turmoil. One of 
the realizations that is taking place is that the housing sector of our 
economy is so central to everything we do. I can imagine, as we all 
can, that there are literally hundreds of thousands of

[[Page 17630]]

families across America who are counting on the equity in their homes 
to send their son or daughter to college. That equity has been 
diminished, if it has not disappeared altogether.
  Today we are responding to that urgent need by providing more 
assistance to families to send their children to higher education. I am 
particularly pleased the aspects of the legislation I helped author are 
included in this final version. I introduced legislation called the 
FAFSA Act, which is the acronym for the federal financial aid form, to 
streamline the financial aid application process. There will now be a 
short EZ-FAFSA form for low-income students and families while also 
allowing students to apply earlier so they have an idea of what their 
financial options are as they consider college. These provisions will 
make the sometimes daunting task of getting financial aid, I hope, a 
little easier and a little more efficient.
  I am also pleased that aspects of my legislation called the ACCESS 
Act have been included. This legislation deals primarily with the LEAP 
program. The LEAP program is a partnership between States and the 
Federal Government to provide grants to students who need the help--not 
loans, but grants. The States put in some resources; we match those 
resources. It is a way in which we can fulfill our commitment and our 
promise to many low-income families. This legislation builds on the 
LEAP program by providing critical additional financial resources, 
particularly resources and that will be useful for helping middle- and 
low-income families attend college.
  We are all concerned about another aspect of our educational system, 
and that is teacher quality. This legislation incorporates some other 
provisions which I advanced that will help prepare teachers for the 
reality of today's classroom. I am very pleased they are included also.
  We also included in this legislation a Perkins student loan 
forgiveness for librarians and for members of the Armed Forces. The 
Perkins program provides need-based loan assistance for students 
attending college. We are going to forgive the debt on that loan 
assistance for librarians and members of our armed services.
  This is a wonderful act. I am pleased and proud to support it and be 
a part of it. I once again thank Chairman Kennedy, Senator Enzi, and 
Senator Mikulski for their great work.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Tennessee.
  Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, do I understand I have up to 30 
minutes?
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator is correct.
  Mr. ALEXANDER. I thank the Chair. I ask unanimous consent that I may 
bring demonstrative evidence on the floor and use it during my remarks.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, in case anyone is wondering, these 
boxes, which are nearly as tall as I am, are the rules and regulations 
that our 6,000 colleges and universities must comply with in order to 
receive students who have a Federal grant or loan. As I will make clear 
in my remarks, my primary objection to the legislation I am about to 
address is that the legislation doubles the size of this stack of 
boxes. My fear is we are undermining the quality of American higher 
education. The greatest threat, I believe, to American higher education 
is not underfunding, it is overregulation.
  Before I say that, let me first say a word, as has been said before, 
about Senator Kennedy, Senator Enzi, and Senator Mikulski. While they 
have, among themselves, different philosophical views, I regard each of 
them as institutions whom I greatly admire. In other words, they like 
to work within this body across party lines to get a result. I thank 
both Senator Enzi and Senator Mikulski for the courtesy accorded me in 
the development of this result. And as every other Member of this body 
does, I greatly admire Senator Kennedy for his tenacity and his 
commitment to education. Obviously, we wish he were here tonight to 
join us.
  Because I admire Senator Kennedy and Senator Mikulski and Senator 
Enzi does not mean I have to admire the particular result of this work. 
After 4 years, the Senate has spewed forth a well-intentioned 
contraption of unnecessary rules and regulations that waste time and 
money that ought to be spent on students and improving quality. It 
confirms my belief that the greatest threat to the quality of American 
higher education is not underfunding, it is overregulation.
  Current Federal rules for the 6,000 higher education institutions 
that accept students with Federal grants or loans fill a stack of boxes 
that is nearly as tall as I am. The former President of Stanford, 
Gerhard Casper, estimated that it cost these institutions from Harvard 
to the Nashville Auto Diesel College 7 cents of each federal dollar to 
do all the busy work to fill out these regulations.
  The legislation which we are considering tonight doubles those rules 
and regulations with 24 new categories and 100 new reporting 
requirements. These new requirements include a total of 54 so-called 
college watch lists which I believe will be too confusing for families 
to understand, and complicated rules involving textbooks which only 
will prove that Members of Congress have no idea about how faculty 
members prepare their courses.
  Most of these complications of rules, graduation rates in 48 
different categories, disaggregation of student reporting dates by 14 
racial, ethnic, and income subgroups, employment of graduates of 
institutions will leave college administrators scratching their heads 
and create thousands of new jobs for people who know how to fill out 
forms.
  All of this will be put on the Web, I suppose, and most of it will be 
sent to Washington, DC, for someone to read. Having once been the 
Secretary of Education myself, I do not know who will read all these 
new regulations and all these new reports, and I don't know what they 
would do about them if they did read them.
  The American higher education system is far from perfect, but it is 
one thing in our country that works and it works well. It is our secret 
weapon in maintaining our brain power advantage so we can keep our 
higher standard of living and keep our jobs from going overseas.
  The United States not only has the best colleges and universities in 
the world, it has almost all of the best colleges and universities in 
the world. Some are big, some are small, some are public, some are 
private, some are profit, some are nonprofit. They are community 
colleges, historically Black colleges and church-affiliated 
institutions.
  Tuitions range from $50,000 a year at some private institutions to an 
average of $6,200 a year for 4-year public institutions, to $2,400 for 
community colleges. In Tennessee, some cities are even making community 
college free.
  Their foremost advantage, the advantage of all these 6,000 
institutions, is that in a rapidly changing world, these 6,000 
autonomous institutions are flexible and able to meet the needs of 
their student customers.
  Federal support for higher education goes almost all to these 
students. It does not go to the institutions. A little of it does, but 
almost all of it goes to the students who then choose the schools, 
forcing the institutions to compete, stay flexible and meet real needs. 
That is the precisely opposite way we fund kindergarten through the 
12th grade. We give the money to elementary and secondary institutions, 
tending to freeze them into whatever they have been doing for the last 
50 years.
  We can compare the success of our higher education system with the 
lack of success of our K through 12 system and wonder whether the 
reason might not be that in higher education, we focus on autonomy, 
choice, and competition.
  Generous research dollars in higher education are for the most part 
competitively awarded, which also helps to keep the institutions on 
their toes.
  The rest of the world is busy trying to emulate the American system 
of higher education, which means other countries are creating more 
autonomy,

[[Page 17631]]

more choices, and more competition. Yet here we are in the Senate today 
cluttering up our secret weapon with the same bureaucratic nonsense 
that has stifled excellence in universities in other parts of the world 
and will do it here if these trends are not reversed.
  There is a great deal of beating of breasts about how much good this 
bill does to address the problem of college costs. It is ironic that 
the same legislation would add to tuition costs by imposing unnecessary 
regulations. And it is especially ironic that the very Members of 
Congress who are complaining the most about rising tuition costs fail 
to see that at least for public institutions, which about 70 percent of 
our students attend, Members of Congress are the cause of the rising 
costs. This is why it is true that State support for higher education 
has been low during this decade.
  Between 2000 and 2006, State spending for higher education increased 
by only 17 percent, while tuition at public institutions during that 
time was up 63 percent. It is also true that the reason tuition costs 
are up is that State spending is down.
  But what Members of Congress seem to be missing is that the principal 
reason State support of higher education is down is because Congress 
has mandated that States pay so much for programs such as Medicaid or 
fail to meet their commitments to programs like the Individuals with 
Disabilities Education Act, IDEA. When the Governors and legislatures 
are through paying for the mandates for Medicaid or to make up the lack 
of the Federal Government's commitment to IDEA, there is very little 
left for higher education.
  When Federal requirements for Medicaid dictate that State spending 
for Medicaid goes up 7 or 8 percent a year when the overall State 
budget is only going up 3 or 4 percent a year, the money has to come 
from somewhere. States have to balance their budgets, and in State 
after State, the money has been coming from higher education. That was 
true in Tennessee during the 1980s, when I was the Governor, and it is 
even more true today.
  During the 1980s, my major goal was to try to help us to spend at 
least 50 percent of our State tax dollar on education. My major 
adversary was Federal Medicaid. While I ultimately did succeed in 
getting to 50 cents, I had to squeeze it and push it and try to control 
it, and still it grew faster than everything else in the State budget. 
I was able to do that then because Medicaid and other health services 
were only about 15 cents of the State tax dollar. But by this decade, 
2003 and 2004, the number was 40 percent of the State tax dollars in 
Tennessee went to education, not 50, and 31 cents went to Medicaid and 
health services. I am confident most of the cutting came out of higher 
education, which resulted in most of the tuition increases so the 
universities could operate and pay their bills.
  I would respectfully suggest that we in Congress need to start along 
two completely different tracks if we want to retain the autonomy, 
competition, and choice that has led to quality and access to American 
higher education. First, we need to deregulate, not overregulate higher 
education. Cut this stack of rules and regulations in half and use the 
time and the money for students and for academic excellence.
  Second, we need to stop loading State budgets with so many unfunded 
Federal mandates. For example, if Congress were to fully fund IDEA, the 
program for students with disabilities, at 40 percent of its cost, 
which is what Congress said it would do in the 1970s, that would add 
$250 million to Tennessee's revenue stream. I am sure much of this 
would go straight to higher education, whose annual budget is about 
$1.2 billion.
  More importantly, we need to give States more flexibility in dealing 
with Medicaid costs and give them an opportunity to take steps to make 
it easier to free themselves from outdated Federal Court consent 
decrees, which restrict the ability of Governors and legislators to 
direct money to higher education priorities. Then, of course, there is 
the REAL ID, another $4 billion in unfunded mandates for the States, 
and out of which pot do you think the States might take that? Higher 
education would be my guess. Most Governors and legislators can point 
to many more unfunded Federal mandates.
  These two steps are the best way to drive down college costs and to 
maintain academic excellence.
  There are major accomplishments in this bill, some of which I have 
worked on and of which I am proud. They include simplifying the Federal 
student aid form and allowing year-round Pell grants for students 
making progress toward a degree. There is a new compliance calendar, 
which the Secretary of Education will be required to develop, that will 
set forth all of the reports and the disclosures required under the 
Higher Education Act. I am proud to say I suggested that. In other 
words, the new Secretary of Education will have to make a calendar 
listing every single report that has to be complied with, so the small 
Catholic college in Baltimore might not have to hire three more people 
in to go through this growing stack of requirements.
  I authored the restrictions prohibiting the Secretary of Education 
from regulating student learning standards or requiring accreditors to 
adopt specific measures of learning assessment, which would have been 
additional federalizing of our 6,000 autonomous institutions.
  There is an accountability research grant in this bill to focus 
attention on institutions making progress in measuring student 
achievement and asking the advisory committee, which has already done 
such good work in simplifying the student application form, to review 
this stack of growing Federal regulations. I also sponsored the new 
discretionary grant program for Teach for America.
  All these actions in this bill are for the good, as is the increase 
in the availability of Pell grants for students who need help attending 
college. But I cannot support a piece of legislation that so undermines 
the excellence in higher education that comes from institutional 
autonomy.
  I would like to offer a few letters and statements, and I ask 
unanimous consent they be printed in the Record following my remarks.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  (See exhibit 1.)
  Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, the first of these is a release today 
from the National Governors Association, which points out that 
Governors are responsible for making funding decisions that serve the 
best interests of all citizens. The Governors, in their release, say:

       Maintenance of effort undermines governors' authority and 
     guarantees students and their families will be writing larger 
     not smaller tuition checks in the future. This is not the 
     answer to affordable higher education. Governors oppose the 
     higher education bill because of the negative impacts of the 
     maintenance of effort and implore Congress to vote against 
     it.

  We had a vote on stripping out the maintenance-of-effort bill, but I 
lost that by one vote in the conference committee. Basically, what it 
says is that Members of the Senate and the House will substitute their 
judgment for that of Governors and State legislators. My suggestion was 
that if we are going to pass a bill and take credit for requiring 
States to spend more money on higher education, whether or not they 
have other priorities, then we might as well also go back down to our 
State capitals and join in the pain and suggest to the Governors whom 
to lay off or what school to close or what mental hospital to limit or 
what tax to raise because of our requirement about higher education 
maintenance of effort.
  The second letter I would like to include in the Record comes from 
the commissioner of the Department of Finance and Administration in 
Nashville. Our Democratic Governor, Phil Bredesen, who has done a great 
many good things for higher education during his 6 years, is in the 
midst of a budget crisis. He is reacting to the very idea that during 
the midst of that, when he is laying off employees and making cuts in 
virtually every program, that we would take it upon ourselves to say 
that if he doesn't increase funding for higher education, we are

[[Page 17632]]

going to cut his Federal funding. All when we ourselves are one of the 
reasons he is having a hard time funding higher education, because of 
all our unfunded mandates.
  The third letter I would like to include is from the chancellor of 
Vanderbilt University in Nashville, one of our most distinguished 
research universities and one of which I am proud to be an alumnus. It 
is a well-modulated letter, as you would expect from the chancellor of 
Vanderbilt. The letter argues very eloquently why the autonomy, 
competition, and choice that characterizes excellence in higher 
education is so important and so fragile and needs to be respected by 
us as we pass higher education bills, rather than to use a blunderbuss 
and start stacking boxes and boxes of regulations on institutions such 
as Vanderbilt.
  Why do we think we can do a better job in the Senate making 
Vanderbilt University a better university by complying with all this 
stuff, when it takes money that might be used to educate the students 
and improve academic excellence? They already have deans, vice 
chancellors, provosts, chancellors, and a board of trustees. If they 
are a public institution, they have a Governor, they have a higher 
education commission. They have plenty of overseers. They do not need 
us.
  Two other letters, one from the president of Duke University, office 
of the president, Richard Brodhead, an equally thoughtful letter about 
the Federal role in higher education. I might say that North Carolina 
has done one of the best jobs of any State in accountability for higher 
education.
  No one is doubting we need accountability for the money the Federal 
Government spends. As I mentioned earlier, the dollars we spend for 
research, tens of millions a year, are made accountable by being 
competitively granted, for the most part. The dollars we spend for 
colleges and universities don't go to the colleges and universities, 
they go to the students, and the students choose the school. If they do 
not like the school or the cost of the school, they may go to another 
school. Each of those schools has to be accredited before the student 
can choose the school. That has been a marvelous system for helping to 
give autonomous institutions the freedom to be good, while at the same 
time allowing for accountability for the money we spend.
  Finally, two letters that were written to Senator Isakson of Georgia. 
One is from the president of the University of Georgia, Mike Adams, who 
was president of two other colleges before he was president of the 
University of Georgia. A distinguished educator. Georgia, of course, is 
one of our distinguished public universities in America.
  Finally, a letter from the President of Emory University, James 
Wagner, and the president of Georgia Tech, Gary Schuster, to Senator 
Isakson, making the same objections.
  As I said at the beginning, I admire my colleagues, I admire their 4 
years of hard work, and I admire their commitment to a result. My hope 
would be we could go on two different tracks from here. One would be to 
look for ways to deregulate higher education, not add regulations to 
it. Realize that in America, where we are worrying that this might work 
or that might work, our system of higher education, with all its warts, 
is the best in the world. The rest of the world is trying to emulate 
it. Its greatest threat, in terms of its quality, is overregulation, 
not underfunding.
  That leads me to the second track we go on. I hope we will be careful 
as Members of Congress that if we have a great idea for States, that we 
don't pass it and send them the bill. Because I know from having been 
Governor and having been president of a university and having been 
Secretary of Education, and seeing it in different areas. As a Governor 
making up a budget, it's pretty well set that you start with K-12. That 
is pretty well set. He then goes to prisons, and that is probably in 
the courts. Then he does mental health. That might be in the courts 
too. Then he or she goes to highways, and that comes from the gas tax. 
Then they are pretty well down to the choice between Medicaid and 
higher education. I can guarantee you that if we continue to increase 
requirements for funding of higher education at the State level, at the 
rate of 7, 8 or 9 percent a year, when State budgets are only going up 
2 or 3 or 4 percent a year, we will significantly reduce the quality of 
our State universities and colleges. We will significantly increase the 
tuition costs that we say in this bill we would like to lower.

