Lobbying Pays Off

Finally Congress has done something worth praising. On Monday and Tuesday of this week, the House and Senate each approved the aptly-named Higher Education Act, a 700-page bill containing several significant reforms in financing a college education in this country.

Under the bill, which the President is expected to sign, students who choose a career in teaching will begin to have student loan debts forgiven after three years; after six years, such debts will be forgiven completely.

Moreover, interest rates on every new student loan will be slashed down from 8.25 percent to 7.46 percent, saving an average student about $700 over 10 years.

Still more money will be thrown at the nation's college students. The maximum award provided by the federal Pell Grant program will jump from $3,000 this year to $4,500 next. In five years, increases will bring that maximum to $5,800.

Students will be allowed to earn more money at a job while remaining eligible for financial aid under federal guidelines.

Students with direct loans from their educational institutions will be allowed to refinance their loans at a lower rate (provided they act on this change before Feb. 1).

All in all, the Act amounts to a major national investment in this generation's future. Congress and the President should be praised for fitting so many helpful provisions into this bill, even amid the continuing conservatism of the late 1990s.

Yet it is sad, in a way, that such a good bill emanating from the 105th Congress comes as such a surprise. Higher education is an easy cause to support, with fans in constituencies of different ages, classes and political beliefs.

And Congress hardly acted on its own initiative. In fact, a good bit of credit for these student-friendly provisions ought go to our own President Rudenstine and other University lobbyists, who, without fanfare, ply the halls of the Capitol on behalf of the needs of America's colleges and their customers. Rudenstine himself sent five letters to Massachusetts Congressional representatives and Harvard alumni on the Hill.

Earlier, Rudenstine had been successful in helping shoot down the Riggs amendment to the Act that would have denied government money to any schools that considered race, sex, color, ethnicity or national origin as factors in the college admissions process.

In fact, the success of Harvard's lobbying points out the need to find a similarly well-connected replacement for Harvard's departing vice president of government and community affairs, James H. Rowe III '73.

The Higher Education Act giveth, but it also taketh away. This page is deeply concerned about one provision of the bill, which makes it possible for universities to inform a student's parents if the student breaks state or federal laws or school policies on drug abuse. Such a provision seems to set a dangerous precedent for excessive intrusions into students' lives. A student trusted to go thousands of dollars in debt to finance an education must also be trusted to negotiate with his or her parents on non-fiscal matters.