Election season begins

SPELLINGS COMMISSION WRAPS UP
The Spellings Commission on the Future of Higher Education could not come to a unanimous consensus on its report and recommendations, despite issuing multiple revisions this summer.  Its final report came as AFT On Campus went to press. (Look for more details next month.)

The commission focused on access, preparation, cost (state subsidies, rising tuition, need-based financial aid), accountability, relevance and research.

The AFT was among those protesting what AFT vice president William Scheuerman called the “relentlessly negative” tone of the first report and its failure to recognize the significance of decreased state funding and the shrinking tenured faculty corps. At its July convention, the union passed a resolution urging the commission to call for new need-based financial aid, especially Pell Grants; restored state support for colleges and universities; voluntary accreditation over federal evaluation; protection against fraud at for-profits; and measures to prevent both erosion of full-time tenured faculty positions and exploitation of contingent faculty. See the resolution at www.aft.org/about/resolutions/index.htm.

OUTSOURCING OVERSIGHT
Proposals being considered in both houses of Congress would create “sunset commissions,” appointed panels of nonelected people who would evaluate federal programs and then recommend their expansion, consolidation or elimination. The conservative Republicans who are backing the idea call it reform. Higher education groups, including the AFT, call it a misguided approach to government accountability.

Under the proposed Government Efficiency Act, H.R. 5766, a panel of seven citizens appointed by the White House would make recommendations that the House would have to act on within 30 days. The Abolishment of Obsolete Agencies and Federal Sunset Act, H.R. 3282, introduced by Rep. Kevin Brady (R-Texas), would require all agencies and programs to be reviewed every 12 years by a bipartisan commission made up of eight members of Congress and four private citizens. If Congress failed to reauthorize the agency or program within 12 months of the review, the agency would be abolished.

Education groups immediately identified programs that would be affected, including education, the environment, workers, housing, nutrition, transportation and others.

The AFT was the lead organization in crafting a letter to members of the House opposing the legislation. The letter points out that sunset commissions would usurp the role of Congress in authorizing and appropriating for programs. Others have charged that the proposals may be unconstitutional.

Brady’s Sunset Act will come to the House floor for a vote in September. Be sure you’re signed up for the AFT e-Activist network (see box) so you can call or send a message to your representatives to oppose this.

KEEPING INTERNET ACCESS OPEN
The Internet should be a fertile, free range for discourse and creativity—but telecommunications companies are treating it like a gold mine instead. Charging more for better access to individual Web sites would create a dual system—a superhighway of fast-moving information, beside a sluggish information ghetto for nonprofits, artists, public organizations and other non-influentials to share.

To keep that from happening, advocates are fighting to preserve net neutrality—the quality that keeps the Internet equally accessible to all—by supporting an amendment to the Telecommunications Act of 1996, being overhauled this fall in Congress.

Net neutrality has already been defeated in the House and went down in a tie vote in the Senate Commerce Committee. But it is expected to hit the Senate floor some time after the November elections. To learn more, or for the entertainment value of this lively Web site, go to www.savetheinternet.com.

HIGHER ED ACT EXTENDED
The House of Representatives passed a three-month extension to keep the Higher Education Act active until Sept. 30, and also passed its version of a reauthorization bill, absent some of the more troublesome elements the AFT worked to omit.

The Senate inserted some of HEA’s student loan provisions into its Deficit Reduction Act, but has yet to craft a bill around the rest of the higher ed reauthorization.

DREAMS FOR IMMIGRANT KIDS
Undocumented residents’ children who receive their education in U.S. schools have become political fodder in the immigration wars. In 10 states, the students can pay in-state tuition. But Rep. John Culberson (R-Texas) has authored an appropriations bill amendment that would block federal aid to those states should they continue the practice. Although the amendment passed in committee, because of a technicality it may not make much impact if it becomes law.

Another bill in Congress has the right idea and the support of the AFT. It is the DREAM Act—for Development, Relief, and Education for Alien Minors. It would secure in-state tuition rates for the undocumented, as well as create a way for them to “earn” permanent status in the United States through criteria such as having entered the country younger than age 16 and having either a high school degree or acceptance to an institution of higher learning. The bill was introduced last November and passed the Senate Judiciary Committee in March.