Congressman Buck McKeon is supporting California Veterans receiving equal Education Benefits.

CQ TODAY ONLINE NEWS – EDUCATION

Amendments Would Extend Tuition Aid to Non-Traditional Students

By Karoun Demirjian

The House Education and Labor Committee on Tuesday began marking up a bill to dramatically change the system of student lending by adopting a series of amendments to extend tuition assistance to non-traditional students, including members of the military.

The core of the legislation (HR 3221) is a direct reflection of a proposal from President Obama to convert all Federal Family Education Loans (FFEL), which are disbursed through private lenders but are federally subsidized, to direct loans from the government — a changeover that supporters say will generate $87 billion in savings. Private lenders would remain part of the equation as servicers of those loans, and much of that $87 billion would then be invested in community colleges, early childhood education, Pell grants, and other educational programs.     
Lawmakers approved four amendments by voice vote to extend access to those funds to special categories of students. One, an amendment by Lynn Woolsey, D-Calif., would prioritize low-income, or first-generation, or delayed-enrollment students and students with dependents for competitive educational grants. Another, presented by Ruben Hinojosa, D-Texas, would extend special funding for historically black colleges under the Higher Education Act until 2019.

The committee also approved two amendments extending benefits to servicemembers — one, by Susan A. Davis, D-Calif., would forgive any loans military members incur while on active duty; another, by Howard P. “Buck” McKeon, R-Calif., would give service members more freedom to attend their college of choice under the G.I. bill, by mandating that their eligibility for state-based tuition assistance be calculated against an aggregate of both maximum tuition thresholds and fees.

Lawmakers also debated two substitute amendments, one presented by Democrats and another by Republicans, which had not been voted on by early afternoon Tuesday. The first, presented by Chairman George Miller, D-Calif., as an amendment to his original bill, added language to promote more opportunities for students to participate in apprenticeships through community colleges, to make early childhood educational opportunities and standards more responsive to children for whom English is not a first language, and to keep graduate students in the loop by eliminating language that would have made graduate students ineligible for subsidized student loans starting in 2015. Miller’s substitute also slightly reduces the amount of money going to school modernization and early childhood education.

But the changes of that substitute don’t get to the heart of Republican’s main point of contention with the bill — that in converting FFEL to direct loans and cutting the private lenders out of the equation, employees of that industry would lose an estimated 35,000 jobs and students across the country would lose a great deal of choice in loans.

“There is a better way to stabilize the loan program, chart a path for long-term student loan reform, invest in financial aid, and reduce the deficit,” said ranking member John Kline, R-Minn.

The committee debated that plan, which Republicans presented as a substitute to Miller’s amendment. It would replace the contents of the bill with legislation to extend the Ensuring Continued Access and Student Loans Act (ECASLA), an emergency act that Congress passed in 2008 to pump cash to private lenders so that they would continue to provide students with loans in the midst of a recession that threatened to otherwise cripple the lending market, to 2014. The program is set to expire in 2010.

While Republicans have said they do not see ECASLA as a long-term solution, Democrats bristled at the suggestion they should keep private lenders on life support at a cost to students and government programs.

“ECASLA was a necessary short-term stopgap response to a difficult situation so as to protect students . . . but it continues to in effect prop up a system that I think reasonable people would say we don’t need,” said Timothy H. Bishop, D-N.Y. “If we are providing the capital, why do we need to funnel that capital through a profit-making intermediary to support student borrowing?”