Mr. President, I am going to speak a little bit about this very important bill, S. 1642, the Higher Education Amendments Act of 2007. This legislation is a bipartisan product of 3 years of negotiations by the members of the Senate Health,…
Mr. President, I am going to speak a little bit about this very important bill, S. 1642, the Higher Education Amendments Act of 2007. This legislation is a bipartisan product of 3 years of negotiations by the members of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, or the HELP Committee. It builds on the legislation the HELP Committee passed in the 109th Congress.
It is important to note that the legislation before us today is not a Democratic or a Republican bill; it is a bipartisan bill. We worked on it carefully. We made sure that parts which were objectionable to either side were eliminated or a third way found, and as a result of that very congenial process, it has gotten us to this point where we are on the floor with the bill.
Following the bill we had last week, which also dealt with higher education--more with the funding issues--this bill covers a number of the other issues. But Republican Senators were able to secure changes to the Higher Education Act that were important to them, as were Democratic Senators.
Our committee works a little differently than a lot of the committees. We use the committee markup to see what the objections are to a bill, the intensity of those objections, and identify possible solutions. Then, once the bill has been marked up, we will get together a managers' package that will overcome any remaining objections. I am pleased with the effort that has gone into this bill since markup. We worked together to bring to the floor a piece of legislation that can be supported by the most liberal and the most conservative Members of the Senate.
I am pleased we are taking up this bill today. The companion legislation, the Higher Education Access Reconciliation Act of 2007, passed the Senate last week, as I mentioned. My colleagues heard me say over and over again last week that the reconciliation bill was only a small piece of the Higher Education Act. Without considering both bills, we would only be doing part of the job.
I wish to thank my leadership for hearing me and my Republican colleagues on the HELP Committee when we requested that both these bills be considered sequentially.
At this point, I ask unanimous consent to have printed in the Record and sent to the desk the letter several of us sent requesting that both these higher education bills be considered together.
Mr. President, today we are going to consider the rest of the higher education pie--the foundation of the programs we discussed last week. I believe that without considering both pieces of legislation, we will not make the changes necessary to help students enter into and succeed in higher education.
These are all of the pieces of the higher education pie. We see the little red triangle there; that is the reconciliation piece which we did last week, and it deals with the Pell grant funding, primarily. This bill deals with the other pie pieces we see on this chart.
ACG, the Academic Competitiveness grants, and the SMART grants, are grants to students who will specialize in science, technology, engineering, math, and some selected languages. These grants provide extra support above the Pell grants, and that is so we turn out the kind of people we need in technical fields to keep the innovation in the United States going. We passed the America COMPETES package that ties in with this.
Teacher quality. The key to a classroom is the teacher. We had to have a piece in there that would encourage teachers and get them extra instruction so they can be better teachers.
FAFSA simplification. There are a lot of people who have not applied for grants because the process is so difficult. You probably saw us last week mention that this was the application--actually, these are the instructions; the applications are equally as long. We have been able, through this bill, to reduce that to a very simple form for students to be able to fill out to see if they can qualify for the Federal help that is available. There is significant Federal help available, and we don't want anybody not attending higher education, whether it be college or technical school, because they don't have the resources for it. We are trying to provide the resources, and now we are trying to make sure the process isn't so difficult that people skip the process and skip higher education. We need the technical skills that are provided by a higher education, a higher level of thought. So we now have a much easier form.
You will also find some little improvements, such as if you do work while you are in junior high and high school and you earn and save some money, you won't be penalized when you apply for college. We want people to be saving their money, not spending their money so that it doesn't count against them when they go to make the application.
Graduate and international education, and loan disclosures are also included in this bill. There has been quite a bit of emphasis on this lately. I was pleased to be able, as an accountant, to provide a lot of suggestions for the ways these problems could be handled so that people would know exactly what is available and so that companies and colleges dealing with loans would do the right thing.
Pell grants and campus-based aid are a huge part. It complements the Pell grant work we did last week, which was essential to what we did in the reconciliation bill. And, of course, financial literacy. We incorporate that into our work whenever we possibly can. People need to know as much about their financial situation as possible. It is particularly critical for college students. We don't want them winding up in an impossible situation when they graduate. We want them to be able to take advantage of the resources available before they enter college.
So we have a lot of pieces that will be completed when we finish the day today, and I am convinced we will be able to complete this today. We have a limited number of amendments, and many are very reasonable and should not be too difficult. We will have discussions on some others. We will have a very bipartisan discussion on what can be put in the bill to complete it, and we will get it done today.
