Higher-Education Officials and Senate Aides Discuss Colleges' Relief Needs

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Special report: Continued coverage of the effects of Hurricane Katrina

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By JEFFREY SELINGO

Washington

A broad coalition of higher-education lobbyists went to Capitol Hill last week to ask Senate aides to remember colleges when putting together a relief package for industries affected by Hurricane Katrina.

Among the multitude of items on the lobbyists' wish list: financial help for colleges that have accepted students displaced by the storm and a new aid program that would encourage students to enroll in the future at Gulf Coast institutions temporarily closed by Katrina.

The Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions is rushing to finish a bill to provide federal aid and regulatory relief to businesses along the Gulf Coast.

The legislation was still being worked on as of late last week, so exactly what type of relief for colleges will end up in the bill was unclear. Lobbyists at the meeting with staff members for the Senate committee said the participants did not talk about an overall dollar figure for federal aid, nor did they discuss in precise detail what the higher-education groups want.

"It was pointed out that we won't get everything," said David S. Baime, vice president for government relations at the American Association of Community Colleges. "There was an acknowledgment that there is a limit, but they also have the sense that higher education was hit."

Before the meeting, the American Council on Education circulated a list of provisions the higher-education associations would like to see in the bill. Items on the list, obtained by The Chronicle, included:

• More money for two federal campus-based aid programs, Work-Study and Supplemental Educational Opportunity Grants. Money for the campus-based programs is distributed to colleges, which add their own dollars and then give the money to students. Colleges that have enrolled students displaced by the hurricane have already used up the federal funds on their own students. As a result, the institutions have nothing left for evacuees from Gulf Coast campuses, who need help with expenses even if they are not paying tuition at their new colleges.
• Direct federal aid to the institutions that have enrolled displaced students, provided on a per-capita basis, to help the institutions defray their costs.
• Assistance to colleges that have played host to evacuees from Katrina.
• Infrastructure assistance that Gulf Coast colleges can use to repair or replace facilities and equipment.
• Broad exemptions for regulatory-filing requirements on campus crime and other similar reports.
• A new student-aid program for colleges in Katrina's path, modeled after Federal Work-Study, that would support students in their college studies as they worked to rebuild their local communities.
• A new student-aid program that would help institutions forced to close for an extended period because of Katrina by providing their students tuition-assistance grants of up to $10,000. The program would be modeled after a District of Columbia program that gives the city's residents money to attend certain public and private colleges around the country that sign up for the program.

"The overriding concern for economic development in the region is an incentive program to get students to return to Loyola [University New Orleans] and other colleges there," said Cynthia A. Littlefield, director of federal relations for the Association of Jesuit Colleges and Universities. "There also needs to be some sort of incentive program to have faculty and staff return."

Different Needs

Nearly every sector of higher education was represented at the meeting. Besides Mr. Baime and Ms. Littlefield, participants included officials from the American Council on Education, the American Association of State Colleges and Universities, the National Association of Independent Colleges and Universities, the National Association of Student Financial Aid Administrators, the Career College Association, the United Negro College Fund, and Tulane University.

The different groups each placed a different emphasis on their needs, Mr. Baime said. For two-year institutions, the biggest worry is that displaced students will never return to college. "This is an inevitable impact on students who generally already have so many other concerns and priorities even in the best of circumstances," said Mr. Baime. Community colleges, he added, will have an even larger work-force-training role in communities devastated by Katrina.

What is eventually included in the bill could depend on how the Senate decides to pay for it. Lawmakers could use funds they expect to save through provisions in legislation to reauthorize the Higher Education Act. The chamber was supposed to use that money for deficit reduction, but the Congressional Budget Office estimates that the Senate reauthorization bill will generate an additional $7-billion in unexpected savings because of cuts to student-loan programs.

"We would prefer that the money to help colleges recover from Katrina not come from the Higher Education Act," said Patricia Smith, director of federal-policy analysis for the American Association of State Colleges and Universities.

In other Katrina-related developments here last week, the U.S. Department of Labor announced that it would provide $12-million in grants to community colleges in the Gulf Coast region to help train workers displaced by Hurricane Katrina. The grants will be used to prepare workers in Alabama, Louisiana, Mississippi, and Texas for jobs in sectors critical to the hurricane-recovery effort, including construction, energy, health care, transportation, and safety/security.

Kelly Field contributed to this article.