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2009 Public Policy Agenda

AASCU’s legislative priorities and positions on higher education issues at the federal and state levels.

Public Policy Principles

2009 PPA CoverAASCU’s Public Policy Agenda is rooted in an uncompromising commitment to opportunity for the nation’s students and expressed through the following core principles:

Higher education is a common good that provides significant benefits to individuals and society as a whole. While the personal gains from higher education are widely acknowledged, the societal benefits are even more significant and lasting, thus warranting continued public investment. These include tangible returns through economic productivity and increased tax revenues, but even more fundamentally, through the promotion of an enlightened citizenry and greater social cohesion and inclusion.

America’s public higher education system stands as an embodiment of the nation’s democratic ideals. State colleges and universities accomplish this by promoting broad access to education for all students, regardless of socioeconomic background, thus transforming society and setting a global standard. Amid fundamental changes in the state-campus relationship, this principle must not be compromised.

State colleges and universities are committed to delivering America’s promise through quality undergraduate and graduate programs that reflect responsible stewardship of the public investment; meaningful engagement of the social and economic issues facing their states, regions and communities; and the promotion of global awareness, understanding and competitiveness.

No American should be denied the opportunity to pursue higher education for lack of financial resources. Affordable public sector tuition and need-based federal aid are the two requisite ingredients for realizing this ideal.

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Affordability

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American families continue to identify college affordability as one of their biggest concerns. AASCU, representing more than 430 institutions and heads of systems on behalf of 3.5 million students who attend AASCU institutions, advocates for a higher education finance model that ensures every qualified student— no matter his or her financial need—can afford a college education.

Student grants, student loans and tax policies all contribute to college affordability. AASCU believes that while each is an important piece of financing a college education, limited public resources should be targeted to the neediest students in the form of direct grant aid. Student debt should be limited, student loan repayment options flexible and manageable for students in all income categories, work-study opportunities available and financially feasible for students, and education tax benefits transparent.

With the recent reauthorization of the Higher Education Act, several AASCU-supported policy provisions related to student financial aid and college affordability were implemented. These include a year-round Pell Grant, improvements to the SMART grant program that ensure all Pell-eligible students who pursue degrees in the math and sciences qualify for the program, improved student loan counseling, and more transparency and accountability in the private loan market.

There are more improvements to be made. While the Higher Education Act has also been amended to provide a variety of federal student loan repayment plans, many borrowers do not understand or have access to these options when they need them. This leads many to become “defaulters” with harsh financial penalties and no statute of limitations. AASCU believes that the legislative goal now should be to streamline and reform borrower repayment in federal student loan programs to ensure that all borrowers are able to repay their loans using an appropriate repayment plan without incurring penalties.

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Affordability Priorities

  1. Amend the Higher Education Act to augment the maximum Pell award to benefit the lowest income students.

  2. Clarify that the definition of “acceleration toward a degree,” for purposes of newly established year-round Pell Grants, includes enrollment in and completion of required remedial/ developmental courses.

  3. Advocate for a student aid financing model in which federal grant and loan resources cover approximately two-thirds of the total cost of attendance at a public four-year institution for the lowest-income student.

  4. Secure sufficient appropriations to sustain the value of Pell Grant awards given the demand for awards driven by the statutory program structure, national economic trends and demographic trends of enrollment in postsecondary education.
  5. Maintain current aggregate loan limits for undergraduate students in the federal loan programs.

  6. Require that all Federal Family Education Loan (FFEL) loans that are past due for a specified period of time be immediately assigned by the lender to the Department of Education. The loans would be transferred at par—the lender would receive principal and accrued interest through the date of the assignment.
  7. Support a change in federal student loan collection policy to collect only what is currently due and manageable instead of adhering to a practice of declaring the entire loan to be due and payable. H Support a legislative change to require mandatory use of institutional certification of private loans by lenders.