Why is that important? This year marks 50 years since Sputnik was launched. That launch sparked huge turmoil in this country and worry about the knowledge and skills necessary to keep our economy growing and competitive. I was in junior high at the time. It was a shock to our Nation. Every one of us could recognize it--teachers, parents and, probably as important, students, recognized it. Russia was beating us. They had put a satellite into orbit. It shocked us. But it also brought out that American competitive spirit. We said they were not going to beat us. It launched a change in education such as we had not seen in the United States in decades, maybe centuries. We were ultimately the winners of the space race, but it wasn't just the space race; it was an education race. It was the broad range of education the United States delved into and the innovation that was brought about at the time that put us ahead of Russia. Of course, the Government probably helped considerably too. Sputnik had a dramatic effect on our education system and made us recognize a high school diploma was no longer just a nice thing to have. We could no longer rest on our past successes as a Nation. We met the challenge of Sputnik through the National Defense Education Act. We looked to education as a path to continued success, and we supported an increase in the number of people who would continue their education beyond high school, particularly in math, science, engineering, and technology.
We are again being challenged. For millions of Americans, access to an affordable college education is the key to their success in the 21st century global economy. In the 1950s, skilled jobs comprised 20 percent of the U.S. job market. In 2000, 85 percent of all U.S. jobs are categorized as skilled. Without some college education, these Americans will not have the qualifications for over 90 percent of the new jobs being created over the next 10 years. It is estimated that 60 percent of tomorrow's jobs will require skills that only 20 percent of today's workers possess. We have a huge challenge, not just in K-12 and higher education but in continuing education. It is estimated the average person leaving college will change careers 14 times. I didn't say ``change jobs'' 14 times, I said ``change careers'' 14 times. That is the pace at which things are accelerating.
Here is an even more important statistic. Of those 14 career changes, 10 of them don't even exist now. So we are
educating people for a level of jobs that do not exist at the present time. That is quite a challenge. In this decade, 40 percent of job growth will be in jobs requiring postsecondary education. Those jobs requiring associate degrees are growing the fastest. Learning is never over; school is never out. Technology is demanding that everybody continue to learn and gain skills to remain competitive in the workplace.
America's ability to compete in a global economy depends increasingly on the number of students entering and completing college. Of the 75 percent of high school seniors who continue their studies, only 50 percent receive a degree in 5 years after enrolling in college. Only 25 percent of them receive a bachelor's degree or higher. These numbers, incidentally, are even worse for children of low-income families. Among eighth graders in 1988, only 16 percent from low-income families attained a bachelor's degree by 2000. The fact is that over four times as many eighth graders from high-income families attain bachelor's degrees than from low-income families. This is using the eighth graders from 1988 who should have graduated by 2000.
On the chart, you can see the level from low to high income who completed a bachelor's degree based on family income. Some of that is a failure on our part to emphasize to those in the low-income category they can do it and they should do it and how they can do it. That is part of what this bill does.
It is important to ensure that more students enroll in college prepared to learn and that more students have the support they need to complete college with the knowledge and skills to be successful. Slightly less than one-third--31 percent--of all public high school students are prepared for postsecondary education, as demonstrated by the academic courses they pursue. Well-prepared and well-supported students are more likely to persist to a degree completion and obtain the knowledge and skills they need.
For years, institutions of higher education and employers have expressed their dissatisfaction about the fact that our high school graduates need remedial study or training in order to do college-level work or to participate in the workforce. Nearly one-third of entering college freshmen take at least one remedial course. Each year, taxpayers pay an estimated $1 billion to $2 billion to provide remedial education to students at our public universities and community colleges.
Our goal should be to keep the cost of college down, expand the availability of information, help students and parents make more informed decisions, and improve financial literacy across the board so students and families have a better understanding of how they can manage their loans and monthly payments. Schools and colleges must do more to increase accountability and seek efficiencies that bring down the cost of postsecondary education.
S. 1642, the Higher Education Amendments of 2007, refines and focuses Federal policy on access, affordability, and accountability. It attempts to tackle the complexity of the Federal student data system. Right now, filling out the free application for federal student aid prevents many students from even considering college. That was never our intent. This bill, as I pointed out, reduces the number of questions on the FAFSA to those that are necessary to determining the need students have for financial assistance. We are making the FAFSA less complicated than filling out tax forms, which has not been the case in the past. The bill puts us on the path of greater coordination between Federal agencies so students and their families will have the opportunity to allow information that is already provided to the Government through tax forms, be used to complete the FAFSA.