                               Exhibit 1

   National Governors Association Statement on Higher Education Bill


governors Say Inclusion of Maintenance of Effort Will Raise Tuition for 
                                Students

       Washington.--The National Governors Association released 
     the following statement regarding the impending vote on the 
     Higher Education Reauthorization bill:
       ``The nation's governors are committed to providing 
     students in their states with affordable access to higher 
     education and agree that the reauthorization of the Higher 
     Education bill is a priority. However, inclusion of the 
     Maintenance of Effort (MOE) provision in the bill has 
     negative implications for states; therefore governors oppose 
     the passage of the conference report with this provision.
       ``Governors must balance their budgets in both good and bad 
     economic times. This mandate means that states will be unable 
     to make major increases or invest one-time surpluses in 
     higher education during good times because they will be 
     penalized if forced to reduce spending during difficult 
     times. In the end, this will increase the cost of college for 
     students and their families.
       ``Governors are responsible for making funding decisions 
     that serve the best interest of all their citizens. MOE 
     undermines governors' authority and guarantees that students 
     and their families will be writing larger, not smaller, 
     tuition checks in the future. This is not the answer to 
     affordable higher education. Governors oppose the higher 
     education bill because of the negative impacts of the 
     maintenance of effort and implore Congress to vote against 
     it.''
                                  ____

                                               State of Tennessee,


      Department of Finance and Administration, State Capitol,

                                     Nashville, TN, July 29, 2008.
     Hon. Lamar Alexander,
     United States Senate, Via Email.
       Dear Senator Alexander, The State of Tennessee shares your 
     concerns with regard to the MOE mandate provided in the 
     higher education bill and appreciates your efforts in 
     defending our state interests. These restrictions on a 
     state's ability to manage its way through a fiscal downturn 
     would be a terrible mistake.
       Under Governor Bredesen's leadership, we have made public 
     education a priority. We know sufficient funding is critical 
     to achieving success in primary, secondary and higher 
     education. During the good economic times, we've increased 
     funding for higher education operating costs and put over $1 
     billion into capital projects.
       However, when times are tough economically, we have to 
     share the downside. When budget cuts have been necessary, 
     education programs were always last to be considered. 
     Unfortunately, Governor Bredesen has experienced two very 
     tough budget fiscal years during his six years in office, FY 
     2003/2004 and FY 2008/2009. The severe problems required some 
     base reductions in higher education's operating budgets. In 
     FY 2003-04 there was a 9 percent base reduction of 
     $101,327,200. In the current fiscal year, we were facing a 
     $464 million total shortfall, and again had to ask higher 
     education to do its part. As a result, higher education 
     received a base reduction in its operating budget of $55.8 
     million. These reductions were not made lightly. However, our 
     constitution requires us to balance, and in a relatively poor 
     state, we have no choice but to spread the reductions as 
     broadly as possible.
       Our economy remains uncertain. We already face numerous 
     restrictions on the state's ability to manage from our 
     federal partner. An MOE mandate that reduces our flexibility 
     even further is not warranted. We appreciate your efforts to 
     oppose this measure.
           Warmest Regards,
                                                 M. D. Goetz, Jr.,
     Commissioner.
                                  ____



                                        Vanderbilt University,

                                                    July 23, 2008.
     Hon. Lamar Alexander,
     U.S. Senate,
     Washington, DC.
       Dear Senator Alexander: After nearly five years of work and 
     ten years since the last reauthorization, I understand that 
     the Higher Education Act reauthorization is nearly complete. 
     It has been a long process, and I commend the Congress for 
     its fortitude to enact the bill this year. My regret is that 
     this final product is not one that I can be proud to share 
     with the Vanderbilt campus.
       As a new chancellor, I have the luxury, or some would say 
     misfortune, of only seeing the end result of the past five 
     years of negotiations. When I accepted the position as 
     Vanderbilt's chancellor, I did so knowing that my first and 
     most important priority is, and always will be, our students. 
     Vanderbilt's mission states:

[[Page 17633]]

       Vanderbilt University is a center for scholarly research, 
     informed and creative teaching, and service to the community 
     and society at large. Vanderbilt will uphold the highest 
     standards and be a leader in the: quest for new knowledge 
     through scholarship; dissemination of knowledge through 
     teaching and outreach; creative experimentation of ideas and 
     concepts.
       In pursuit of these goals, Vanderbilt values most highly: 
     intellectual freedom that supports open inquiry; equality, 
     compassion, and excellence in all endeavors.
       With this mission in mind, I have been evaluating the 
     conference agreement for the Higher Education Act. While 
     there are provisions in this agreement that will support and 
     enhance our mission, there are many other provisions that 
     deeply trouble me and, I think, have the potential to 
     profoundly threaten our ability to be a ``center for 
     scholarly research, informed and creative teaching, and 
     service to the community and society at large.''
       I believe you share my view that at the heart of the 
     American system of higher education are its autonomy and its 
     great diversity. What works for Vanderbilt may not work for 
     Rhodes College, MTSU, Volunteer State Community College, or 
     any other school in Tennessee. I firmly believe that 
     increased federal intrusion into higher education would 
     fundamentally and irreparably damage our system of 
     postsecondary education. For these reasons, I am saddened to 
     conclude that Vanderbilt cannot wholeheartedly endorse this 
     conference agreement. However, before I enumerate the reasons 
     for our reservations, I would be remiss in did not 
     acknowledge and applaud the Congress--and you in particular--
     for preserving institutional autonomy with respect to the 
     accreditation process. As you know, this has been our top 
     priority throughout the reauthorization, and we are extremely 
     pleased by the final outcome on this issue. Vanderbilt 
     strongly supports an institution's ability to choose how it 
     will demonstrate success with respect to student achievement 
     as well as the standards by which such achievement is 
     measured. We have consistently opposed any effort to make 
     accrediting agencies agents of the federal government; in 
     particular, we believe that the Secretary of Education should 
     not be able to regulate in this area. This responsibility 
     must lie with individual institutions.
       The issue of accreditation is of such paramount concern to 
     Vanderbilt that, had this not been adequately addressed, we 
     would have strongly considered opposing the entire agreement. 
     We are grateful that we do not have to take this drastic 
     action, and we have you--and your staff--to thank for this. 
     Without your unyielding persistence on the matter of 
     institutional autonomy with respect to accreditation, the 
     outcome would have been far different. Vanderbilt is 
     immensely proud to call you one of our own and is indebted to 
     you and your staff for your efforts.
       Nonetheless, there is a lengthy list of provisions with 
     which we have serious concerns. We recognize that many 
     Members and staff have worked diligently on this legislation 
     for years, and we regret that more reasonable language was 
     not agreed upon.
       Chief among our concerns are the countless number of new 
     regulations with which universities are going to be forced to 
     comply, covering such topics as peer-to-peer file sharing, 
     campus emergency notifications, data on alumni, charitable 
     gifts, student diversity, immunization records, missing 
     person reports, and lobbying efforts. These new regulations 
     will place an immense burden on institutions and carry with 
     them a heavy implementation price tag. At the same time that 
     we are trying to rein in costs, we are facing spiraling 
     expenses associated with complying with federal regulations. 
     Overregulation of higher education institutions threatens the 
     core of what makes our system successful--its autonomy and 
     its diversity.
       We also remain concerned about provisions that could lead 
     us along the path toward federal price controls through the 
     creation of innumerable ``Watch Lists;'' a mandatory 
     Department of Education developed net price calculator; 
     mandatory ``Quality and Efficiency Task Forces;'' projecting 
     future tuition; and reporting on tuition based on income 
     categories. Vanderbilt is committed to ensuring that every 
     admitted student can afford to attend Vanderbilt, regardless 
     of their financial situation and regardless of what the 
     ``sticker price'' is. We are very proud of the fact that we 
     meet 100 percent of a student's demonstrated financial need.
       Finally, provisions related to textbook prices continue to 
     concern us. Requirements that ISBN numbers for textbooks be 
     disclosed in course catalogs are, frankly, unworkable as many 
     courses have not finalized their textbooks at the time the 
     catalog is printed. We recognize that textbook costs have 
     grown considerably and are committed to finding ways to 
     address this; federal requirements and a ``one-size-fits-
     all'' approach, again, fail to recognize the immense 
     diversity of our nation's colleges and universities.
       In short, other than the accreditation language, there is 
     very little to support in this final agreement. Ultimately, 
     in my estimation, this bill will do more harm than good for 
     the students it purports to serve. Legislation that hampers 
     an institution's ability to educate its students threatens 
     our institutional mission. I am deeply troubled that the 
     conferees will agree to this woefully misguided legislation, 
     and I worry about how it will be implemented and the 
     ramifications of that implementation. Therefore, I urge you 
     to think carefully about whether this is the direction we 
     want to take postsecondary education and whether this 
     legislation supports the fundamental nature of our system of 
     higher education.
       Thank you again for your strong and principled leadership 
     on so many issues about which we care deeply.
           Sincerely,
                                               Nicholas S. Zeppos,
     Chancellor.
                                  ____

                                                  Duke University,


                                      Office of the President,

                                         Durham, NC, May 28, 2008.
     Hon. Edward M. Kennedy,
     U.S. Senate, Russell Senate Office Building, Washington, DC.
     Hon. Michael Enzi,
     U.S. Senate, Russell Senate Office Building, Washington, DC.
     Hon. George Miller,
     House of Representatives, Rayburn House Office Building, 
         Washington, DC.
     Hon. Howard ``Buck'' McKeon,
     House of Representatives, Rayburn House Office Building, 
         Washington, DC.
       Dear Senator Kennedy, Senator Enzi, Representative Miller 
     and Representative McKeon: As you work to complete conference 
     consideration of the Higher Education Act (REA) 
     reauthorization, I write to add my voice to those expressing 
     concern about a number of issues your committees are facing 
     as you finalize this important legislation.
       I appreciate the time and thoughtful consideration you and 
     members of your staff have devoted to the REA bill. Two years 
     ago I wrote the North Carolina congressional delegation 
     urging our representatives to vote against the House version 
     of the REA because of the significant steps the legislation 
     took toward eroding the role of trustees in institutional 
     governance and the longstanding, successful relationship 
     between the federal government and institutions of higher 
     education. While the current legislation is somewhat more 
     palatable, I fear that it still represents a major intrusion 
     and regulatory encumbrance for higher education and that the 
     proportion of bureaucracy relative to public value will be 
     extremely high.
       Please allow me to highlight several troublesome provisions 
     that I urge you to revise or eliminate before the bill moves 
     forward:
       It is apparent that you have taken our concerns about the 
     inappropriateness of unnecessary federal control of 
     accreditation seriously. Including language that limits the 
     authority of the Secretary of Education from prescribing 
     standards and otherwise regulating measures of student 
     achievement success is welcome. But, the language is not 
     restrictive enough. I urge you to modify it specifically to 
     prevent the Secretary from regulating standards for faculty, 
     facilities, equipment, supplies, student services and the 
     fiscal and administrative capacity of institutions.
       Duke takes the accreditation process with great 
     seriousness, and we use what we learn from our intensive 
     self-study, as well as external evaluations, to help guide 
     the high quality of the educational experiences we offer our 
     students. Duke is currently in the midst of its decennial 
     review with the Commission on Colleges of the Southern 
     Association--of Colleges and Universities (SACS). I am 
     impressed with the thoughtful questions the SACS team asks of 
     us regarding a wide range of issues. Maintaining this quasi-
     independent system of assessment and assurance of quality is 
     an important contribution to the unique success of American 
     higher education. While there are areas of accreditation that 
     may need some tinkering, it is not role, nor is it wise 
     public policy, to have the responsibility of institutional 
     trustees and accreditation usurped by federal intrusion. I 
     urge you to fully close the door on the Secretary's ability 
     to dictate the measurement of standards that should remain 
     outside the scope of the federal government's responsibility 
     in higher education.
       At a time when institutions are struggling to find ways to 
     reduce administrative costs, I am struck by the number of new 
     reporting requirements in the bill, which inevitably will 
     lead to greater bureaucracy both at the institution and at 
     the Department of Education. For example, the reporting of 
     graduation rates in 48 different student categories gives 
     pause and raises questions about the usefulness of such 
     information.
       Penalizing institutions for increasing tuition by requiring 
     a report to the Department of Education about cost reducing 
     strategies is an egregious notion, at best. There is little 
     doubt that the quality of the educational experience Duke 
     provides does not come cheap. Our trustees invest in 
     progressive and aggressive financial aid programs to make a 
     Duke education affordable to the more than 40 percent of Duke 
     students who receive financial aid under Duke's need-blind 
     admissions policy. In the coming year alone, we are budgeting 
     more than $86 million from institutional funds to help ensure 
     that no admitted student is denied access to the Duke

[[Page 17634]]

     educational experience for financial reasons. Our trustees 
     have developed over time both policies and procedures to 
     ensure that the university's budget--including our tuition 
     and financial aid programs--is consistent with the mission of 
     the university. Inserting the Department of Education into 
     this conversation eats away at the delineation between 
     governmental responsibility and institutional autonomy. 
     Please remove this provision.
       Along those same lines, the proposed requirement to provide 
     non-binding, multi-year estimates of future tuition and fee 
     levels, is misleading and inappropriate. In order for this to 
     be of minimal assistance to an entering student, each 
     institution of higher education would need to forecast every 
     individual student's financial situation in advance. Each 
     year we reassess all of our students' financial aid packages 
     to make sure we are meeting each student's demonstrated need. 
     If their financial situation changes during the year--for 
     instance if their mother loses her job or wins the lottery--
     the aid package is appropriately adjusted. We simply can't 
     predict what will happen to the, student, nor can we predict 
     the needs of the university as far in advance as the proposed 
     legislation would require.
       There is much in the proposed REA that will benefit 
     students, their families, and institutions of higher 
     education, and I applaud the Congress for these positive 
     steps. As the bill works its way to passage, I urge you and 
     your colleagues to reconsider the inappropriate regulatory 
     burden that will be placed on institutions of higher 
     education if this legislation passes as currently written.
       Thank you for your consideration.
           Sincerely,
     Richard H. Brodhead.
                                  ____

