Education panel pushes for more need-based college aid

NEW YORK -- A national commission charged with charting the future of American higher education approved its final recommendations yesterday, calling on the government to provide more aid based on financial need, while telling colleges to be more accountable for what students learn.

A commission member representing nonprofit colleges declined to sign on, however, saying the report reflected too much of a ``top down" approach to overhauling education.

The report will be delivered to Education Secretary Margaret Spellings in its final form next month.

It recommends that the federal government consolidate its more than 20 financial aid programs and ensure that Pell Grants, the main aid program for low-income students, cover at least 70 percent of in-state tuition costs. In 2004-2005, the grants covered less than half.

But the commission said colleges should do more to hold down costs and to better measure what students learn.

The 19-member panel, created by Spellings, has no direct power, but has been closely watched by policy makers.

Because of the panel's diverse membership -- industry, government, and for-profit and traditional colleges are represented -- any recommendations that all members agreed on would carry substantial weight as Congress, the White House, and state governments consider future education measures .

In the end, after weeks of negotiations and several drafts, chairman Charles Miller brought all but one commission member on board. The holdout, David Ward of the American Council on Education, was the primary voice of traditional colleges on the commission, and his refusal to sign on could dilute the report's influence.

Ward said he supported many of the commission's objectives, but opposed ``one size fits all" prescriptions that he said do not reflect the differing mission of colleges.

Still, Ward noted that several current and past college presidents on the commission signed on to the report at a meeting in Washington. He said colleges would pay close attention to its calls for reform.

``They now realize if they don't do it to themselves, somebody will do it to them," he said.

Miller removed a recommendation that federally backed student loans be limited to low-income students and that wealthier students instead be steered to private loans. That language had generated significant opposition, including protests from student groups.

The commission called for student achievement tests to help ``measure the relative effectiveness of different colleges and universities."

The report also recommended simplifying the application process for federal aid and directing it more toward financial need.

One recommendation calls for a 45 percent increase in funding for Pell Grants, though Miller said he had no estimate of its cost.

Ward said that while he could accept the concern behind most of the suggestions, he feared endorsing language that could lead Spellings and President Bush to pursue policies opposed by his members.

The provision on Pell Grants, for instance, is welcome in theory, Ward said. Yet with a limited federal budget, a commitment to devote additional resources to students could starve colleges of needed funds, he said.

Other commission members, while voting in favor, said the plan omits key concerns. Richard Vedder, a professor of economics at Ohio University, said the proposal fails to mention objectives other than vocational skills, the need to promote ``intellectual diversity" in classrooms, and problems surrounding the ``hedonistic culture" on campuses.

Commission members worried about whether their voices would be heard once the report is issued, and several described plans to lobby Congress and other policy makers, Bloomberg News reported.

Commission member Robert Zemsky, chairman of the Learning Alliance for Higher Education at the University of Pennsylvania, said the report is not likely to have the impact of ``A Nation at Risk," the 1983 report from the Reagan administration-appointed commission that warned of widespread mediocrity in US education.

The job was made more difficult by some of the harsher attacks on higher education in earlier drafts of the commission's report, Zemsky said. As a result, many people stopped ``reading what we're writing," he said.

Material from Bloomberg News was included in this report.