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Access

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Access to college means ensuring that all students who wish to pursue a higher education have the opportunity to do so, regardless of their socioeconomic, demographic, geographic or academic backgrounds. It includes the opportunity to earn admittance, experience a supportive environment during their studies and graduate from college prepared to succeed in the workplace and participate as a citizen of the world.

State and federal governments—as well as institutions—play a role in ensuring the path to college is as smooth as possible for all students, with the federal government playing an especially important role in ensuring equal access to college. The states and federal government, in partnership with the nation’s pre-K-12 system, have a responsibility to focus the most effective strategies for access and inclusion on the precollege years and work to reduce barriers in the transition from secondary to postsecondary education.

AASCU is pleased that the most recent reauthorization of the Higher Education Act includes provisions that address access issues supported and advocated by AASCU, including extending eligibility requirements in Title III to include the new designation of “Predominantly Black Institution;” adding six new graduate programs to the list of Historically Black Colleges and Universities; creating a new program under Title V to strengthen graduate opportunities for Hispanic students; and allowing for institutional payments to master’s degree-granting institutions that enroll a Graduate Assistant in Areas of National Need (GAANN) fellow.

In addition, during the 110th Congress, significant adjustments to student veteran benefits were signed into law. In the same measure, veteran education benefit eligibility requirements were improved and equalized among the various active and reserve duty components.

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Access Priorities

  1. Boost appropriation levels for Title III of the Higher Education Act, which supports the development and strengthening of Historically Black Colleges and Universities, Predominantly Black Institutions, American Indian Tribally Controlled Colleges and Universities, Alaska Native and Hawaiian-Serving Institutions, Native American-Serving Nontribal Institutions, and Asian American and Native American Pacific Islander-Serving Institutions.

  2. Boost funding of Title V of the Higher Education Act, which supports the development and strengthening of Hispanic Serving Institutions (HSIs) in order to address the nation’s changing demographics and the increasing enrollments at HSIs.

  3. Benchmark MGIB benefits (pre-9/11 GI Bill) to the cost of attendance at public four-year institutions for those service members who served prior to September 11, 2001.

  4. Fund Model Programs for Centers of Excellence for Veteran Success authorized under HEA to award competitive grants for model programs that support veteran student success in postsecondary education.

  5. Support clarification of existing federal immigration laws to allow states to determine the tuition status of qualified dependents of undocumented immigrants.

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Accountability

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Public colleges and universities have an obligation to be responsible guardians of the public’s resources and trust and to communicate clearly and effectively about their stewardship of the public’s investment in them. AASCU is committed to greater public accountability and has been a leader in promoting improved data systems, greater transparency and increased focus on student learning outcomes. AASCU calls on its members to participate in the AASCU/NASULGC Voluntary System of Accountability (VSA), designed to improve transparency of institutional and student data, core educational outcomes and student engagement. Nearly two-thirds of AASCU members signed on to this initiative in its first year.

With the most recent reauthorization of the Higher Education Act, Congress has called upon colleges and universities to be more accountable, particularly in relation to transparency in college costs. AASCU worked with Congress to ensure these new provisions take into account the unique nature of costs in public higher education and tuition-setting authority of public colleges. AASCU helped to secure several provisions, including recognition of the measure of tuition in dollars and not just percentages; the role of state appropriations in tuition levels; and the role of tuition-setting authority in the price of tuition. AASCU is proud to have supported in the reauthorization bill the state maintenance of funding effort that strengthens the federal government’s commitment to ensuring state commitment to public higher education—an important piece in the college cost equation.

AASCU strongly supported and succeeded in its advocacy for a new requirement contained in the HEA reauthorization that adds an economic status component to the existing graduation rate by using receipt of federal financial aid as a proxy for income.