                                        The University of Georgia,


                                      Office of the President,

                                        Athens, GA, July 16, 2008.
     Hon. Johnny Isakson,
     Russell Senate Office Building,
     Washington, DC.
       Dear Senator Isakson: As conference consideration of the 
     Higher Education Act Reauthorization progresses, I would like 
     to take the opportunity to comment on the latest draft of the 
     proposed legislation.
       As you know, we have followed the process to reauthorize 
     the Higher Education Act very closely. We at the University 
     of Georgia appreciate that, during this process, you have 
     been an advocate for higher education nationally as well as 
     for our institution and the University System of Georgia.
       In the latest draft, many improvements have been made, 
     particularly in the areas of accreditation, teacher education 
     reporting, and collection of data on alumni. While such 
     improvements are laudable, the legislation, in its current 
     form, still represents a major intrusion and regulatory 
     burden for higher education.
       It is always difficult to balance the need for transparency 
     in the educational process with the burdens associated with 
     new regulations. In a time of declining state funds for 
     higher education and a need to reduce administrative costs, I 
     am concerned about the wisdom of creating new unfunded 
     mandates for reporting data from our universities. Many of 
     the new requirements contained in the draft of this bill are 
     unnecessary and/or duplicative, and they would impose 
     significant compliance costs in exchange for little, if any, 
     benefit. I fear these reporting requirements will lead to 
     greater bureaucracy both at the institution level and at the 
     Department of Education.
       Please allow me to highlight a few troublesome areas that 
     UGA and other members of the National Association of State 
     Universities and Land-Grant Colleges are seeking to revise or 
     eliminate before the bill moves forward:
       College Costs and Transparency: The proposed ``watch'' 
     lists in Title I of the bill for institutions that must raise 
     tuition; the reporting requirements related to the lists; and 
     the proposed provisions in Title VIII of the bill (Tierney 
     provisions) that would establish new requirements for costs 
     reporting and reducing net tuition. All of these could be 
     simplified, and Section 830 of the conference legislation 
     would place additional reporting requirements on institutions 
     with respect to costs and is inconsistent with the cost 
     provisions of Title I.
       Multi-year Tuition Price Estimates: The Murphy-Myrick 
     Amendment would require institutions to publish non-binding, 
     multi-year estimates of future tuition and fee levels. 
     Although ``non-binding,'' these figures would create the 
     potential for ill will between universities and prospective 
     students if the state of the economy or other events force 
     institutions to take action. As you know, tuition at state 
     universities is inextricably linked to funding from the 
     state. This provision is fundamentally flawed and should be 
     addressed.
       New Reporting Requirements: This legislation would impose a 
     host of new reporting requirements on colleges and 
     universities that would be virtually impossible to meet. For 
     example, the bill would require universities to obtain 
     information on alumni employment, salary, and graduate 
     education. Such data is very valuable, but we cannot compel 
     graduates to report it.
       Student Diversity and Graduation Rates Reporting 
     Requirements: Institutions would be required to report to the 
     Department of Education the percentage of enrolled, full-time 
     students who are male, female, Pell Grant-eligible, and self-
     identified members of a major racial or ethnic group. These 
     categories would also be applied to existing reporting of 
     graduation rates. Institutions would have to report 
     graduation rates in no fewer than 48 separate categories. To 
     determine Pell Grant eligibility, institutions would have to 
     demand private financial information.
       Peer-to-Peer File Sharing/Copyright Infringement 
     Requirements: Institutions would be required to disclose 
     ``the development of plans to detect and prevent unauthorized 
     distribution of copyrighted material on the institution's 
     information technology system, which shall, to the extent 
     practicable, include offering alternatives to illegal 
     downloading.'' Although our institutions offer alternatives 
     to illegal downloading, the technology simply does not exist 
     to prevent all unauthorized distribution of copyrighted 
     material on our IT systems.
       While it has the potential to benefit students, their 
     families, and institutions of higher education, the 
     regulatory requirements and the additional costs relative to 
     benefits are such that I would recommend that you vote 
     against this bill. We hope for a better version to come along 
     shortly.
           Sincerely,
                                                 Michael F. Adams,
     President.
                                  ____

                                                 Emory University,


                                      Office of the President,

                                       Atlanta, GA, July 14, 2008.
     Hon. Johnny Isakson,
     Russell Senate Office Building,
     Washington, DC.
       Dear Senator Isakson: As conference consideration of the 
     Higher Education Act Reauthorization progresses, we 
     respectfully write to offer our comments on the latest draft 
     of the proposed legislation.
       As you are aware, we have followed very closely the process 
     to reauthorize the Higher Education Act. We appreciate that, 
     during this process, you have been an advocate for higher 
     education nationally as well as in the state of Georgia. 
     Specifically, we have been pleased with improvements in the 
     areas of accreditation, teacher education reporting, and 
     collection of income data.
       While improvements have been made, the legislation in its 
     current form represents a major intrusion and regulatory 
     encumbrance for higher education. At a time when institutions 
     of higher education are struggling to find ways to reduce 
     administrative costs, we are gravely concerned about the 
     collective weight of these new federal requirements. The 
     draft bill would significantly increase the number of federal 
     requirements with which universities must comply. Many of the 
     new proposed requirements are unnecessary and/or duplicative, 
     and they would impose significant compliance costs in 
     exchange for little, if any, benefit. We fear these reporting 
     requirements will lead to greater bureaucracy both at the 
     institution level and at the Department of Education.
       Please allow us to highlight several other troublesome 
     areas that we hope can be revised or eliminated before the 
     bill moves forward:
       College Costs: The proposed 400 ``watch'' lists in Title I 
     of the bill; the reporting requirements related to the lists; 
     and the proposed provisions in Title VIII of the bill 
     (Tierney provisions) that would establish new requirements 
     for costs reporting and reducing net tuition should be 
     simplified. The proposed reporting requirements in Title I 
     and Title VIII of the bill would require ``high-cost'' 
     institutions to form cost efficiency task forces and issue 
     reports to the Department describing actions they are taking 
     to reduce costs and net tuition.
       Tuition Price Estimates: The Murphy-Myrick Amendment would 
     require institutions to publish non-binding, multi-year 
     estimates of future tuition and fee levels. In order for this 
     to be of even minimal assistance to an entering student, each 
     institution of higher education would need to forecast every 
     individual student's financial situation in advance. 
     Furthermore, public universities are highly dependent on 
     state funding, making such estimates nearly impossible.
       Alumni Reporting Requirements: Institutions would be 
     required to report on alumni employment and enrollment in 
     graduate and professional education programs. Although we 
     would like to have more detailed information on our alumni, 
     we cannot force them to provide us with this information.
       Student Diversity and Graduation Rates Reporting 
     Requirement: Institutions would be required to report to the 
     Department of Education the percentage of enrolled, full-time 
     students who are male, female, Pell Grant-eligible, and self-
     identified members of a major racial or ethnic group. These 
     categories would also be applied to existing reporting of 
     graduation rates. Institutions would have to report 
     graduation rates in no fewer than 48 separate categories. 
     Although

[[Page 17635]]

     we already collect some of this information, other data, like 
     Pell Grant-eligible, would require us to demand personal 
     financial information that our students, and their parents, 
     may not want to share with us.
       Peer-to-Peer File Sharing/Copyright Infringement 
     Requirements: Institutions would be required to disclose 
     ``the development of plans to detect and prevent unauthorized 
     distribution of copyrighted material on the institution's 
     information technology system, which shall, to the extent 
     practicable, include offering alternatives to illegal 
     downloading.'' Although our institutions offer alternatives 
     to illegal downloading, the technology simply does not exist 
     to prevent all unauthorized distribution of copyrighted 
     material on our IT systems.
       We have asked our staff to provide your staff with more 
     information detailing our concerns with this legislation in 
     its current form. The proposed HEA has the potential to 
     greatly benefit students, their families, and institutions of 
     higher education. We applaud Congress for these steps. 
     However, we urge Congress to reconsider the inappropriate 
     regulatory burden that will be placed on institutions of 
     higher education if this legislation passes in its current 
     form.
           Sincerely,

                                              James W. Wagner,

                                                        President,
                                                 Emory University.

                                                Gary Schuster,

                                                Interim President,
                                  Georgia Institute of Technology.

  Mr. ALEXANDER. I thank the Chair, and I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Maryland.
  Ms. MIKULSKI. Mr. President, under our agreement, I will yield time 
to our colleague, Senator Harkin from Iowa, but before I do, I wish to 
do two things.
  First, a few minutes ago we heard from our colleague, Senator 
Bingaman, about the untimely death of one of Senator Bingaman's key 
staffer's sons. Bob Simon is a staff director on his Energy Committee. 
Bob Simon's 16-year-old son passed away, and he, Senator Bingaman, was 
paying an eloquent tribute about this very melancholy situation. On 
behalf of the Senate, we would like to extend our condolences to the 
Simon family.
  The other comment I wish to make is in response, very quickly, to the 
comments my colleague from Tennessee made.
  First, I would like to thank my colleague from Tennessee for his very 
collegial and thoughtful efforts as we moved our bill through. I 
enjoyed our conversations, from talking about bluegrass and Grand Old 
Opry, we went on to high notes and higher education, and then we went 
on to maintenance of effort.
  I am sorry you took out the regulatory stack you had because it is 
bigger than I am. As we said in our conversation, I look forward to 
working with the Senator from Tennessee to see if some of the regs 
might be dated, arcane, duplicative, and so on and how, over the next 
year or so, we could look forward to doing that.
  But before I move off from the reg comment, I do wish to comment 
about the maintenance of effort. In many ways, I understand the point 
the Senator from Tennessee is making. My own home State of Maryland's 
Governor O'Malley inherited a $1.7 billion budget deficit that was not 
of his making, and at the same time I understand Governors and State 
legislators are facing real obstacles. However, we need to be 
realistic. Congress is doing its part by increasing Pell grants, and 
families can be assured that as the Federal Government increases its 
commitment to colleges, funds will not be offset by the States.
  Last night we did pass an amendment offered by another gentleman from 
Massachusetts, Congressman Tierney. What his amendment does is provide 
incentives and funds to Governors, which they can use for a broad range 
of college access activities. They would be able to access $66 million 
to States to use on a variety of very important college access 
activities, particularly need-based grants and college prep programs.
  But I also want to acknowledge the validity of the issues raised by 
the Senator from Tennessee on unfunded mandates.
  Over here we have a champion.
  Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, may I have 60 seconds to respond?
  Ms. MIKULSKI. Yes, but I am not done with my comments so I have not 
yielded the floor.
  Mr. ALEXANDER. I am sorry.
  Ms. MIKULSKI. I wish to comment on the unfunded mandates. The Senator 
who will speak shortly has been a champion of the disability community 
and a leader of the IDEA community. We have been fighting to double 
IDEA and we have been trying to do it on both sides of the aisle. We 
look forward to having the Senator's support to do exactly that. We 
look forward to increasing the Federal role in Medicaid, particularly 
in SCHIP, which would be a very important component of Medicaid.
  Last, but not at all least, in Medicaid, 80 percent of the money goes 
to 20 percent of the population. That 20 percent of the population that 
gets that Medicaid is primarily old or fragile people in nursing homes, 
many of whom have serious cognitive impairment such as Alzheimer's.
  Let's get the Coburn hold off my bill to double funding for 
Alzheimer's. One of the ways to lower the cost of Medicaid is to find 
the cure of the cognitive stretchout for people with Alzheimer's. It is 
estimated by NIH and other institutions that comment on these things 
that we could reduce Medicaid by $5 to $11 billion a year if we could 
do that.
  I think we can work our way through this, but I must say, working 
with the Senator from Tennessee has been indeed a pleasure. It has been 
based on intellectual rigor, good conversation, excellent exchanges of 
ideas. I look forward to doing more of it and trying to solve some of 
the problems that we both strongly believe need to be addressed.
  Mr. ALEXANDER. If I may just acknowledge the remarks of the Senator, 
I feel the same way about working with her. I am delighted we will be 
working together to take a look at the rules and regulations that we 
impose from here in Congress to make sure they are useful and needed. 
The natural thing here is to add. It is also very natural for us to 
have good ideas, but we might discover that the dean or the provost or 
the Governor or somebody else might have a good idea as well.
  This is one of those issues that has no partisan attribute 
whatsoever. As far as I am concerned, the Republicans are as bad as the 
Democrats on unfunded Federal mandates and unnecessary regulations. I 
look forward to an opportunity to work with the Senator from Maryland 
to see if we can identify a process that makes certain that 
institutions are accountable for the Federal dollars, but at the same 
time we leave them free to be excellent in their own autonomous ways.
  Ms. MIKULSKI. I yield to the Senator from Iowa, Senator Harkin, also 
a member of the Health-Education committee and who is a prime mover in 
the area of expanding access for people with disabilities to be able to 
have access to higher education.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Iowa is recognized.
  Mr. HARKIN. Mr. President, I came here to speak, obviously, in favor 
of the Higher Education Opportunity Act. Passage of this bill today 
restores the Federal commitment to make a college education a reality 
for Americans from all walks of life. I commend Senator Kennedy and 
Senator Enzi for all of their hard work in passing this bill. I 
recognize and thank my good friend, Senator Mikulski, for stepping in 
and shepherding this bill to final completion the other evening.
  The Higher Education Opportunity Act is the first reauthorization of 
the Higher Education Act in 10 years. It takes clear and strong action 
to make college more affordable for low- and middle-income students and 
their families, our top higher education priority.
  This legislation will provide families with accurate information on 
the cost of college at any school, as well as hold colleges accountable 
for skyrocketing tuition and fees.
  I am also proud we have saved money for students by requiring 
publishers to no longer bundle unnecessary materials with their 
textbooks, giving students the freedom to buy only what they need for 
their classes.
  I have heard from students about the need to reform the unnecessary 
long form that is required to receive Federal student aid. It is called 
the Free Application for Federal Student Aid