Also, it is our responsibility to ensure that students and their families have the information they need to make informed decisions about the investment of time and money they are making to secure a college education. The cost of college has risen dramatically and at the same time the need for a college education has never been greater. Students will receive upfront information about financial decisions they are making. Similar information would be provided to them periodically throughout their college experience.
The quality of classroom teacher preparation is critical to the education of our K-12 students. The goal of the teacher preparation programs supported under this bill is to help teachers be prepared to meet the ever-increasing diverse needs of students and to improve student achievement.
The bill also addresses recent concerns that institutions of higher education and lenders have not been operating in the best interest of students and their families. Although what we have seen are isolated incidents, we wish to make sure the confidence in our institutions and financial aid advisors is not questioned. We have included requirements that institutions establish codes of conduct for how they work with lenders and prohibit incentives and other arrangements that would appear inappropriate. Students and their parents must have knowledge to make informed choices and financial decisions that will impact their lives for years to come.
It is no longer an option whether to pursue college or skills certification that is nationally recognized. Everybody needs tools to understand and shape their future. Higher education is the onramp to success in the global economy, and it is our responsibility to make sure everyone can access that opportunity and reach their goals. Without a lifetime of education, training, and retraining opportunities for everyone, we will not meet our 21st century needs and challenges.
There is tremendous opportunity in the United States. We recently went to India to see why they were winning in some markets and getting American jobs, and their method is kind of abhorrent to Americans, and it should be. They begin excluding students at very early ages. They make the prize very desirable in the end, and that results in lots of people pursuing and competing and getting those few opportunities for higher education out of that huge population.
We believe in higher education for anyone who wants it, and the need is there. I look forward to the opportunity to discuss this bill and to consider the amendments that will be offered. I thank Senator Kennedy for working with me and my Republican colleagues in order to bring a bipartisan bill to the floor. As he mentioned last week, this is essentially the bill he and I worked on the past 2 years and wanted to bring to the floor, but were not able to. We now have that opportunity, and I am pleased everyone is willing to cooperate and get it done quickly.
As we move forward, I am hopeful we will move forward with both the Higher Education Access Act of 2007, the reconciliation bill we passed last week, and this bill. The comprehensive reauthorization of both of these bills will make a huge difference. There is no reason they cannot accompany each other moving forward, as they have on the Senate floor. Each complements the other, and without both, the changes made in reconciliation will be less meaningful. I encourage the Democratic leadership to ensure we don't do just a piece of the pie as we move forward; otherwise, as was said last week, ``any way you slice it, higher education is left undone.'' We need both pieces to get it done right.
Again, I thank Senator Kennedy and those on the other side of the aisle on the committee for their tremendous cooperation, participation, focus, and willingness to figure out what we are trying to solve and find a way to solve it. We have done a very adequate job with what is in this bill.
I yield the floor.
Mr. President, I thank the Senator from North Dakota for offering this amendment. I think we will be able to take it on voice--I know we will be able to take it on a voice vote, and I appreciate what he has done to enhance what we have in the bill that deals with more transparency and better information for students and parents on their loans.
We created a number of new programs and disclosure requirements that will better equip students to make informed choices about how to finance their postsecondary education, which is always desired and what we are always working toward, and we have to find some mechanism through which that can be done. So I appreciate the way in which the Senator from North Dakota has approached this.
I appreciate, too, his information. I always learn a lot from listening to him, and the Claude Pepper pictures about the 1903 Wright flight and the 1969 Moon landing are particularly interesting. It does show how education is accelerating--learning how to do flight in 1903, landing on the Moon in 1969--but it was the Sputnik event I mentioned in 1957 that touched off a lot of that. So it was essentially 12 years of development that got us to the Moon.
I also want to mention the Grameen Bank. The founder of the Grameen Bank got a Nobel Peace prize for the work he has been doing loaning money to poor people. And this is a whole different level of poor than we know about in the United States. His first loan was for 27 cents to a lady who was then able to go into a weaving business. But the point I want to make is that the reason a lot of people aren't able to get loans is because they do not have any collateral. Students fall into that category, unless their parents have money. The student doesn't have money, and the student doesn't have collateral.
So what we have provided for in the United States, through the Higher Education Act, both the reconciliation and this act, is a mechanism for people who don't have collateral but just have that collateral of desire; that collateral of a work ethic to be able to get loans and grants to be able to go on to college.
The poorer they are, the more grants they qualify for in different ways. But they can get loans based on their desire to go to college. This mechanism, this clearinghouse, will help people make better determinations on their loans.
