The AFT has strongly objected to provisions of a proposed higher education bill that the union says are skewed toward for-profit institutions. H.R. 4283, the College Access and Opportunity Act of 2004, "promotes the financial interests of the for-profit higher education industry at the expense of the needs of students," said AFT legislative director Charlotte Fraas in a June 16 letter to members of the House Committee on Education and the Workforce.

For more than a decade, guidelines under the current Higher Education Act, now in the reauthorization process, have ensured that student and institutional aid goes to low- and middle-income students while also protecting the federal financial aid system from fraud and abuse.

The new bill would open more federal dollars to for-profit institutions, however, says the AFT. H. R. 4283 calls for a "single definition" of an institution of higher education. This would make all higher education institutions, including for-profit institutions, eligible for Title IV programs that provide institutional aid to public and private nonprofit colleges and universities serving large numbers of minority and other nontraditional students. Under current law, many for-profits are not eligible to participate in these programs.

The bill also would repeal a legal provision that prohibits students who attend institutions offering more than half their coursework by distance education from receiving federal student aid. The AFT opposes changing this 50 percent rule, which has served to ensure integrity in federal student financial-aid programs and promote "face-to-face" interaction as part of a student's college education, said Fraas.

The union also opposes lifting the so-called 90/10 rule, which mandates that for-profit schools demonstrate that 10 percent of their revenue is derived from sources other than federal student aid funds. The 90/10 rule was put into effect to ensure that federal student aid was not the sole funding stream for these schools. As a result of the implementation of that rule, fraud and abuse in federal student aid programs were drastically reduced, notes the AFT.

Reauthorization of the Higher Education Act "represents a tremendous opportunity to improve access to higher education for America's low- and middle-income students," added Fraas, and "it should not be reduced to an exercise in improving access to federal aid for private entrepreneurs." [AFT legislation department, Trish Gorman]

June 17, 2004