[[Page 17636]]

form--FAFSA, I understand is the short term nomenclature for that.
  The bill we have here cuts through much of the redtape to immediately 
provide a 2-page application for low-income students and to phase out 
the current 7-page form for all students in 5 years.
  In recent years we have seen corruption and mismanagement in the 
student loan arena. This bill takes strong action to root out the 
lenders' improper gifts and inducements for school financial aid 
officers and to protect students from scurrilous private lending 
practices.
  I am proud of the many achievements of this bill. I want to take the 
time to highlight two initiatives included in this bill that I was 
proud to sponsor.
  I started my legal career as a legal aid lawyer. It is an experience 
I will never forget and always cherish. Our promise of equal justice 
under law rings hollow if those who are most vulnerable are denied 
access to representation. But right now it is almost impossible for a 
new lawyer, a new young lawyer, newly admitted to the bar, to make the 
choice that I made, to work for legal aid. The average starting salary 
for a legal aid lawyer is now about $35,000 a year. But the average 
annual loan repayment burden for a new law school graduate is $12,000. 
That doesn't leave a lot left over for rent or food or for starting a 
family.
  The Legal Aid Loan Repayment Program, which we have included in this 
bill, will make it possible for young lawyers to make a longer 
commitment to equal justice. The program is simple. If a legal aid 
lawyer agrees to make a minimum 3-year commitment, he or she will be 
eligible for up to $6,000 a year to help repay their student loan debt. 
This is a critical step to ensuring that qualified lawyers can be 
recruited and retained to represent low-income Americans.
  I particularly again thank Senator Mikulski for her great leadership 
in this area, both on this committee and on the Appropriations 
Committee, in making sure we have adequate funding for the Legal 
Services Corporation and now, in this bill, to make sure we have a 
commitment to helping legal aid lawyers repay their student loans if 
they want to be a legal aid lawyer for at least 3 years.
  I am also proud this legislation includes a Realtime Writers Program, 
an initiative I have long fought for to improve the quality of life for 
more than 30 million Americans who are deaf or have a hearing 
impairment. As many know, my late brother Frank was deaf for all of his 
life. I know from personal experience that access to culture and to 
news and other media was important to him and to others in having a 
good quality of life.
  Closed captioning, which many of us now take for granted on our 
television sets, doesn't benefit those with a hearing impairment, 
however. Captioning improves the quality of life of individuals seeking 
to read or to speak better, adults who may be functionally illiterate, 
immigrants learning English as a second language and children just 
learning to read. Captioning also helps travelers trying to get 
emergency information in loud settings such as airports or bus 
terminals or train stations. I would guess that every American at some 
time or another relies on the captioning on their television to get 
some kind of information.
  As part of the 1996 Telecom Act, I offered an amendment, a 
requirement in that bill now, that all English language television 
broadcasts must be realtime captioned by 2006. Every television program 
must be realtime captioned by 2006. That date has come and gone and all 
television programs are still not realtime captioned. This is due to a 
lack of captioners. So what has happened is that stations all across 
the country have asked the FCC for waivers from this requirement, which 
they should have because we simply do not have the supply of people 
trained to be realtime captioners. Passage of the Realtime Writers Act, 
which is now in this bill, authorizes competitive grants to recruit and 
train realtime writers to alleviate this shortage.
  This is a very good bill. It has a lot of good things in it to help 
low-income families and kids to be able to get to college. It 
alleviates some of the burdens, some debts kids have hanging over their 
heads when they get through. It provides, as I said, for some of the 
unbundling of textbook materials and things that students buy that they 
do not need all of. Of course, as I said, it does a lot to weed out the 
corruption and mismanagement in the student loan program.
  To close here, I often speak of the necessity of having a ladder of 
opportunity for our kids in this country, a ladder of opportunity for 
all of our citizens. A college education is an essential rung on that 
ladder. I am proud to support the Higher Education Opportunity Act 
which I believe extends that ladder of opportunity to more Americans 
who want to better themselves, their communities, and our country with 
a college education.
  Again, I thank Senator Kennedy and Senator Enzi, and in particular 
Senator Mikulski for stepping in and helping, with Senator Enzi, to 
bring this bill to completion. Hopefully we will have an overwhelming 
vote in favor of this conference report later this evening.
  I yield the floor.
  Mr. ENZI. I believe under the previous order we will move to Senator 
Murkowski for 5 minutes at this point.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Alaska is recognized.
  Ms. MURKOWSKI. Mr. President, I rise to speak briefly on the 
conference report to the Higher Education Opportunity Act. The 
reauthorization of this act, the Higher Education Act, has taken 5 
years and thousands of hours to complete. I congratulate Senator 
Kennedy and Senator Enzi for guiding us through passage of the Senate 
bill and then through a long and somewhat contentious conference 
process. Their leadership has brought us to an achievement of which we 
can all be proud. It is a bipartisan product that will have a positive 
impact on the lives of American students.
  I also acknowledge and thank Senator Mikulski for the good work she 
has done, stepping in for Senator Kennedy during his period of absence, 
in order to help us resolve these last issues.
  The Higher Education Opportunity Act includes many provisions that 
will benefit students and student loan borrowers in my home State of 
Alaska. One provision of which I am particularly proud will assist 
members of the military, particularly those who are in the lowest 
ranks. It will help them and help their spouses and their children to 
afford college or job training.
  I had the opportunity last winter to visit Fort Richardson, outside 
of Anchorage. I met with the spouses of the deployed soldiers who were 
over in Iraq. It was kind of a townhall meeting. I was there to ask 
them what I could do to help make their lives a little bit easier, help 
them get through the long winter. One of them told me that the one 
thing that was keeping her from being able to afford to go to college 
was the money that the military pays to help offset a portion of their 
housing costs. The housing allowance prevented her from being eligible 
for a Pell grant.
  Given the low rate of pay for many members of our military, 
particularly those in the lowest ranks, they could not afford to take 
on any student loan debt. So I made contact with the National Military 
Families Association and learned that so many military spouses are in 
that same position.
  So what we included in this legislation, through my provision, is 
language that excludes the cost of the basic allowance for housing for 
servicemembers who live off base, as well as the value of on-base 
housing. We exclude that from being calculated in the final 
calculations for financial need.
  Excluding the basic housing allowance, which in the vast majority of 
cases does not completely cover military families' housing costs, and 
the value of on-base housing will benefit the least well paid members 
of our military and their spouses, whether they be privates, seaman 
apprentices, lance corporals, airmen--those folks whose base pay is 
less than $35,000 per year. While they are off defending our country at 
war, we want to be able to help the spouses and family members who 
remain at home.

[[Page 17637]]

  I am very pleased to know that this wonderful woman I had the 
privilege to meet last winter, and potentially thousands like her, will 
have a better chance now of being able to attend college or obtain job 
training.
  Another provision I was pleased to participate in and to author 
authorizes a program dedicated to improving science, technology, and 
engineering and mathematics education, with a focus on Alaska Native 
and Native Hawaiian students.
  There are three programs in Alaska, Washington State, and Hawaii. 
They have had outstanding success using an innovative model to recruit 
and support Alaska Native and Native Hawaiian students through 
engineering, science, and technology programs. These are available at 
the University of Alaska, the University of Hawaii, and also through 
the Maui Economic Development Board.
  The programs' graduation rate is phenomenal. By identifying the 
students who have an interest in math, science, and technology while 
they are still in middle school, helping them to graduate from high 
school with the courses they need to be successful in those disciplines 
in college, and then mentoring them throughout the college program, 
these entities have helped so many of our young students, Natives and 
the non-Natives alike, to really succeed in these demanding and high-
need fields.
  The Higher Education Opportunity Act includes many provisions of 
which Members of the Senate can be proud. Suffice it to say that before 
the fall semester begins at many colleges around the country, we will 
have authorized: improvements to the Federal Pell grant; changes 
designed to help colleges and textbook publishers take steps to make 
the textbooks more affordable; increased and improved information about 
the cost of college and financial aid; rules intended to increase 
students' safety on campus; and greater State involvement in and 
accountability to the public for the success of our teacher preparation 
programs.
  There are so many provisions in this legislation that I think we have 
to be proud of, and I thank my colleagues for their good work and 
certainly urge all Members to support this legislation. And my thanks 
to those who have led this through the process: Senator Kennedy, 
Senator Enzi, and Senator Mikulski.
  I yield the floor.
  Ms. MIKULSKI. I yield the Senator from Vermont 2 minutes so he can 
make a brief statement before he presides, and then to Senator Brown.
  Mr. SANDERS. I thank Senator Mikulski and Senator Brown. I will be 
very brief.
  In the United States today, there is a nursing shortage approaching a 
crisis. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, more than 1.2 
million new and replacement nurses will be needed by 2014. We are not 
educating enough nurses to meet this need, which is why the U.S. 
Department of Health foresees a nursing shortage of over 1 million by 
2020. Yet, even with such an enormous need for nurses, U.S. nursing 
schools turned away--turned away--41,000 qualified applicants for 
baccalaureate and graduate nursing programs in 2005 because they do not 
have the resources to train more nurses. If community college nursing 
programs are included in these numbers, 150,000 well-qualified 
applicants are turned away each year from nursing programs.
  The College Opportunity and Affordability Act includes an important 
new program which will enable our colleges to train more nurses to meet 
the nursing crisis. It provides extra capacity for nursing students in 
a very simple, efficient, and cost-effective way.
  The nursing provision in title VIII provides colleges, community 
colleges, and universities a grant for each additional student their 
nursing program enrolls over their previous average enrollment. The 
nursing program gets a $3,000 grant for each additional student, money 
which will help defray the increased cost required to teach and train 
that student. With this program in place, nursing programs can expand 
to admit an additional 10,000 student nurses each year, or more, at 
modest costs.
  I thank Chairman Mikulski, and I thank Huck Gutman of my office for 
his outstanding work over the last year. This is an outstanding 
program, and we are going to begin to address a serious problem.
  I yield for Senator Brown.
  Ms. MIKULSKI. I control the time. I now yield 5 minutes to the 
Senator from Ohio, Mr. Brown.
  Mr. BROWN. I wish to thank Chairman Kennedy, Ranking Member Enzi, and 
especially Senator Mikulski for her terrific work, and their staffs. 
J.D. LaRock was especially helpful; Erin Renner, Carmel Martin, and 
Missy Rohrbach. I wish to give special thanks to Will Jawando in my 
office for his terrific success on this legislation. He celebrated the 
success of the full conference committee, which was earlier this week, 
by taking the Maryland bar for those 2 days during the actual passage 
of the conference committee.
  The conference report before us takes important steps toward breaking 
down the barriers to higher education by addressing affordability and 
access. With college costs at alltime highs, family income and student 
aid simply have not kept up.
  In my home State of Ohio, between 2001 and 2006, the cost of 
attendance has increased 53 percent at 4-year public colleges. Yet the 
median income in Ohio, household income, increased only 3 percent. We 
know the purchasing power of the Pell grant has fallen dramatically. 
Students and parents are finding it harder and harder to figure out a 
way to finance their education. But our bill, as we know, increases 
Pell grants to $8,000 by 2014, enabling thousands of low-income and 
first-time students to attend institutions of higher education. For the 
first time, low-income students can receive Pell grants year-round, 
allowing them to accelerate the completion of their degrees.
  The Free Application for Federal Student Aid required for the receipt 
of Federal student aid is currently seven pages long and acts too often 
as a barrier for students seeking college aid. We have begun the 
process of taking care of the complexities and the bureaucracy of that.
  In the last 2 years, I have held about 110 roundtables around my 
State, in 75 of the 88 counties, listening to people telling me what we 
should do with higher education and other issues.
  Last Memorial Day, I met with veterans who were also students at 
Cleveland State University. I met with them at a veterans hospital and 
heard directly about their experiences transitioning from the 
battlefield to the classroom.
  This bill takes steps to ensure student veterans get the assistance 
they need. It authorizes funds for campuses to create Centers of 
Excellence for Veteran Student Success. It is modeled after a program 
at Cleveland State University. It will allow schools to provide student 
veterans with a one-stop shop for assistance with financial aid, with 
class selection, with VA benefits, and with other transitional issues.
  In addition to the unique challenges many student veterans face, 
others have their academic career interrupted by deployments. When 
students head off to war, they know they will be given the time and 
support they need now, because of this legislation, without falling 
unnecessarily behind academically or financially when they return to 
their life as a college student.
  By allowing servicemembers to defer payments, interest free, on 
Federal student loans while serving on Active Duty, we have removed a 
financial penalty for student veterans.
  I would also like to thank the committee and the chairman for working 
with me to include several other provisions in the conference report. 
Among them is a program that creates an early childhood educator 
workforce development system to ensure that all children are taught by 
great teachers in their developmental years. I spoke with the head of 
Ohio Head Start today in Dayton, who is very excited about what this 
will mean for Head Start students in all of Ohio.
  Also included was a program that helps increase the enrollment rates 
of rural students at institutions of higher education.

[[Page 17638]]

  Finally, provisions are included that will reauthorize the 
Underground Railroad Educational and Cultural Program and establish a 
Perkins loan forgiveness program for our nation's firefighters. We did 
it for the nurses, teachers, and police officers. We inadvertently left 
out firefighters in the bill last year. This takes care of that.
  While there are many other issues we must address in higher 
education, including the rise in private student loans, this bill makes 
important progress on assisting needy students, increasing 
affordability for all, and enhancing protections for our servicemembers 
because of this legislation, because of Chairman Mikulski's work. It 
means a whole lot of working-class kids, a whole lot of poor kids, a 
whole lot of middle-class kids will be able to go to college. It will 
be easier for them to finish their college degrees, not drop out with 
huge student loans. It will enable most of these students to graduate 
without the onerous burden of huge student loans.
  I thank Chairman Kennedy and I thank Ranking Member Enzi for their 
work. I hope my colleagues will join me in supporting this legislation.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Wyoming.
  Mr. ENZI. The Senator from Oklahoma has up to 20 minutes.
  Mr. COBURN. Mr. President, I will assure everyone I will not take 20 
minutes.
  First of all, let my thank all of those on the committee who worked 
on this bill.
  The Higher Education Act of 1965, HEA, authorizes the Federal 
Government's major Federal student aid programs, as well as other 
programs which provide institutional aid and support. HEA also 
authorizes services and support to disadvantaged students, and to 
students pursuing international education and certain graduate and 
professional degrees. The last time the act was reauthorized was over a 
decade ago, in 1998.
  The Senate passed HEA reauthorize on in July of 2007, with a vote of 
95-0. The House of Representatives passed their version February 7, 
2008, with a vote of 354-58. The final conference agreement is the 
product of nearly 6 months of work between the House and the Senate.
  The Higher Education Act conference report, by the numbers, is nearly 
1,200 pages, authorizes for appropriation of roughly $3.7 billion, 
creates 65 new programs, requires 24 new government studies, and 
requires the Department of Education to create and publish 26 different 
lists with information from more than 6,463 schools.
  This bill seeks to address an enormous concern for many American 
families and students who are struggling to afford the cost of a 
college education. During the 2006-2007 academic year, more than $130 
billion in financial aid was distributed to students in the form of 
grants, Federal loans, work-study, and tax credits and deductions. 
However, this financial aid is hardly keeping pace with the increasing 
rate of tuition.
  According to the College Board, from 1996 to 2006, tuition rose 51 
percent at 4-year public colleges and universities, after adjusting for 
inflation. Furthermore, according to the U.S. Department of Education's 
National Center for Education Statistics, the average rate for 
undergraduate tuition and fees has nearly tripled over the past decade.
  No one argues that the cost of college is rapidly rising, or that 
Congress, the States and institutions of higher education should 
examine this issue and work together to increase access and 
affordability for students. However, we must ask ourselves, is this 
bill the right solution? This bill dramatically increase general 
Federal financial aid to students through the following:
  Increase the Pell Grant maximum from $5,800 to $8,000 at a cost of 
potentially $1.6 billion per year;
  Permits students to receive Pell Grants year-round at a cost of $2.6 
billion over 5 years;
  Increases the loan fund for Perkins loans at a cost of $1 billion 
over 5 years;
  Expands deferment for PLUS Loans and accrued interest would reduce 
direct spending $75 million over 5 years; and
  Extend Federal loan forgiveness to the following groups--at a cost of 
$10.9 billion over 5 years: Public-sector employees (including Federal 
Government employees in Washington DC), nutrition professionals, mental 
health professionals, medical specialists, dentists, STEM employees, 
physical therapists, occupational therapists, superintendents, 
principals and other administrators, fire fighters, librarians, early 
childhood educators, nurses, foreign language specialists, speech 
language pathologists, school counselors, and others.
  Dramatic increases in Federal student aid may sound like a helpful 
solution at first. However, research shows that increases in government 
funding only lead to further increases in tuition. According to a 
report by the Cato Institute, for every dollar increase in Pell Grants, 
private 4-year colleges increased tuition by more than two dollars.
  The findings of the College Board in ``Trends in Student Aid 2007'' 
are even more astounding. The College Board reported that student aid 
increased by about 82 percent over the decade from 1997 to 2007, and 
Federal loans increased by 61 percent. Interestingly, this increase in 
aid covered about two-thirds of the increase in tuition at private 4-
year colleges and almost all of the increase in tuition at public 4-
year institutions.
  These statistics demonstrate that both public and private 
universities are increasing tuition at the same pace--if not faster--
than the Government increases funding. If we truly wish to make college 
education more affordable for students and families, we must focus on 
why tuition is increasing, despite increased subsidies from the Federal 
Government.
  A July 31 editorial in the Washington Times discusses the correlation 
between increased government funding and rising tuition. The editorial 
states of the higher education conference agreement.