We also have a new mechanism which deals with the Parent PLUS loans, which are about 10 percent of the loans. That is going to be an auction process. We looked at some ways to be able to auction the rights to provide the loans in order to bring down the costs, particularly the Federal Government. What we decided on was taking this one category and trying it. To do the whole thing could disrupt the entire student loan process, so we are trying it through an auction process on the Parent PLUS loans. That will answer some of these questions, too, on certification and perhaps bring down some of the costs. But it will increase the ability of students to get loans.
I thank the Senator from North Dakota for his effort. At the appropriate time, we will do a voice vote on that if that is agreeable?
The amendment is cleared on both sides. Would it be appropriate to finish it now?
Mr. President, I thank the Senator for his good work on this amendment.
The GAO study of the feasibility of collecting employment information on college graduates can help us find out how effective the program is before we have another reauthorization. Reliable information on student success, particularly employment success--that is our best measure--is very important to the future of higher education. The postsecondary education system needs facts at the State and institutional levels to identify successes and challenges, and consumers need the information to make informed decisions about education and training programs. Some States have pretty strong relationships between higher education and State agencies to get those employment statistics, but it is not done nationally. I think this would be a great step to providing that information and helping us to see how well we are doing, as well as the students.
I yield the floor.
I move to lay that motion on the table.
The motion to lay on the table was agreed to.
Mr. President, I want to voice my appreciation for the presentation that was just made to give people a fuller understanding of what this amendment does. I will make a couple of additional comments on it.
One of the problems that brings this particular amendment forward is the appropriators did not appropriate the money that would have provided for all of the people who got a score of 70 or above to receive a grant in fiscal year 2007. Perhaps that has to do with a lack of authorization or too low of an authorization. So this one is an authorization.
It is an interesting process we have around here. We have the budget process, which is where the President sends us a bunch of recommendations as to how he thinks we ought to spend money, and then we revise it sort of the way we want to spend money, except the real revision is only in the caps. That is what a budget is, it is how much total money we get to spend. Then we have an authorization process, where the committees are involved in the actual legislation for that area.
In this case, higher education comes under Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions, the HELP Committee. So we get to authorize, which says what we think ought to happen, kind of in a maximum sort of way. So this amendment does authorize additional funds that would meet the criteria.
I do have some small concern. It says this would allow for those to reapply who did not apply for assistance. This is a competitive grant situation. For whatever reason, they might not have applied. If they did not apply, for a competitive grant, you simply do not get it. But I suspect that is something I will either better understand or we can make a correction on at a later time. So I do not have any problem with taking this amendment.
I do want to emphasize that anybody who wants higher education ought to look at the programs that are available out there. One of the things we are trying to do is get more information to more people about what is available. We originally called it the TRIO Program because there were three programs that would help students--some in minorities, some in lower income situations. But we had three programs.
Now we are at eight programs, and we keep devising ways so more kids can get more education.
What we need, of course, is for the kids to take advantage of the programs that are out there. I certainly would not want to stifle a program by not authorizing this at this point in time. So I encourage us to accept this amendment by a voice vote.
I yield the floor.
Mr. President, I, too, would like to thank her for her comments and her tremendous participation on the committee, particularly with her rural approach to problem-solving, and that rural approach affects Wyoming equally--well, maybe not equally to Alaska because they have a lot more land with a few more people--but she has done a tremendous job in the committee.
I yield up to 15 minutes to the Senator from Virginia for a presentation of his amendment.
Yes. Mr. President, I congratulate the Senator, Mr. Warner, for his tremendous effort, and not just on this bill but on the previous bills where his emphasis on science, technology, engineering, and math, has resulted in other grants that are available to students. We need to increase awareness among students of these opportunities, particularly in the lower grades, so they have the prerequisites they need to qualify for going to college. The Senator's emphasis on that has had tremendous effect on higher education and on the work we have done before.
I also thank the Senator for the comments he made about his staff working through the weekend and ours working through the weekend. This is not a 9-to-5 job around here. People don't realize the amount of dedication our staffs have. As I say, they work through the weekend for these students. It happened to be a beautiful weekend in Washington, and they were indoors making telephone calls and making sure that everything works precisely right so we can pass this amendment today. I think we would be willing to take it on a voice vote.
This will provide up-to-date technology, which is vitally important. Everything is operating off of technology today. And I especially appreciate the concern for and emphasis on minority-serving institutions having this opportunity. There is a disadvantage there, and we want to equalize that. The Senator has caught the essence of that and has the solution for it. I congratulate him. It will strengthen the national and digital and wireless infrastructure. That helps all of us because it increases national investment in that area and makes us all more communicative and to also have a greater ability for education.
I thank the Senator.
I move to lay that motion on the table.