AASCU is pleased that the HEA continues to protect academic autonomy by retaining current transfer of credit law, provides a boundary between the federal government and the peer-review nature of accreditation, and clarifies the definition of an institution of higher education. The reauthorization falls short, however, by weakening regulation of federal student financial aid programs as it pertains to the “90/10 rule.” Amendments made to the HEA weaken the original intent of the provision by allowing for-profit institutions to include private institutional loans and the extra unsubsidized Stafford Loan eligibility authorized by the Ensuring Continued Access to Student Loans Act (ECASLA) in calculating the minimum required 10 percent of revenue that is to be derived from sources other than federal student financial aid. AASCU will support efforts to strengthen government oversight and institutional accountability to eliminate fraud and abuse in federal student aid programs.

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Accountability Priorities

  1. Support the development of an integrated network of state data systems, based on common data elements, to serve as a privacy-protected national system of student-level longitudinal data.

  2. Require the reporting in the Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System (IPEDS) and display on the federal College Navigator website of graduation rates for the following three groups of students identified in the HEOA: Pell Grant recipients; subsidized Stafford Loan recipients who are not Pell Grant recipients; and students who do not receive any federal aid or who receive only unsubsidized loans.

  3. Oppose the direct involvement of the federal government in regulating inter-institutional academic practices such as the transfer of credit.

  4. Support the strengthening of current laws requiring for-profit institutions of higher education to have a diverse revenue stream that includes 10 percent or more of their revenue from sources other than federal student financial aid to ensure the integrity of taxpayer dollars.

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Competitiveness

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Public colleges and universities play a central role in expanding the nation’s human capital and boosting our competitive advantage in today’s global marketplace. This is accomplished, in part, by providing quality preparation for the majority of the nation’s K-12 teachers. It is also accomplished by producing graduates in a variety of fields who have the knowledge and skills needed to meet the needs of business, nonprofit and public sector employers. This includes healthcare workers, scientists and engineers, business leaders, and others essential to the nation’s economy.

AASCU believes that the federal government must play an essential role in supporting institutional efforts to meet national and state workforce needs. The federal government can provide incentives for individuals to enter high-demand fields and to work in hard-to-staff areas, support scientific research and education, and streamline efforts to attract international talent. State governments, as well, can support institutional efforts to educate teachers, healthcare workers, scientists and engineers, and others. The nation’s economic competitiveness, security and prosperity depend in large measure on how well the nation’s colleges prepare citizens for a knowledge-based economy.

Among other federal laws, the Higher Education Act contains numerous programs that assist colleges and universities in preparing students to be informed, participating members of a democracy and of the global world while contributing to U.S. competitiveness. With the recent reauthorization of the Higher Education Act, Congress has created several new programs while amending previous law.

For example, in an effort to strengthen teacher preparation programs, Congress has aligned Title II of the Higher Education with provisions in the Elementary and Secondary Education Act/ No Child Left Behind that create more prescriptive requirements and stronger accountability measures in the preparation of the nation’s teaching force.

AASCU is also pleased to have advocated for provisions in the reauthorized Higher Education Act that create a new competitive grant program for rural colleges and universities in an effort to support and strengthen our nation’s rural communities.

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Competitiveness Priorities

  1. Require that federally funded partnership programs between institutions of higher education and K-12 schools include a comprehensive focus on teacher induction, mentoring and professional development.

  2. Target the limited federal funds available to support linkages between teacher preparation programs and the needs of our nation’s K-12 system, such as preparing teachers to teach in high-need, hard-to-staff schools and in high-need subjects.

  3. Create incentives for partnerships among institutions and states to strengthen traditional and nontraditional pathways for qualified candidates to teach in science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) fields.

  4. Provide appropriations for the newly authorized Rural Development Grants for Rural Colleges and Universities program. These grants encourage partnerships between rural colleges and universities and local entities that promote greater access to college for rural high school students.

  5. Support the Lincoln Commission recommendations to establish a national study abroad program, particularly for students from underrepresented institutions and populations.

  6. Strengthen the pipeline for those who have been traditionally underrepresented in STEM fields, such as students of color, low-income students and women.