       This bill would do nothing to rein in rampant tuition 
     inflation, by far the biggest problem in higher education. 
     Indeed, by giving students yet more taxpayer-furnished aid, 
     it will just keep exacerbating the problem . . . Just look at 
     the numbers: It's no coincidence that while the inflation-
     adjusted price of college has gone up roughly 70 percent over 
     the last two decades, aid per-student rose almost 140 
     percent.

  The best way to make improvements in higher education is to begin 
removing the Federal Government from the equation. When Congress and 
the U.S. Department of Education interject themselves into education 
matters, the result is generally less competition and individual 
control, more bureaucracy and an ultimately an inferior outcome.
  The American Council on Education states that the higher education 
conference agreement ``would create a huge number of new reporting and 
regulatory requirements . . . Complying with these new unfunded 
mandates will take time and will increase the administrative costs 
facing colleges and universities.''
  Rather than increasing the role of the Federal Government in 
subsidizing and regulating higher education, Congress should create 
incentives for families to save money and ease tax burden for students. 
Federal education tax credits and the Federal tuition tax deductions 
generated $5.9 billion in savings for taxpayers in 2006.
  The Higher Education conference agreement does more than expand 
financial aid for students. The bill authorizes 65 new programs, many 
of which are duplicate, wasteful and unnecessary. By authorizing 
appropriations for these programs, Congress is allowing them to take 
funding away from student aid. Consider the following examples of 
misplaced priorities in the bill:
  Henry Kuualoha Giugni Kupuna Memorial Archives: Provides a grant to 
the University of Hawaii Academy for Creative Media for the 
establishment and maintenance of memorial archives--such sums as 
necessary;
  Campus-Based Digital Theft Prevention: Provides grants for schools to 
develop programs to prevent illegal downloading and distribution of 
music, movies and other intellectual property--such sums as necessary;

[[Page 17639]]

  Pilot Program for Course Material Rental: Provides grants for college 
bookstores to operate textbook rental programs--such sums as necessary;
  Off-Campus Community Service: Authorizes work study grants to 
institutions for recruiting and compensating students to supplement off 
campus community service employment--such sums as necessary;
  University Sustainability Programs: Provides grants to establish 
sustainability programs and practices on campus. The term 
``sustainability'' is not defined in the bill--such sums as necessary;
  Modeling and Simulation Programs: Establishes a task force to study 
modeling and simulation and to support the development of the model and 
simulation field--such sums as necessary; and
  Teach for America: Authorizes a 5-year grant to Teach for America, 
Inc. for $20 million in FY 2009, $25 million for FY 2010 and such sums 
for each of the four succeeding fiscal years.
  It is important to note that if a Federal audit of Teach for America 
recently found that the organization did not properly account for 
$775,000 in Federal funds. The Department of Education Inspector 
General found that Teach for America was unable to provide documents to 
support roughly half its claimed spending. The New York Times reported 
that there was no documentation that any teachers actually attended and 
completed the class or that there even was a class. Rather than 
cleaning up the waste, Congress authorizes $45 million for the 
organization.
  According to a July 11 CBS Evening News report titled, ``Teach for 
America Gets Schooled; Organization That Trains Teachers Gets a Failing 
Grade for Its Accounting Skills,'' after the audit, Teach for America 
tried handing over some newly-found documents, but it didn't help. The 
Inspector General said they contained ``significant discrepancies.''
  Another important way to help contain the skyrocketing costs of 
education is to simply ensure taxpayers' dollars and students' tuition 
are directed towards educational purposes, and not lobbying or 
earmarks. We cannot continue to earmark millions of dollars to 
universities with billion dollar endowments, while students and 
families struggle to afford the cost of college.
  The total cost of earmarks for colleges and universities exceeded $9 
billion between 1995 and 2003. At the same time, average annual tuition 
at public 4-year institutions increased by 137 percent, from $2,357 to 
$5,836. The Chronicle of Higher Education recently reported that 
Congress set aside a record $2.3 billion in pet projects for colleges 
and universities last year, $300 million more than in 2003, when the 
total was $2.01 billion.
  Furthermore, in 2005 and 2006, colleges and universities spent more 
than $127 million on lobbying activities. This amount could have paid 
the full tuition for more than 21,760 students to attend public 
colleges and universities. Most students struggling to pay for housing 
and tuition may not be able to afford a tutor, much less a lobbyist. 
They should not, therefore, be forced to pay higher tuition so their 
school can hire Washington lobbyists.
  Nobody who listened to Senator Alexander can come away saying we have 
not done what we need to do. And this is certainly a compromise piece 
of legislation.
  But it is very worrisome to me that the only thing rising faster than 
the cost of health care in this country, other than gasoline in the 
last year and a half, is the cost of a college education. The only way 
we can compete globally is with an educated workforce. We have to ask 
ourselves the question, Why is it costing so much? Could it be the 10-
foot tall--now with the passage of this bill--group of regulations that 
require billions of dollars to comply with every year that has taken 
away from the educational opportunities in this country?
  I think another thing that was not addressed in the bill that should 
have been added in the bill is the fact that we have had over $9 
billion worth of earmarks in the higher ed bill over the last 7 years. 
That is $9 billion that did not get prioritized. It was put in in the 
dark of night, inside a bill, inside an appropriations bill, that did 
not go out on the basis of merit, did not go out on the basis of a 
competitive grant.
  And when the American people hear that $127 million was spent last 
year by colleges and universities to lobby this place, is it not any 
wonder that we are spending $9 billion on earmarks?
  I also want to spend a moment talking about realtime writers. I held 
that bill; am still in opposition to it. I know it is in the bill. That 
is the way things work around here. I am going to lose that. But I want 
you to ask yourself the question: If there is greater demand for 
realtime writers and we are seeing the salaries rise and we are seeing 
the numbers start to come in, why in the world are we going to create a 
program to pay for it when the market is going to create the demand and 
the pay to get people to do it? We are going to blow that money because 
those people are going to go do that because the amount of money that 
is being paid for someone to do that is rising. So we are going to get 
in the middle of the economics of that. We are going to create a false 
level of it because we are going to train them. Now, do you know what 
is going to happen? Everyone who is a realtime writer now is going to 
make less money in the future.
  So we are going to disown the economics of supply and demand, much 
like we are doing on energy, and we are going to put a grant program 
in, we are going to make sure these people are there, but everyone who 
is doing it now is going to make less money, and then we are going to 
have an overage. And so then what is going to happen is the people who 
went out and did it on their own and invested in it, they are going to 
go look for another job because we did not trust what has made this 
country great, which is the idea that if there is a demand, someone is 
going to fill the supply, and if they do not, the price is going to 
rise. So we have put that in this bill.
  It will be a part of the bill. It is going to become law. But we are 
going to waste that money. It is shortsighted. It is wasteful. This 
bill creates 65 new Federal Government programs. Thirty-six reports are 
demanded from this bill, and it gets rid of six programs. Of the 
programs we create, nary a one has a metric on it so we can measure it 
2 years from now to know whether what we did was right or wrong. In 
Oklahoma we call that peeing into the wind. It is going to come back on 
us.
  As to the cost of a college education, we are seeing families 
squeezed by $2,400 a year in energy costs because we didn't act when we 
should have acted on energy, and we are not acting now. So they have 
less resources. Even with the wonderful increase in Pell grants and 
everything that we have done in this bill, the cost of a college 
education is going to rise about 9 percent a year. They can't keep up 
no matter what we do with Pell grants.
  The better part of wisdom would be to ask the question: Is what we 
are doing really making a difference to increase the availability of a 
4-year education or a 2-year education post high school?
  The maintenance of effort in this bill will kill every community 
college in Oklahoma because they design programs for certain things and 
then walk away from them because there is not a demand for them 
anymore, whether it be for a new business, a new industry, or a new 
area where there is a shortage, and then they walk away. Now they have 
a maintenance of effort requirement. There is no exemption on that. You 
have killed one of the best things we have in Oklahoma, which is our 
community colleges. You are going to strangle them with this 
maintenance of effort. Now they will be very hesitant to create a new 
program that will make a big difference in the lives of Oklahomans, 
even though they will only run the program for 2 years because they 
will have to continue to fund it to be able to get anything else from 
us. It is shortsighted.
  I will not go on. I know everybody who worked on this bill is well 
intentioned. Their heart is in the right place. They want us to have 
better educational opportunities. They want us

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to be able to afford it. They want greater excellence in terms of 
academia. I just don't think we did it. If we didn't do it, we are not 
going to be able to measure because we don't have any metrics.
  The hope would be that maybe we could learn from this exercise. Maybe 
we ought to put in metrics. If we are going to create 65 programs, 
maybe we ought to think about getting rid of 65 instead of 6, and maybe 
we ought to measure the effect of what we are doing.
  I yield the floor.
  Mr. FEINGOLD. Mr. President, I am pleased to support passage of the 
conference report reauthorizing the Higher Education Act of 1965. This 
law is the main Federal law governing higher education in this country 
and authorizes a number of important federal programs including Pell 
grants and other need-based grant programs as well as Federal student 
loan programs. This conference report, the Higher Education Opportunity 
Act, will improve college access and affordability for our nation's 
students in a number of ways including, raising the authorized level of 
Pell grants, allowing Pell grants to be awarded on a year-round basis, 
and simplifying the financial aid application process. Congress has 
been working on revisions to the Higher Education Act for many years 
and it is welcome news that Congress has finally completed its work on 
this important, if imperfect, legislation.
  Access to postsecondary education is becoming more and more important 
in this increasingly competitive 21st century. In Wisconsin and around 
the country, we continue to see a significant gap in which students can 
afford to obtain a higher education and which students cannot, with 
students from low income and middle class families increasingly unable 
to attend college due to escalating costs and less availability of 
financial aid. Furthermore, students increasingly have to turn to 
federal and private student loans to cover the costs of a higher 
education because of declining grant aid. Some of these students are 
then saddled with heavy debts upon graduation from college, which 
impact what sort of career decisions and life choices they can make for 
themselves.
  Since coming to the Senate in 1993, I have made increasing funding 
for the federal Pell grant program one of my top higher education 
priorities. I have worked with Senators Kennedy, Collins, and Coleman 
to lead efforts to increase funding for the Pell grant program as part 
of the yearly budget and appropriations process. I am pleased that the 
110th Congress has taken some important steps to boost the availability 
of Pell grants for our Nation's students. Soon after the 110th Congress 
convened in January of 2007, we passed a continuing resolution funding 
the government for fiscal year 2007. As part of that continuing 
resolution, we increased the maximum award for the Pell grant for the 
first time since 2003, from $4,050 to $4,310.
  As part of the College Cost Reduction and Access Act which was signed 
into law last September and the fiscal year 2008 omnibus appropriations 
bill, Congress further increased the maximum Pell grant award from 
$4,310 to $4,731. These recent increases in the maximum Pell grant 
award represent a good step to improved access to higher education for 
our Nation's students most in need, but much more remains to be done. 
This conference report builds on these efforts to boost the Pell grant 
program, by increasing the authorized levels for the maximum Pell grant 
award to $8,000 by 2014 and by allowing students to use their Pell 
grant awards year round. I will continue to work to help ensure that 
Congress appropriates funds for the Pell program consistent with these 
new authorized levels.
  This conference report also reauthorizes another critical need-based 
grant program, the federal TRIO programs, which include Upward Bound, 
Student Support Services, Ronald McNair Post Baccalaureate Achievement, 
and Talent Search programs, among others. Every year, students who have 
participated in TRIO programs at Wisconsin's universities come out to 
Washington to meet with myself or my staff to discuss how the various 
TRIO programs are improving access to higher education and providing 
support services once these students have enrolled in college. These 
students' testimonials illustrate how important the TRIO programs are, 
and have guided my yearly efforts to work to boost Federal funding for 
the TRIO programs. I am pleased that this conference report also 
includes language based on previous legislation I introduced that 
defines the terms ``different campus'' and ``different population'' for 
purposes of administering the federal TRIO program. The language 
included in this bill ensures that higher education institutions with 
branch campuses geographically apart from each other, like some of the 
campuses in the UW System, can compete on an equal footing for these 
important TRIO grants.
  This conference report also includes language to modify the 
application progress for Federal financial aid in order to make it 
simpler for students and parents to complete the process. I often hear 
from students and parents in Wisconsin that applying for financial aid 
is a time consuming and confusing process and this legislation should 
help to simplify the process for Wisconsin's families. This legislation 
establishes a two-page FAFSA application for certain low-income 
students and broadens the use of this simplified FAFSA to other 
students within the next few years. This legislation also improves the 
process whereby students can reapply for financial aid so that they do 
not have to fill out a new FAFSA every time they want to apply for 
additional financial aid. Many of Wisconsin's students fill out these 
FAFSA forms every year and I hope that the new provisions in this 
conference report can make the FAFSA application process less 
burdensome in the coming months and years.
  This conference report also retains language from the Senate-passed 
bill to ensure that the grants for training of teachers will promote a 
wide range of teaching skills, including measuring students on 
different forms of assessment, such as performance-based measures, 
student portfolios, and formative assessments. In an era of increased 
accountability at the local, State, and Federal level, we need to do 
all we can to promote more responsible and accurate assessment of 
students in our K-12 schools.
  I remain concerned about the increased use of high-stakes 
standardized testing at the K-12 level, including using high-stakes 
standardized tests to make decisions regarding school accountability. 
By broadening the definition of student learning and teaching skills as 
this new title II language does, we can better ensure that teachers are 
trained to more accurately and responsibly measure student achievement 
through alternatives to high-stakes standardized testing. I hope that 
Congress can build on these efforts to promote better and more 
responsible assessments of our Nation's students when we reauthorize 
the Elementary and Secondary Education Act by providing increased 
funding for the development of these types of assessments as well as 
the teacher training that is needed to implement these assessments in 
our classrooms.
  The student loan industry has also seen some tumultuous times over 
the past 2 years, with a number of abuses involving lenders and some 
financial aid administrators brought to light as well as ongoing unrest 
in the lending business due to the current instability in our credit 
markets. While we should do all we can to boost Federal funding for 
grant aid so that students are not as dependent on student loans to 
finance their higher education, we also need to make certain that our 
Nation's students have access to Federal student loans to help cover 
any unmet costs they face. Wherever possible, we should help students 
participate in the various Federal student loan programs before making 
them turn to private loans, which do not offer our students as many 
safeguards as the Federal student loan programs. Earlier this year, 
Congress passed a law designed to help ensure students' continued 
access to Federal loans in the upcoming school year and this conference 
report seeks