The motion to lay on the table was agreed to.
Mr. President, I, too, wish to thank Senator Akaka for bringing this to our attention. That is one of the reasons we have 100 people in the Senate and 435 people on the House side, so that we bring all these various backgrounds together, so that something which may have been overlooked can be corrected, and the amendment process is one of the places where we correct that.
As Senator Akaka has said, this amendment would provide Native Hawaiians and Pacific Islanders with eligibility for the Ronald McNair Post-Baccalaureate Achievement Program, and that is a program which provides assistance to disadvantaged students who are pursuing doctoral degrees. The students in the McNair Program get research opportunities, they get seminars, they get summer internships, they get tutoring and academic counseling, and they get assistance in securing graduate admission and financial aid mentoring. Those are all things, of course, which increase the probability and the possibility that a person will get their doctoral degree.
I am sure it wasn't anyone's intention to leave these groups out, so this amendment, of course, would include the Native Hawaiians to the list of students eligible for this program. So, in his usual way of taking a careful look at things, I appreciate his doing this and enjoy all the times we have worked together on financial literacy.
I think there is still someone taking a look at the exact wording on this, so hopefully we can get that done and get to a voice vote a little later.
Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.
Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that we set aside the pending amendment so that we can proceed to another amendment.
Mr. President, I send to the desk an amendment by Senator Burr.
Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that further reading of the amendment be dispensed with.
Mr. President, Federal student aid is a tangled web of tax, grant, loan, and savings programs with rules and regulations that are so complicated, many prospective students don't know that they really can afford to go to college. Families have to fight their way through a maze of paperwork. We have talked about this several times, the difficulty of the present financial aid form. Nearly 10 million prospective aid recipients must file that form each year, and submitting the form is the only way for families to determine their eligibility for Federal grants and loans.
The free application for federal financial aid is longer and more complicated than a Federal tax form. It has 5 pages and 127 questions, so it is longer than the form 1040EZ, which is 1 page and 37 questions for filing your taxes, or the form 1040A, which is 2 pages and 83 questions. It is comparable to the form 1040, with 2 pages and 118 questions. The contrast between the tax forms and the financial aid forms is especially informative. With a third of the financial aid form questions and a fifth of its pages, the IRS captures the information needed to determine tax liability for the very population targeted by the Pell grant.
Financial aid officers and education specialists typically explain that the complexity of the form is a necessary evil, without which we could not target aid to students with the greatest need. The FAFSA, financial aid form, is long, it is argued, so that it can precisely measure who most needs aid. However, a few economists have recently completed research that measured empirically how much complexity in the current aid system contributes to its targeting. They found this complexity adds very little to the targeting of aid to those who most need it. Only a handful of questions on the FAFSA determine eligibility for Federal aid, and most of these questions are currently found even in the 1040EZ, the tax form.
In response, a small but growing number of researchers, economists, and leaders in higher education have offered proposals to reduce the FAFSA to one page and to prepopulate a student's FAFSA with the data their families have already submitted to the IRS. Such an approach would reduce the time-consuming and confusing FAFSA paperwork which requires parents and students to report to one Federal agency--the Department of Education--data they have already submitted to another Federal agency--the IRS.
Two North Carolinians--Senator Burr, on whose behalf I have submitted this amendment, and Erskine Bowles, who is the President of the University of North Carolina System, teamed up in the belief they could make applying for financial aid simpler and easier. President Bowles knows simplification of Federal applications is possible. As Administrator of the Small Business Administration in the 1990s, Erskine Bowles reduced the inch-thick SBA loan application to one page.
After a conversation between the two this spring, President Bowles put together a task force across the State of North Carolina and gave them 90 days to come up with a one-page form which made better use of data parents had already reported to the IRS. This June, President Bowles delivered the mockup of this one page to Senator Burr. So North Carolina showed we can and should work more rapidly to simplify the process of financial aid, both by reducing the length of the application and making better and more efficient use of data parents have already submitted to the Federal Government through their IRS forms.
I would mention we have had a task force, largely my staff, who has been working on reducing it. We have it down to a one-page form. But Senator Burr's amendment speeds up the time we study included in the higher education bill, so the relevant offices: Education, Comptroller General, Treasury, Office of Management and the Congressional Budget Office and representatives of higher education and State higher education executive officers who have a demonstrated commitment to simplifying the application for financial aid, report back to Congress in 1 year, how we could simplify the application and make even better use of data parents have already submitted to the Federal Government.
