Federal student aid hangs in the balance as congress stalls

Congressional gridlock has a new victim: higher education.

The Higher Education Act , originally signed by President Lyndon Johnson in 1965 , authorizes federal financial aid programs, such as Pell Grants, federal student loans and federal work-study. Last reformed in 2008 , the act is up for reauthorization when it expires at the end of 2014 .

While Congressional appropriations committees will continue to fund these programs if Congress does not reauthorize the Act, reauthorization plays an important role in how federal funds are allocated to college students and universities .

“The Higher Education Act is something that is critical to the support the federal government provides for students and their ability to attend college,” said Barry Toiv, vice president for public affairs for the Association of American Universities. “And that is particularly true for low- and middle-income students.”

This summer, both Republicans and Democrats put forth reauthorization proposals, yet they differed substantially. Democrats, in a 785-page bill by Sen. Tom Harkin (D-Iowa), advocated for expanding Pell Grants year-round. Republicans, meanwhile, passed a series of bills in the House advocating for linking tax credits to Pell Grants.

Pell Grants, a form of financial aid given by the U.S. Department of Education, have dominated the debate over reauthorizing the Higher Education Act.

“It is most important for schools that serve the highest share of low-income students,” Penn professor and Chair of the Higher Education Division of the Graduate School of Education Laura Perna said. “The Pell is just so important to provide need-based financial aid in the form of grants, money that doesn’t have to be repaid.”

Perna testified on Pell Grants in front of the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions this summer.

Penn, as well as other universities, have been staunch supporters of expanding Pell Grants.

“We support reinstitution of year-round Pell — that is something that the higher education community as a whole strongly supports,” Penn’s Associate Vice President for Federal Affairs Bill Andresen said. “We want Pell to be as expansive as possible, so we think things like Summer Pell, year-round Pell, those types of things, we support.”

Pell grants are not available to students who want to take summer courses. Summer Pell Grants and year-round Pell Grants, which both expired in 2012, used to support students who wanted to take summer courses.

The higher education community, including Penn, has also used the reauthorization process to lobby Congress for other changes in higher education policy.

“What we would also like to see is to have Congress take a look at some of the regulations contained in the bill, to see if there is a way to eliminate some duplicative and unnecessary, overly burdensome regulations,” Andresen said. “But they are mostly administrative kinds of things.”

Regardless of lobbying and bipartisan support for higher education, it is unlikely that any type of reauthorization will pass before the new Congress arrives following the midterm election.

“Congress will be occupied by other matters now that the election is approaching,” Perna said. “But we should all be interested in paying attention to the mechanisms in place to ensure affordability of higher education, and federal financial aid is one very important part of that.”

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