[[Page 17641]]

to help prevent certain abuses in the student loan markets from 
happening in the future. For example, this conference report requires 
schools and lenders to create codes of conduct governing their lending 
practices and relationships. This legislation also bans lenders and 
colleges from accepting gifts as part of their student loan business. I 
cosponsored many of these provisions in Senator Kennedy's standalone 
legislation, the Student Loan Sunshine Act, and I am pleased that these 
provisions were included in this conference report.
  I know a number of colleges are concerned about the increased 
reporting requirements in this legislation related to college costs and 
tuition increases. These reporting requirements and the provisions 
creating searchable college cost lists and Web sites are designed to 
improve access to information for students and their families. This 
sort of information is important to Wisconsin families deciding which 
colleges they can afford. I hope that these provisions can be 
implemented in a reasonable way that addresses the concerns of our 
Nation's universities while ensuring that students and their families 
have access to this valuable information.
  This legislation has broad bipartisan support and it is good news 
that we were finally able to reach agreement on this reauthorization of 
the Higher Education Act. The conference report Congress is set to pass 
this week strengthens a number of existing Federal student aid programs 
and creates new programs to boost access to and affordability of higher 
education for America's students who wish to attend college. With the 
new school year set to begin in about a month, I hope that the 
President will quickly sign this legislation into law and that the 
Department of Education will work to implement this legislation in a 
fair and responsible manner.
  Mr. ALLARD. Mr. President, today I wish to speak about a topic that 
has been important to me for some time the role of veterinarians in 
safeguarding the public health. Yesterday, the Senate passed the 
Higher-Ed bill which contained historic language improving veterinary 
education in this country. This language has important implications for 
human health. We have been overdue to invest in veterinary medicine as 
a national asset. Today, there are only 28 colleges of veterinary 
medicine across the Nation which collectively graduate a mere 2,500 
veterinarians per year.
  Unfortunately, this number is insufficient to meet demand and leaves 
our Nation vulnerable to emerging infectious diseases such as west nile 
virus, severe acute respiratory syndrome, SARS, Monkeypox and Avian 
Influenza although there are numerous other examples of animal-born 
infectious diseases, some of which could be used as biological agents 
in a terrorist attack.
  To meet the critical shortage of public health veterinarians and to 
augment the ability of veterinary expertise to guide public health, I 
introduced the Veterinary Workforce Expansion Act, S. 746, this 
Congress and the two previous Congresses. I am pleased that part of the 
Veterinary Workforce Expansion Act made it into the higher-ed 
reauthorization.
  The language in the higher-ed bill will establish a new competitive 
grant program for capital improvements to allow veterinary medical 
colleges to expand and graduate more veterinarians trained in public 
health. As both a veterinarian and a member of the HELP Committee, I 
have seen first-hand the links between human and animal health. A half-
century ago, more people appreciated this too and we were able to all-
but eradicate malaria and other animal-born infectious diseases with 
techniques such as mosquito control and inoculations.
  Veterinarians are uniquely qualified to address high-priority public 
health issues such as animal-to-human transmission of infectious 
diseases because the curriculum in veterinary medical colleges is 
significantly different from that of other health professions. In 
addition to the basic biomedical sciences and the surgical and medical 
training that physicians receive, veterinarians receive extensive 
training in population medicine. Veterinary colleges also provide a 
broad, multispecies, comparative medical approach to disease prevention 
and control, which is fundamental to understanding the transmission and 
life cycle of infectious disease agents, especially those that animals 
share with humans.
  Although I hope awareness of the part veterinarians play in promoting 
public health will improve, I want to note that I am by no means the 
first Government official to recognize the importance of veterinarians 
in public health practice. Dr. Julie L. Gerberding, Director of the 
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, CDC, noted that, ``Eleven 
of the last 12 emerging infectious diseases that we're aware of in the 
world have probably arisen from animal health sources.'' CDC estimates 
that more than 60 percent of all infectious organisms that are harmful 
to people are transmissible between humans and animals. In addition, 
more than more than 75 percent of newly emerging infectious diseases 
fitj into this category and, even more important, more than 80 percent 
of biothreat agents of concern are shared between animals and man. 
These are the harmful biothreat agents most likely to be used in a 
bioterrorism attack.
  So in closing, I would like to thank Senators Kennedy, Enzi, 
Mikulski, and Burr for working with me to include this program in the 
bill. I am grateful for their hard work and support. My hope is that 
through this new grant program, veterinary colleges will be able to 
fulfill the needs of the communities that they serve and on a national 
level will augment the expertise of other public health specialists in 
preventing or mitigating the effects of possible pandemics or 
biological terrorist attacks.
  Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, I am here today to talk about the 
reauthorization of the Tribally Controlled College or University 
Assistance Act of 1978, which is included in H.R. 4137, the Higher 
Education Reauthorization and College Opportunity Act of 2008.
  As chairman of the Senate Committee on Indian Affairs, I worked 
closely with the Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee and 
the House of Representatives to ensure that provisions enhancing tribal 
colleges and universities were included in the reauthorization of the 
Higher Education Opportunity Act.
  H.R. 4137 reauthorizes the Tribally Controlled College or University 
Assistance Act of 1978. Additionally, it will authorize two tribally 
controlled postsecondary career and vocational technical institutions: 
United Tribes Technical College and Navajo Technical College. Both of 
these institutions are critical to strengthening tribal higher 
education and providing the necessary resources for Indian students.
  I have been a longtime supporter of tribal colleges and universities 
because of the benefits they provide to both the community and the 
individual student. There are 36 tribal colleges and universities 
throughout the United States. I am very fortunate to have 5 of these 
tribal colleges in my State of North Dakota.
  Tribal colleges and universities offer a wide range of accredited 
programs from business administration to nursing. In addition to 
college-level courses, tribal colleges and universities also offer high 
school completion programs, job training, and college- preparatory 
courses.
  These colleges and universities are essential to their communities, 
often serving as community centers, libraries, tribal archives, career 
and business centers, economic development centers, public meeting 
places and childcare centers.
  Because most tribal colleges and universities are located on or near 
Indian reservations, they provide a greater level of access to higher 
education for a group of Native students who would otherwise be unable 
to attend college.
  Approximately 28,000 American Indian and Alaska Native students 
attend tribally-controlled colleges and universities across the 
country. Characteristics of American Indian students enrolled in tribal 
colleges differ from those of most other undergraduate students: 
Students attending these schools often come from geographically 
isolated communities with high

[[Page 17642]]

unemployment rates where the average family income is $13,998.00. This 
is 27 percent below the Federal poverty level. Most students attending 
tribal colleges are the first generation in their family to go to 
college. American Indians who earn a bachelor's degree or higher can 
expect to earn two times as much as those with a high school diploma 
and four times as much as those with no high school diploma.
  I am committed to finding ways to strengthen tribal colleges because 
they are truly a success story in Indian country. The reauthorization 
of the Tribally Controlled Colleges or University Assistance Act is a 
strong step in that direction.
  Mr. LEVIN. Mr. President, access to higher education is increasingly 
important in a competitive, global economy where training beyond a high 
school education is frequently required. On average, a student who 
earns a bachelor's degree will earn 70 percent more annually than a 
student who has only a high school diploma.
  Last year, Congress approved more than $17 billion in new Federal aid 
for college students, the largest Federal investment since the GI bill 
with the enactment of the College Cost Reduction Act of 2007. This was 
a great victory for students and families all across America, including 
my home State. Michigan will receive over $80 million in new assistance 
above the current $429.8 million for the upcoming academic year and an 
additional $689.6 million over the next 5 years.
  However, we still need to do more to help students achieve their goal 
of attaining a college education as college cost continues to rise. The 
legislation before us, the conference report of the Higher Education 
Opportunity Act of 2008, is another major step forward to support 
students and families in this endeavor. It contains several important 
policy changes to increase access to college and help protect students, 
families and taxpayers from high college cost and unmanageable debt.
  It expands need-based grant aid further by increasing Pell grants, 
from $4,800 to $6,000 for 2009 and to $8,000 for 2014; and allows 
students, for the first time, to receive Pell grants year-round, to 
help them accelerate the completion of their degrees. The legislation 
also creates the Grants for Access and Persistence, GAP, program, a new 
matching grant program to allow States to increase need-based grant aid 
to students. This will give a major boost to the 5.3 million students 
who qualify for the Pell grant, 182,000 in Michigan.
  The bill enhances and strengthens TRIO and GEAR UP, proven programs 
that help students, many of whom are first generation college-bound, 
prepare for and succeed in higher education. It expands required 
activities with a special focus on improving students' financial and 
economic literacy, and encourages student enrollment in challenging 
secondary coursework and professional development.
  The legislation also replaces the complex, 7-page Free Application 
for Federal Student Aid, FAFSA, with a 2-page EZ-FAFSA; bans lenders 
from offering gifts to college officials as a condition of making 
student loans, and requires colleges to adopt a code of conduct 
regarding student loans; promotes innovative and effective teacher 
preparation programs for new and prospective teachers; and creates a 
pipeline for high-quality teachers to teach in high-need schools by 
promoting partnerships between teacher education programs and high-need 
districts.
  The bill also makes college a reality for more students with 
disabilities through a number of new initiatives, including supporting 
model demonstration projects to make college course materials more 
accessible; and expands and strengthens nursing faculty by creating a 
new grant program to help nursing schools enroll more students.
  Finally, this legislation also includes a much-needed amendment 
introduced by Senator Durbin, which I cosponsored, that creates a 
targeted student loan repayment assistance program that will bolster 
the ranks of attorneys in this country's criminal justice system. It 
will provide up to $10,000 a year in student loan forgiveness for those 
who will work a minimum of 3 years as State or local criminal 
prosecutors or as State, local, or Federal public defenders. This would 
benefit many young law graduates who want to take a job as a young 
prosecutor or public defender, but find it difficult to do so because 
of a mountain of student debt. The need for this amendment is apparent. 
Prosecutor and public defender offices throughout the country are 
having serious difficulties recruiting and retaining qualified 
attorneys. In a recent survey, over a third of prosecutor offices 
nationwide reported problems with keeping attorneys on staff. Over 60 
percent of prosecutor offices that serve populations of 250,000 or more 
have reported serious problems with the retention of attorneys. The 
story is the same for public defender offices. Another recent survey 
found that over 60 percent of State and local public defender offices 
reported difficulty in attorney recruitment and retention. When 
prosecutor and defender offices cannot attract new lawyers or keep 
experienced ones, their ability to protect the public is compromised. 
Caseloads become unmanageable, cases can be delayed or mishandled, 
crimes may go unprosecuted, and innocent defendants may sit in jail.
  A student's access to higher education ought not to depend on his or 
her family's income. Working families and aspiring students across this 
country are struggling to obtain the financial resources to secure a 
college education. Low and middle income students who have managed to 
enter and stay in college are graduating with unprecedented levels of 
debt. This legislation, coupled with the legislation Congress passed 
last year responds to this crisis.
  Mrs. FEINSTEIN. Mr. President, I rise in support of the Higher 
Education Opportunity Act of 2008 that would renew major programs that 
ensure our Nation's students have access to a college education.
  This important legislation would increase grant aid to our neediest 
students, provide new measures to address rising college costs, and 
would reform the student loan system so that it better serves students.
  Students and their families in California and nationwide are 
struggling to pay the growing costs of a college education.
  Specifically, this bill will increase Pell grants from $4,800 to 
$6,000 for 2009 and to $8,000 for 2014. Over 625,000 California 
students rely on Pell grants to afford college.
  It will allow low-income students, for the first time, to receive 
Pell grants year round, including summer school. This will help 
students complete their degree programs more quickly.
  It will allow military servicemembers to defer payments, interest 
free, on Federal direct loans while they are on active duty. Our 
service men and women risk their lives for our Nation and deserve to 
not have to worry about paying their student loans while they are on 
duty.
  It will authorize the U.S. Department of Education to award 
competitive grants for Teacher Preparation Programs that help recruit 
and retain high-quality teachers in high-need schools.
  It will require the U.S. Department of Education to publish detailed 
data about college pricing trends on its website to ensure more 
transparency.
  It will simplify student financial aid forms by creating a new 2-page 
form for low-income students, and phase out the current 7-page form 
within 5 years.
  It is critical that we help make college more affordable and 
accessible for students at a time when they are taking on more debt to 
pay for school.
  More than half of California students who graduate from 4-year public 
colleges have debt averaging over $12,000.
  Nearly 1 year ago, the President signed into law major legislation 
that provides over $17 billion in new grant aid to low-income college 
students--$2.5 billion of which would go to help California's students. 
And the key reforms in the renewal of this Higher Education legislation 
before us today will further help ensure that college is more 
affordable for our young people and that they receive the education 
they deserve to succeed.
  Mr. KERRY. Mr. President, education is at the core of America's basic

[[Page 17643]]