America's students and parents should not have to wait any longer than necessary for simplification. One stage of simplification should not preclude another stage of simplification. We do want to see that those who need the money the most have the highest priority. We want that to be done as simply as possible, so it doesn't discourage people from applying.
I appreciate this amendment to try to speed up the time to do a further simplification of FAFSA. I am pretty sure there are no objections on the other side of the aisle. We will leave the time open for further debate on that as well.
I suggest the absence of a quorum and allocate the time to the amendment.
I move to lay that motion on the table.
The motion to lay on the table was agreed to.
I move to lay that motion on the table.
The motion to lay on the table was agreed to.
Mr. President, I think we are prepared to move on with the Burr amendment as well. That is next.
Mr. President, I move to reconsider the vote.
Mr. President, I send an amendment to the desk on behalf of Senator Burr.
Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that further reading of the amendment be dispensed with.
Mr. President, this is a teacher amendment. Teachers are the most important factor to a child's academic achievement. Student achievement will not improve unless we can ensure that all children have access to qualified teachers. Many of our schools, however, are lacking in a steady and ample supply of qualified teachers.
The current state of affairs for high schools and middle schools is especially troubling. Nationally, 24 percent of all high school classes are taught by teachers lacking in either a college major or minor in their field of teaching. However, for students in high-poverty schools, this number jumps to 34 percent in comparison to 19 percent in low- poverty schools.
Nearly 50 percent of math classes in high-poverty high schools are taught by teachers with neither a major nor minor in math or a math- related field, such as engineering, physics, or math education.
Schools and districts for too long have been forced to depend on teacher pipelines that are not producing sufficient numbers of qualified individuals to teach in high-need areas such as math, science, foreign language, special education, and English language proficiency, and in hard-to-staff schools both in urban and rural areas.
The Bipartisan Commission on No Child Left Behind, led by Tommy Thompson and Roy Barnes, though concentrating primarily on the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, recognized the critical connection between higher education--colleges of education--and K-12 education, for improving the supply of qualified teachers.
As one of its recommendations, the No Child Left Behind Commission recommended amending title II of the Higher Education Act to require institutions of higher education that prepare prospective teachers to set annual goals for increasing the number of prospective teachers in shortage areas, such as math, science, special education, and instruction of limited English-proficient students, and for more closely linking the instruction colleges of education provide prospective teachers with the needs new teachers will face in the classroom.
Additionally, the Commission recommended having institutions of higher education provide an assurance to the Secretary that, No. 1, teacher training responds to the needs of the school districts and States in which new teachers graduate; No. 2, regular education teachers are provided with training in teaching diverse populations, including special education students, limited English-proficient students, and low-income students; No. 3, prospective teachers receive training to teach in urban and rural schools; and, No. 4, special education teachers receive training on instruction in content areas.
Senator Burr's amendment puts into statute these important Higher Education Act recommendations made by the bipartisan, nonpartisan No Child Left Behind Commission. Senator Burr, on whose behalf I offer this amendment, and I share the belief we must forge stronger connections between higher education and our K-12 schools and that higher education has a responsibility to ensure that the pipeline of prospective teachers grows and responds to the needs of American students and schools.
All our children, regardless of background or neighborhood, must have access to high-quality teachers. So I am going to urge everyone to support this important amendment, which is offered by Senator Burr. This amendment requires teacher training programs to report to the Secretary of Education on how they are responsive to the needs of their graduates once they reach the classroom.
I am particularly pleased this amendment recognizes the special skills new teachers need when teaching in rural areas. Today's teachers need training to meet the needs for diverse student populations-- ranging from students with disabilities to English language learners to gifted and talented students.
Finally, this amendment does not impose additional mandates on institutions with teacher training programs. It simply requires them to report on how they are meeting the needs of prospective teachers in local school districts, and I am sure they are working on that on a daily basis to figure out how they can meet the needs in the best way possible. Sharing that with us will help us in our work. So I ask that we adopt the Burr amendment.
I thank the Senator from Massachusetts for his comments. It is something he and I have talked about extensively. We do know teachers are the key to education.
I am not aware of any disagreement on either side. I am ready to wrap up the debate on it.
We ask the time left on the amendment be yielded to the bill itself.
I thank the Chair.
I move to lay that motion on the table.
The motion to lay on the table was agreed to.
Parliamentary inquiry: It is my understanding of the time that it was equally divided by the pro and the con on the amendment rather than----
Rather than half to the presenter.
Mr. President, I rise to oppose the amendment. There are some statements that I would like to clear up a little bit. I would not want anybody to think that this is increasing competition. This is increasing Government price fixing. It is requiring the Secretary of Education to do the price fixing. She is the one who sets the interest rate, or he, as the case might be at the time it was put into effect. That is not the person with the expertise to know what kind of interest rate ought to be charged on anything.