promise--that all Americans should be able to make the most of their 
potential.
  Every young person should graduate from high school, and every young 
person who works hard and wants to go to college should be able to 
afford it. And all Americans should be able to get the skills they need 
to succeed throughout their lives.
  Today, I am supporting the Higher Education Opportunity Act 
conference report because it will advance key reforms that will address 
the soaring price of a college education and remove obstacles that make 
it harder for qualified students to attend college. This legislation is 
an important step forward for students and their families. It will help 
reduce their college costs and will help expand the future growth of 
our economy.
  This legislation would not have been possible without the leadership 
of Senator Edward M. Kennedy who has tirelessly dedicated his time in 
the Senate to helping children and their families gain increased access 
to education. It is another victory for Senator Kennedy, whose record 
of achievement in the Senate has helped benefit the lives of virtually 
every man, woman and child in the country. As we adopt this 
legislation, I want Senator Kennedy to know that we miss him, that we 
are thinking of him as he recovers from his illness and we congratulate 
him on this important accomplishment.
  The Higher Education Opportunity Act will hold colleges more 
accountable for increasing costs and will simplify the federal 
financial aid application process. The legislation will make textbook 
costs more manageable for students by helping them plan for textbook 
expenses in advance of each semester. It will increase college aid and 
support programs for veterans and military families. This legislation 
will ensure equal college opportunities and fair learning environments 
for students with disabilities. It includes new measures to curb 
unethical practices in the student loan industry, increasing federal 
grant aid to our neediest students, and strengthen college pipeline 
programs.
  The Higher Education Reauthorization Act will help ensure that all 
Americans can make the most of their God-given talents. Educating our 
children is a key part of ensuring a strong economy in the future. It 
will help make college affordable for all and expand lifelong learning. 
I urge my colleagues to support this legislation.
  Mr. ROCKEFELLER. Mr. President, I wanted to affirm my support of the 
Higher Education Act, which will help many young Americans realize 
their dream of a college education.
  As president of West Virginia Wesleyan years ago, I saw firsthand 
that given the opportunity, student will perform to the highest degree. 
Our goal as legislators should be to provide quality, affordable 
education for every American. While we have done a good job giving high 
school students the opportunity to attend higher education, the time 
has come to do more to make it affordable.
  Tuition rates have steadily increased over the last few years while 
our Nation's financial aid programs have failed to keep up, causing 
college students to graduate with higher amounts of debt than ever 
before. In West Virginia alone, the cost of college education has 
increased at least 30 percent since the 2000-2001 school year, while 
the median family income of most West Virginians has increased only 13 
percent. Additionally, the percentage of higher education that is paid 
for with grants has decreased significantly, from 77 percent in 1975-
1976 to just 20 percent in 2004-2005.
  The Higher Education Act before us today will modernize the financial 
aid system. The act will revitalize title IV loans, including Pell 
grants. Pell grants help over 35,000 West Virginia students attend 
college, a value of $92 million annually. An increase in assistance is 
needed to help students cope with the rising cost of tuition. The bill 
will invest $20 billion to improve Pell grants. The loan amount will 
increase approximately $500 next year, and in 2012, the maximum Pell 
grant should be $5,400. These improvements will allow more low-income 
students to have the opportunity to pursue higher education that before 
would have been out of their reach.
  An important provision in the act will protect students by giving 
them greater access to information about their loans by requiring 
student loan providers to be up front about terms and rates. This new 
law will reduce interest rates on Federal student loans, allowing 
students to graduate college with less debt and on a stable financial 
foundation. The law even addresses the real concern about the rising 
costs of textbooks with balanced provisions to disclose prices.
  The act would also increase TRIO funding and provide better tools to 
encourage high school students to apply for college. Every year, I meet 
with TRIO leaders and students from across the state of West Virginia 
about the importance of this program. The Higher Education 
Reauthorization Act allows our dedicated TRIO counselors to focus on 
tutoring, college exam preparation, and assisting students with 
application and financial aid applications. West Virginia has 30 TRIO 
programs which will benefit by the increase in the grant duration and 
funding. This increased support, will better enable the 8,000 plus West 
Virginian TRIO students to reach their potential in high school, and 
achieve their goal of pursuing higher education.
  Another vital part of this legislation is the emphasis it places on 
sciences and mathematics. The greater assistance and grant money going 
to students who study science and mathematics, will ensure that our 
Nation has a group of educated individuals who are ready to handle 
future challenges.
  To support our troops and their families, this legislation allows 
service members to defer payments on loans, and stop interest on 
Federal direct loans while they are on active duty. It will ensure that 
military benefits do not count against service members' eligibility for 
Federal grants and loans they need to pay for college. It will provide 
for easy reenrollment for service members when they return from duty 
and go back to school.
  The Higher Education Reauthorization Act will provide opportunity to 
students in West Virginia and throughout the country. This bill also 
encourages public service and puts a new emphasis on science and math, 
causes that I have long promoted. This is an important bill and I 
commend my colleagues and the leadership for forging bipartisan 
consensus to enact this legislation that should inspire students to 
pursue their dreams of a higher education.
  Mr. AKAKA. Mr. President, today, I was pleased to vote in favor of 
the conference report to accompany the College Opportunity and 
Affordability Act, H.R. 4137. I congratulate my colleagues, 
particularly my good friend, Senator Kennedy, for their dedication and 
bipartisan efforts in moving this vitally important legislation 
forward. It is imperative during these difficult economic times, to do 
all that we can to help students achieve their educational goals by 
making college more accessible and more affordable. This legislation 
will assist students and their families in Hawaii and across the Nation 
by, among other things, simplifying the Federal financial aid 
application process, increasing the amount of Federal grants to 
students and their families who need them most, providing more 
authority to regulate private student loan lenders engaged in predatory 
practices, and holding colleges accountable for growing tuition rates.
  As chairman of the Veterans' Affairs Committee and a senior member of 
the Armed Services Committee, I was also pleased to support this 
legislation which will make higher education more accessible for the 
men and women who have volunteered to protect and defend our Nation. It 
includes a provision allowing the members of our Armed Forces to defer 
their payments, interest free, on Federal Direct Loans while they are 
on Active Duty and making reenrollment easier for service members who 
left college to join the military. It also benefits the families of our 
soldiers and sailors who have also sacrificed so much. First, by 
providing new scholarships for the children and family members of 
service

[[Page 17644]]

members who have died since 9/11. And, second, by providing instate 
tuition for members of the military and their dependents who have lived 
in a state for more than 30 days.
  This legislation also incorporates several provisions which will 
specifically benefit students in Hawaii. These include the 
authorization of the creation of the Henry Kuualoha Giugni Kupuna 
Memorial Archives at the University of Hawaii as a repository for 
Native Hawaiian historical artifacts and the expansion of authorized 
grant programs for Native Hawaiian Institutions to include education 
designed to improve financial literacy. It also clarifies that Native 
Hawaiians and other Pacific Islanders are eligible for the Federally 
funded McNair Scholars Program. In addition, it benefits our State by 
authorizing the development and expansion of programs to improve 
science, technology, and mathematics education specifically focused on 
meeting the educational and cultural needs of Native Hawaiian students.
  Today, more than ever, a college education has become a key to future 
opportunities and financial stability. A student who desires to attend 
college should not have to delay or give up their dreams of a higher 
education because of the cost.
  With the passage of this bill today, we are helping students achieve 
this dream and I applaud its passage. Now, it is time for the President 
to sign this critically important bill into law and make it a reality.
  Mr. REID. Mr. President, last year, as Democrats took control of the 
Congress, we made college affordability and access one of our top 
priorities.
  In the fall, we completed work on the first part of that promise--the 
College Cost Reduction and Access Act. This landmark legislation 
provided nearly $20 billion in new student aid and benefits, including 
a significant increase to the Pell grant and a reduction in student 
loan interest rates, which went into effect last month, providing a 
tangible benefit to college students across this country.
  It's been a full decade since the Congress last reauthorized the 
Higher Education Act. Today, as a result of a strong bipartisan effort, 
we take up the final piece of our commitment to make a college 
education more affordable and accessible.
  Among other key provisions, this conference report addresses the 
scandals that have tainted the student loan industry. Through increased 
disclosure requirements, a prohibition on payments and gifts from 
lenders to colleges and financial aid administrators, and new 
restrictions on preferred lender lists, we are finally putting an end 
to these unacceptable practices, and making sure that the student loan 
system works in the best interests of our students.
  Just as importantly, the Higher Education Opportunity Act tackles the 
rising costs of college. Despite the billions in new student aid and 
benefits we approved last year, if college costs continue to rise at 
the rate they have been--nearly tripling over the past 20 years--higher 
education will continue to remain further and further out of reach for 
too many Americans.
  I am pleased that students in Nevada have the good fortune of a state 
university system with some of the lowest tuition costs in the nation. 
But the same is not true everywhere and this bill will hold colleges 
and universities accountable if their costs increase too dramatically. 
It also ensures that students and parents have the information they 
need to make objective decisions based on the cost of college, and 
attempts to rein in the high cost of textbooks, by requiring greater 
disclosure of prices and purchasing information.
  On the issue of costs, the Federal Government has raised the bar in 
its commitment to higher education. While statehouse budgets are 
undoubtedly strained in these difficult economic times, I am hopeful 
that these efforts will not result in a reduced State commitment to 
making sure that a college education is affordable. I am concerned, 
along with students and college administrators in my own State, about 
harmful budget cuts to colleges and universities in Nevada. The Federal 
Government is doing its part for students, and I hope State governments 
will continue to do the same.
  To further assist students, the bill authorizes an increase in the 
maximum Pell grant to $6,000 in 2009 and $8,000 by 2014, and makes it 
available to college students year-round, instead of just during the 
traditional academic year. This is particularly important for low-
income, nontraditional students in Nevada--those juggling college, jobs 
and a family--or for those students at community colleges taking summer 
courses so they can finish their degrees.
  Additionally, to help low-income and first generation students, this 
legislation strengthens the GEAR UP and TRIO programs, programs which 
have helped thousands of young Nevadans achieve their dream of a 
college degree.
  A final point I want to highlight is the simplification of the 
federal financial aid form--the FAFSA. Currently seven pages long and 
probably more complicated than filling out a tax return, the bill 
creates a two-page ``EZFAFSA'' for low-income kids, and phases out the 
current form within five years. This will help get federal aid to the 
students that need it most.
  While Senator Kennedy and Enzi, and the entire HELP Committee deserve 
enormous credit for their work to move this legislation forward in a 
bipartisan way, I also want to thank my friend from Maryland, Senator 
Mikulski, who stepped into some very big shoes with Senator Kennedy's 
absence, to help get this bill across the finish line.
  Combined with our efforts last year, passage of the Higher Education 
Opportunity Act reaffirms our commitment to making sure higher 
education is affordable and accessible for students across America.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Sanders). Who yields time?
  Ms. MIKULSKI. I yield the Senator from Illinois 3 minutes.
  Mr. DURBIN. I thank the Senator from Maryland. What a great job she 
did pinch hitting for our friend Ted Kennedy, with Senator Enzi, 
bringing this bill to the floor tonight and the conference report. 
There are three or four provisions in here I worked hard to include, 
and I think they are going to help provide an affordable college 
education.
  You would be surprised to know that about one-fourth of the expense 
that college students face when they go to college is for textbooks. 
Textbooks cost twice as much as ordinary books. Until we put this 
provision in, students couldn't go on Amazon and other places to find 
discounts. Now they will be able to. They will have the information so 
they can search for the most affordable books. We make the publisher 
split up the books into pocket parts and CDs so they don't bundle them 
together, and students can buy only what they really need.
  Secondly, I have been working for years with my friends who are 
prosecutors and public defenders. Kids graduating from law school today 
have a mountain of debt. They can't afford, usually, to take a job as a 
young prosecutor or public defender. We have a student loan forgiveness 
program in here. It went through the Judiciary Committee, now through 
the HELP Committee. It will provide up to $10,000 a year in student 
loan forgiveness for those who will work a minimum of 3 years. That is 
the way to build the professionals we need as both prosecutors and 
defenders. It is the John R. Justice Act. It is one that will help our 
Nation and help the enforcement of law all across the country.
  I also have a provision to help campuses deal with insecurity and 
terrorism. We have seen too many instances of violence on campus. This 
will provide for coordination on campuses to develop plans to keep 
their students safe. That is something every parent wants to feel when 
they leave their kids at school.
  These are all steps in the right direction. I thank all those who 
worked on this bill. Most of us in the Senate would say flat-out we 
wouldn't be here today were it not for higher education. It has become 
a more difficult challenge for today's students. This bill is going to 
give those students a helping

[[Page 17645]]

hand. I will be happy to cast my vote in favor of it.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Who yields time?
  Ms. MIKULSKI. Mr. President, how much time do I have?
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator has 4 minutes.
  Ms. MIKULSKI. I yield 3 minutes to the Senator from Connecticut, who 
also chairs the Banking Committee. On behalf of all of us who worked on 
this bill, I thank Senator Dodd for helping us resolve some very 
serious issues that existed between the Banking and Education 
Committees on the student loan issue. His steadfastness and work with 
Senator Shelby actually helped us bring this bill to the floor. I thank 
him.
  Mr. DODD. Mr. President, let me return the compliment by commending 
our colleague from Maryland, who has taken on the Herculean task in the 
absence of our colleague from Massachusetts, of shepherding, along with 
Senator Enzi, this very important piece of legislation. My compliments 
to Mike Enzi, the Republican leader on this issue, along with Barbara, 
and the House leaders--George Miller, with whom I was elected to 
Congress many years ago--and the members of the House Education 
Committee.
  This is a very important bill. A few days ago we passed the housing 
bill to make a difference for people facing foreclosure. We tried to 
pass legislation dealing with low-income energy assistance. I remind my 
colleagues, the Presiding Officer led the effort on that issue, and we 
will come back to it.
  Education costs are critical to address. This bill is sweeping in its 
reforms, making a difference for average Americans and their families 
to deal with those costs and allow them to achieve the goal of a higher 
education, which not only has tremendous advantage for them 
individually but for us, as a country. It is a small price to pay for 
the reward we receive. The GI bill, which was adopted during World War 
II, is another example of this sort of effort, providing 8 million 
Americans benefits. Over the years it cost a lot of money, but the 
benefit to our country has vastly exceeded the cost of that program. 
This bill is like that one in many ways. This bill is not inexpensive, 
but it provides benefits to our country.
  I am particularly proud of a number of provisions. One is the Pell 
grant increase, up to $8,000, which will help us in dealing with the 
cost of a public education, though not close enough when it comes to 
private education. The Patsy Mink Fellowship Program, which I am proud 
to have authored, creates scholarships and makes it possible for young 
women and minorities to become college professors, and addressing the 
very small number of women who are providing a college education. The 
provisions designed to get colleges and universities to control their 
costs, including both transparency and incentives for schools who 
succeed in this endeavor. I am also proud of the improvements we have 
made to TRIO and GEAR-Up and the expansion of child care in this bill.
  Lastly, as my friend and colleague from Maryland pointed out, the 
inclusion of the Private Student Loan Transparency Improvement Act, 
which Senator Shelby and I, along with 19 other members of the Banking 
Committee authored unanimously, will make a difference when it comes to 
protecting student borrowers from excessive debt. These provisions 
require lenders to provide more accurate and timely information to 
their customers about interest rates, terms and conditions of their 
private loans, and prohibits documented private student lending 
practices that have harmed students and their families, keeping them 
from obtaining the most competitive and affordable student loans.
  The bill also ensures that private lending is done on the fairest and 
most transparent terms. It prevents kickbacks and co-branding that may 
allow steering of students to specific lenders, and it guarantees 
borrowers time to consider their options and shop around for better 
terms without losing the loan they have been offered. These are very 
important steps.
  Finally, I end where I began. None of this would have happened 
without the senior Senator from Massachusetts who has dedicated his 
life to working families. This bill is yet further testimony to his 
commitment to those constituencies, the people of this country. We have 
missed him terribly lately, but he had a champion in the Senator from 
Maryland. If I had to pick one person to replace Ted Kennedy, I would 
choose Barbara Mikulski every day of the week. She did a fabulous job 
on behalf of students and their families. We thank her immensely. I 
know my friend from Massachusetts is watching tonight, and he thanks 
her as well.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Who yields time?
  The Senator from Wyoming.
  Mr. ENZI. Mr. President, may I ask how much time I have?
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator has 15 minutes.
  Mr. ENZI. Mr. President, I won't use nearly that much time, and I 
would be happy to share with my colleague, if she wants to make some 
closing remarks as well.
  I rise to summarize why the Higher Education Opportunity Act is a 
major victory for America's students and their families and for our 
future economic security. Simply put, it ensures that a college 
education, which is the gateway to the future for working families and 
for businesses, will be within their reach in the years to come.
  I thank those who have made their comments earlier: the Senator from 
Oklahoma, Mr. Coburn, and the Senator from Tennessee, Mr. Alexander, 
who pointed out some things that still need to be done in the area of 
higher education. It would have been nice to have been able to do them 
in the bill.
  One of those is deregulation. If we have that much paper, that many 
billions of dollars' worth of paper that need to be done, it is time 
for us to appoint a task force to evaluate their usefulness. I did that 
with some of the elementary education issues the first year I was here, 
and we found that every single paper that was submitted to the 
Department of Education was looked at to be sure that every blank was 
filled in and every ``t'' was crossed and every ``I'' was dotted. Our 
disappointment was that they were then filed away and nobody made any 
use of them.
  We were able to get rid of some of those forms. Obviously, this is an 
even bigger opportunity.
  The Senator from Oklahoma pointed out the lack of metrics for 
progress in these areas. Although there are new programs, past 
experience has been that many of them do not get funded because they 
have to come out of discretionary funds. They are good ideas that 
probably will never happen. But it would be a good idea to have metrics 
in there so we can gauge how well things are doing. We have a law that 
provides for that kind of measurement and requires each agency have a 
program to set up the guidelines by which we can measure, and then they 
are required to measure. I have noticed over the years that there are a 
number of agencies that are actually failing their own evaluations. We 
never do anything with that, which is another challenge.
  Our country is being challenged today, and it is a challenge we 
cannot afford to lose. We are engaged in a race for knowledge and 
skills, and the nation that wins will have a head start on building a 
stronger economy. The solution to this challenge is to make a college 
education more accessible, affordable, and accountable for all 
Americans. That is what we are trying to do in the Higher Education 
Opportunity Act.
  In this era of rising college costs, students and families must have 
good information to use when making decisions about which college to 
attend, how to finance their college education, and how to manage their 
student loans once they are out of college. This agreement is about 
good information, sunshine, and transparency. College is no longer an 
option. It is a necessity. Most good jobs today require some college. I 
want to make sure everyone has access to the education and training