I also have objection because this amendment has neither been through the Education Committee nor the Banking Committee. This is something the Banking Committee would strongly believe should be in their jurisdiction. I am glad we are having the discussion because it is very important for people to hear that you can borrow money at 18 percent, $21,000, defer all payments for 2 years, and pay off the loan in equal installments after that and wind up paying $100,000. If you are buying a car at $21,000 and you have to pay 18 percent interest and you don't have to pay anything for the first 2 years, that car is going to cost $100,000.
That comes under the subject of financial literacy. It is important for us to impress on young people today what the cost of interest means, what the cost of deferring interest means. There are people buying houses under that kind of a proposal right now. They are very surprised at how much they owe on their house. We are trying to do as much as we can in the bill on financial literacy. Part of that financial literacy would be to encourage the parents to have a home equity loan to provide for the student, and that way it is deductible on their income tax. There are a number of different ways of doing this, but I don't think having the Secretary of Education determine an interest rate would intentionally bring down the cost of interest. Hopefully, we can get banks to be responsible on the interest rates they charge. But when there is no Federal backing, no Federal guarantee on the loan, they are actually providing the loan at very high risk to a student with no collateral, which is why the interest rates come in at 18 percent. There are other ways to correct the problem other than putting this in the hands of the Secretary.
We had some experience with this before. There was a tuition credit that was initiated in 1978 to solve a huge problem at that time. It was supposed to apply to both elementary and secondary education and higher education, but it was focused on tuition tax credits for parochial schools. Almost all of the public attention was on the higher education part of it. The Carter administration very quickly came up with a two- part plan, automatic Pell eligibility for every family if their income was below $25,000, and automatic eligibility for a student loan to any student who wanted one regardless of family income. Of course, one of the things that Money magazine pointed out was that even a Rockefeller could get a loan at 9 percent. That is what the Government set the loan rate at, 9 percent.
What is the problem with that? If we had a Secretary of Education right now, and they happened to set the loan rate at 9 percent, I am sure the press would say that was absolutely terrible. On the other hand, if it was a Democrat who set it at 9 percent, they would probably say it was great. But this was the case where the Government set the rate at 9 percent. What is the problem? It was a time when interest rates were climbing through the roof and were on their way to 21 percent prime. So there was an incentive to borrow money at a fixed 9 percent rate, which is what the student loan interest rate was, and that didn't have to be repaid until after college when interest rates were going through the roof.
So students borrowed the money, put the funds in a money market, and paid it back as soon as the repayment began, having made a tidy profit on the float.
Other students borrowed money and used it to finance cars and other things unrelated to college. In fact, parents were encouraged to borrow and do home improvements and other things because they could get this 9 percent money from the Federal Government. The amount of money being borrowed jumped from $1.7 billion in 1977 and 1978 to $67.2 billion in 1980-1981, an increase of 265 percent in 4 years. Federal costs associated with student loans grew from $480 million to $2.5 billion which was also growth of 420 percent.
Under the Brown-Sanders amendment, a student attending an expensive private college could borrow the entire cost of attendance, as much as $45,000 a year, on highly favorable terms. Repayment would, indeed, start right away, but if families have college money in the bank, they can pay off the loan gradually and earn on the interest, as they do, the same as we had a problem with before.
The amendment also will encourage students to have their children borrow money for college rather than finance it through the PLUS loans or other mechanisms that would put the burden on the adults. In some cases, of course, parents will have the student take out the loans and would repay it for them.
I am suggesting this is something we haven't reviewed enough to do yet; that it would put some of the present loans in jeopardy. We have been very careful in both last week's bill and this week's to be sure that there was some competition between direct loans and the private loans. But those were reviewed over a period of time, looked at with some history, and this one doesn't have the history.
I hope we will vote against it.
I yield the floor and reserve the remainder of my time.
I will use some more of my time. I haven't used all of it yet today, and I probably will not on this one either.
I do have a letter I ask unanimous consent to have printed in the Record. It is from the American Association of State Colleges and Universities, U.S. Public Interest Research Group, and the United States Student Association.
A few of the highlights:
Dear Senator,
On behalf of students and institutions of higher education
we urge you to oppose the Brown amendment to create a new
supplemental loan program and eliminate all federal student
loan limits.
By eliminating all federal loan limits, the Brown amendment
could have serious, negative unintended consequences on state
investment in higher education.
I also have a letter from the Financial Services Roundtable. I ask unanimous consent that it be printed in the Record.
I will mention, again, a couple of highlights. They, of course, express their opposition and point out that it would ``create a new federal-run student loan program, in addition to current programs that would offer loans currently be made by private student lenders. This new government system with the ability to borrow money at government rates would essentially supplant lenders offering private student loans. The policy implications of such a program are broad and the unintended consequences are numerous.''
Once again, I reiterate that this hasn't been tested. It hasn't been vetted through the committees. Of course, when it goes through committee, that is an opportunity for a diverse group of people to put their opinions behind it, as well as to meet with stakeholders and get an outside opinion.
I would ask that Members oppose the amendment.
Does the Senator from New Hampshire wish to speak on this amendment.
I yield the remainder of my time to the Senator from New Hampshire.
Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that a letter from the Consumer Bankers Association be printed in the Record.
Mr. President, I appreciate the Senator being willing to allow us to go back to the previous amendment or on to another amendment. We have one more that will be presented on our side. I think there is another one that will be presented on the Democratic side.
I do have to oppose this amendment. I understand the importance, the desire, but I would oppose it on the basis that we spent a lot of time last week doing this same thing. I appreciate the time the Senator from Massachusetts, Mr. Kennedy, took to explain to everybody what we were doing in a very general way so we did not have to pick one profession over another profession so we could give some reduced loan repayments and then forgiveness to public prosecutors, defenders, teachers--a whole category, a whole bunch of service sector people. There was a lot of support, although we spent more time debating that part than we did several other parts of the bill, showing there is some discomfort with doing that, but also support for doing that, but in a general way.
When we start picking out one particular area of Federal service over others, what we are doing is touching off a whole raft of people coming in with their particular public service and asking for the same kind of a reduction. Of course, if we do that for everybody, we have increased the cost considerably. We ought to start with the proposal that is in there, and after that works, make modifications to it, rather than encouraging every specialty of public service to come in and do that as well.
I know the Judiciary passed it. That does not surprise me. That is a special Judiciary category. If it were a category coming through one of the other committees that dealt with their committee, it would get that same kind of support. But what we tried to do is come up with a way we could have fairness between professions. Each of the professions we talked about have some special needs, and we would be able to encourage and incentivize people to go into those professions earlier, quicker, and with less debt if we have this same kind of proposal for them. So I hope we will resist separating the prosecutors and public defenders at this point in time when we have included them in other language with loan forgiveness. Although it is not as short a period of time as the Senator might like, I think it is what we ought to do at the present time, and we shouldn't be increasing the program and then leveraging everybody else at the same time.
I yield the floor and reserve the remainder of my time.
Mr. President, I thank the Senator for his explanation. I would suggest that the phones are probably ringing off the hook over in my office saying: My public service profession is as important as those public defenders, and that is probably what this phone call was on the floor over here earlier as well.
I yield the floor and reserve the remainder of my time.
Mr. President, we should have some time for debate because I don't even know what amendment he is offering.
That sounds reasonable to me. I assume we are going to have a couple votes tonight.
Mr. President, so tomorrow we will be voting on whatever is needed to be voted on on Coburn, and then we will be voting on Durbin and then final passage, but we also have the second-degree amendment that Senator Harkin has offered. Does that preclude anybody from putting in more second-degree amendments?
I thought we had that whole issue done last week when we dealt with loan forgiveness. I think that would have been a more appropriate place to deal with loan forgiveness. Now we have some special cases. I doubt that anybody in public service doesn't consider themselves to be a special case. There are some people who consider themselves to have spent a lot of money.
I guess people can turn in amendments, second-degree amendments, for virtually any profession they want by tomorrow morning, and we will vote on each of those separately.
Mr. President, as Senator Gregg and I have both explained, this amendment is very problematic. It has not been to a committee. It has not been heard. There has been no vote on it. It creates another loan program. It creates a different loan program than any we have ever done because this says the Secretary of Education will set the loan rate and the requirements on it. We have never had that kind of a situation.
Most problematic, the system of education in this country is successful because it is a partnership between the private and public sectors. This one moves it all to private. It off-balances the direct loan versus the private loan market. We should not be supporting this amendment. The Secretary is not in a position to make the kind of decisions this calls for. We do have to have a private market. This would eliminate it.
We also have a previous example of where this kind of loan was used back in the 1970s, but that was because the interest rates were about 21 percent in the regular market, and the Secretary set it at--well, it wasn't the Secretary, but the loan rate wound up being set at 9 percent. People borrowed it for everything except education.
I ask Members to defeat the amendment.
Mr. President, I yield back the remainder of my time.