[[Page 17646]]

they will need to be successful in the global economy. This legislation 
gets us much closer to that goal.
  I am pleased to say that with the passage of this agreement, we will 
have completed the work of two of the four pieces that make up Federal 
education and training policy.
  Late last year we finished Head Start. Today we will finish higher 
education. We still have more work to do because we must reauthorize 
and improve the Workforce Investment Act so that our workers have the 
skills they need to be successful in an increasingly skill-driven 
economy. That leaves reauthorizing No Child Left Behind to complete our 
education task.
  Mr. President, as this debate on this legislation comes to a close, 
it is necessary to thank those who have worked long and hard on this 
bill. First and foremost, I thank Chairman Kennedy for his commitment 
to keeping this process bipartisan, and working with me and all of my 
Republican colleagues on the HELP Committee throughout this entire 
process, lately by telephone, but with the same passion and enthusiasm.
  I also thank Senator Mikulski for taking the helm and getting us to 
the finish line when others might have given up.
  Because this has been a bipartisan, bicameral process, I want to 
thank our House counterparts--Chairman Miller, Ranking Member McKeon, 
Congressman Hinojosa, and Congressman Keller--for their commitment to 
working with us to find ways to reach an agreement on issues that many 
thought would be impossible to achieve.
  There are many other Members I wish to thank for contributing the 
time and effort they did to make sure we were putting together good 
policy. It is difficult to single out just a few. I have to immensely 
thank every single Senator who is on my committee, both Republican and 
Democrat. That is where we share ideas. That is where most of the 
changes in the bills are made. That is where people are able to get 
together and debate at length their ideas for how to make things 
better. And we do.
  I thank Senators Alexander, Burr, and Coburn for their comments. They 
have disagreements on some of the key issues in the conference report, 
but, nonetheless, they continued to work to reach a resolution and 
improve the final product.
  There are many congressional staff who worked on this conference 
report. The breadth and importance of the issues, not to mention the 
length of the legislation, requires many people working many hours to 
get it done. Actually, it is not only many hours or many days or many 
weeks or many months--but this one has been many years.
  I have always said I have a staff worthy of gold medals, and my staff 
who worked on this bill have shown their gold medal status once again. 
I must first acknowledge and thank Beth Buehlmann, my education policy 
director. It is no exaggeration to state that without Beth, I do not 
think there would be a Higher Education Act reauthorization today. That 
is what I hired her for several years ago. She truly was the force to 
start the reauthorization 3\1/2\ years ago. She worked tirelessly to 
ensure that we drafted a bill to reflect the changing nature of our 
student bodies, as well as to ensure that we, as a nation, will 
maintain our status as having the best education system in the world.
  Her team of Ann Clough, Adam Briddell, Kelly Hastings, and Lindsay 
Hunsicker is comprised of remarkable individuals who brought their 
talents and knowledge to the forefront in this bill.
  I also thank my staff director, Ilyse Schuman, and Greg Dean, Amy 
Shank, Randi Reid, John Hallmark, and Ron Hindle, who also put in many 
hours and added invaluable input into this bill as well as the overall 
process.
  I also thank members of Senator Kennedy's staff for their hard work: 
Michael Myers, who has been tireless on this and has provided the kind 
of leadership that coordinated it through some of these difficult 
times; Carmel Martin, the expert on education; JD LaRock; Missy 
Rohrbach, who, incidentally, had twin babies today, a boy and a girl. 
It is my understanding she is doing well. She worked while pregnant and 
helped to get this pregnant bill done. I also thank Erin Renner, 
Roberto Rodriguez, and Emma Vadehra of Senator Kennedy's staff.
  Additionally, I thank all of the other HELP Committee staff for their 
hard work throughout this process, especially David Cleary and Sarah 
Rittling of Senator Alexander's subcommittee staff. Also deserving 
thanks are our Republican Members' staff, including Allison Dembeck, 
Celia Sims, Glee Smith, Karen McCarthy, Juliann Andreen, Alison Anway, 
John van Meter, and Elizabeth Floyd, as well as their Democratic staff 
counterparts. Also, I thank Scott Raab from Senator McConnell's office 
and Jim Johnson in Senator Shelby's office for helping us work through 
some of the more difficult issues in the negotiations.
  Also deserving my gratitude is the House staff, including Mark 
Zuckerman, Alex Nock, Gabriella Gomez, Julie Radocchia, and Jeff Appel 
with Chairman Miller's staff, and Sally Stroup, James Bergeron, and Amy 
Jones with Congressman McKeon's staff.
  Also, with any piece of legislation that we draft, we should not 
forget the legislative counsels in both bodies who worked tirelessly to 
put the 1,500-page agreement together. They are Steve Cope, Molly 
Lothamer, Mark Koster, Kristin Romero, and Amy Gaynor, who also deserve 
to be recognized.
  It has been 10 years since the last major reauthorization. I believe 
it was worth the time and the effort to get it to this point. The 
changes we make today will affect today's students and students for 
generations to come.
  I yield the floor and yield the remainder of my time to the Senator 
from Maryland.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Maryland.
  Ms. MIKULSKI. Mr. President, I thank the Senator from Wyoming.
  We are now heading to our wrap-up.
  Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that a list of 48 letters in 
support of the bill be printed in the Record. They range from the 
American Association of State Colleges and Universities, to the United 
States Student Association, to the Chamber of Commerce, and many 
others.
  There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in 
the Record, as follows:

    Letters of Support Received for Higher Education Opportunity Act

       American Association of State Colleges and Universities, 
     State Higher Education Executive Officers (SHEEO), U.S. 
     Public Interest Research Group/United States Student 
     Association, United Negro College Fund, Association of Jesuit 
     Colleges and Universities, Council for Opportunity in 
     Education, Thurgood Marshall College Fund, National 
     Association for Equal Opportunity in Higher Education 
     (NAFEO), National Council for Community and Education 
     Partnerships (NCCEP), National Council of La Raza, National 
     Education Association, American Federation of Teachers, 
     American Indian Higher Education Consortium, National Down 
     Syndrome Society/National Down Syndrome Congress, National 
     Federation for the Blind, and Consortium for Citizens with 
     Disabilities.
       U.S. Chamber of Commerce, American Bar Association, 
     American Association of University Women, American 
     Association of School Administrators, American Association of 
     Colleges of Teacher Education, Career College Association, 
     Council of Graduate Schools, National School Board 
     Association, National Association of Student Financial Aid 
     Administrators, National Association for the Education of 
     Young Children, New York State Education Department, 
     University of North Carolina, California State University, 
     Midwestern University, Student Loan Servicing Alliance, and 
     National HEP/CAMP Association.
       Hispanic Education Association, Center for Law and Social 
     Policy (CLASP), Direct Loan Coalition, Massachusetts 
     Institute of Technology, Endicott College (MA), College 
     Summit, Motion Picture Association of America, National 
     Association of College Stores, Legal Action Center, EdInvest, 
     International University of Nursing, St. George's University 
     School of Medicine, University of Phoenix, Massachusetts 
     Educational Opportunity Association, St. Matthew's 
     University, and Saba University School of Medicine.

  Ms. MIKULSKI. Mr. President, I too thank the very hard-working staff 
on this bill. There have been many compliments of me tonight, but I 
could not

[[Page 17647]]

have done what Senator Kennedy asked me to do without the very able 
help of Senator Kennedy's staff. Senator Enzi articulated them by name, 
but especially Mike Myers, Carmel Martin, JD LaRock, and others. I 
could not have done it without them. Also, I say to Senator Enzi, we 
could not have done this without you. I worked with you on pensions and 
I knew how solid our relationship was and how carefully you pursue 
these matters. Senator Kennedy said you were a prince of a guy to work 
with, and he was absolutely right. I extend my thanks to you and to 
your professional staff as well.
  There were also other Democrats who worked on the bill on our side--
two who could not speak tonight, but I acknowledge the very hard-
working role of Senator Obama, who was a very aggressive advocate on 
many of these issues, along with Senator Clinton.
  Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that a list of the staff 
thank-yous be printed in the Record so we do not forget one person who 
helped make this legislation possible.
  There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in 
the Record, as follows:

                   List of Staff Thank-You's for HEA

       Senator Kennedy: Michael Myers, Carmel Martin, J.D. LaRock, 
     Erin Renner, Missy Rohrbach, Emma Vadehra, Jennie Fay, Shawn 
     Daugherty, Michael Zawada, Roberto Rodriguez, David Johns, 
     Jane Oates.
       Senator Enzi: Ilyse Shuman, Greg Dean, Beth Buehlmann, Ann 
     Clough, Adam Briddell, Lindsay Hunsicker, Aaron Bishop, Kelly 
     Hastings.
       Chairman Miller: Mark Zuckerman, Alex Nock, Gabriella 
     Gomez, Julie Radocchia, Jeff Appel.
       Ranking Member McKeon: Sally Stroup, Amy Jones.
       Senator Dodd: Mary Ellen McGuire, Jeremy Sharp.
       Senator Mikulski: Julia Frifield, Dvora Lovinger, Robin 
     Juliano.
       Senator Harkin: Rob Barron.
       Senator Bingaman: Michael Yudin, Michele Mazzocco.
       Senator Murray: Kathryn Young.
       Senator Reed: Seth Gerson.
       Senator Clinton: Mildred Otero, Latoya Johnson, Chelsea 
     Maughan.
       Senator Obama: Steve Robinson.
       Senator Sanders: Huck Gutman.
       Senator Brown: Will Jawando.
       Senator Gregg: Allison Dembeck.
       Senator Alexander: David Cleary, Sarah Rittling.
       Senator Burr: Celia Sims.
       Senator Isakson: Glee Smith.
       Senator Murkowski: Karen McCarthy.
       Senator Hatch: Juliann Andreen.
       Senator Roberts: Alison Anway.
       Senator Allard: Jon VanMeter.
       Senator Coburn: Elizabeth Floyd.
       Senate Banking Committee: Senator Dodd: Shawn Maher, Amy 
     Friend, Roger Hollingsworth.
       Senator Shelby: Jim Johnson.
       Senate Budget Committee: Robyn Hiestand.
       Senate Legislative Counsel: Mark Koster, Amy Gaynor, 
     Kristin Romero, Laura Ayoud.
       House Legislative Counsel: Steve Cope, Molly Lothamer.
       Congressional Budget Office: Debb Kalcevic, Justin 
     Humphrey.

  Ms. MIKULSKI. Mr. President, I also thank our colleagues in the 
House. Congressman Miller and Congressman McKeon were absolutely 
stalwarts in working with us. Congressman Miller and I had daily 
conversations on how to move this bill forward, and it was both 
fruitful and productive, and what the Congress should be.
  A word about working with my colleague, Senator Enzi. We had 
disputes. We had issues. We had things that had to be worked out. You 
heard some of them this evening from the Senator from Oklahoma, the 
Senator from Tennessee. But at the end of the day, the day was over. We 
would be able to work and follow that kind of Ronald Reagan-Tip O'Neill 
rule that when the day was over, the dispute was set aside. We went 
home and thought about what we could do to move this bill.
  I wish the whole Senate could work the way we worked on this bill, 
starting with Senator Kennedy's leadership, and Senator Enzi's, as they 
held the hearings, listened to us, and included us. We need to do more 
bipartisan work. When all is said and done, we have to start doing 
things and less saying things. Because one of the great things I like 
about this bill is it achieves a very important American freedom.
  Our Constitution explicitly guarantees many rights: the freedom of 
speech, the freedom of assembly, the freedom of religion, the freedom 
of press. But implicit in our Constitution, our Declaration of 
Independence, and all of our documents, all of our beliefs, and all of 
our values, is we believe in the freedom to achieve, that in the United 
States of America you can be anything you want to be, and you have 
access, and should have access, to an opportunity ladder that enables 
you to participate in the American dream.
  We are a country whose values say: Dream about what you can be and 
dream about what you can contribute. And when you want to follow that 
dream, you should not be barred from it because of the size of your 
wallet. Your dream should only be shaped by the size of your talents.
  I think this bill today, tonight, will advance this whole freedom to 
achieve, this opportunity ladder for our young people. I am very 
honored to participate in it. I am very honored Senator Kennedy asked 
me to take on this conference. But we could not have advanced this idea 
without Senator Ted Kennedy.
  Senator Ted Kennedy is a giant in this institution and in this 
country. His whole life has been devoted to access to opportunity, 
access to education, access to health care, that there be no barriers 
in the area of civil rights where people were sidelined or redlined.
  So tonight, as we move to the adoption of this bill, I say to my 
colleagues here, I urge the adoption of this bill.
  I want Senator Kennedy to know many of us today, and while he has 
been recovering from his illness, have worn these blue armbands. They 
say: ``Ted Strong.'' Well, we know Ted is strong.
  So, Ted, this is for you tonight.
  Mr. President, I ask for the yeas and nays on the adoption of the 
conference report.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there a sufficient second?
  There appears to be a sufficient second.
  The yeas and nays were ordered.
  Ms. MIKULSKI. Mr. President, I understand that the actual vote on the 
conference report will occur at a time to be determined by our 
leadership.
  Mr. President, I yield the floor.
  I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. DURBIN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for 
the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.


                           ORDER OF PROCEDURE

  Mr. DURBIN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the 
conference report to accompany H.R. 4137 be set aside; and the Senate 
now proceed to the conference report to accompany H.R. 4040, the 
Consumer Product Safety Commission Act; there be debate on the 
conference report until 8 p.m. this evening, with the time equally 
divided and controlled in the usual form; that at 8 p.m. the Senate 
proceed to vote on adoption of the conference report to accompany H.R. 
4040, that upon disposition of that report, the Senate then resume the 
conference report to accompany H.R. 4137 and the Senate proceed to vote 
on adoption of the report, without further intervening action or 
debate; that prior to the second vote, there be 2 minutes of debate 
equally divided and controlled in the usual form.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there objection?
  Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Mr. DURBIN. Mr. President, if I could have the attention of the 
Members, there will be two votes at 8 o'clock.

                          ____________________