Congress OKs education bill

A major overhaul of the federal higher education laws that make college costs more affordable also attempts to crack down on so-called diploma mills that sell phony degrees from fictitious universities or counterfeit degrees from real schools.

The legislation, which passed the House and Senate on Thursday, would also give prospective students more information about college tuitions and textbook costs, while making Pell Grants, the main federal aid program for low-income students, available year-round.

“It seems the only thing consistent about college costs is that they are going up and going up rapidly,” said U.S. Rep. Howard “Buck” McKeon, R-Calif., top Republican on the Education and Labor Committee. “With this bill we hope to change that.”

In the Senate, both Maria Cantwell, D-Wash., and Patty Murray, D-Wash., voted in favor of the bill.

“This legislation takes important steps to go after the fraudulent organizations that are cheating the public by awarding meaningless degrees and sending students the bill,” Murray said in a news release.

The White House has complained that the legislation creates costly and duplicative programs, but President Bush is expected to sign the measure.

Also in the bill is the requirement that the U.S. Department of Education set up a Diploma Mill Task Force to create guidelines to pass tougher federal laws against operations that offer degrees, diplomas or certificates with little work or academic requirements.

Operators of a Spokane-based diploma mill were sentenced to prison recently for making millions of dollars from the sale of more than 10,000 college and high school degrees, some of them from non-existent schools and others counterfeit diplomas from legitimate schools.

A list of some 9,600 people who purchased degrees or certificates from the diploma mill operated by Dixie Randock was published on The Spokesman-Review’s Web site and has prompted state officials in Washington and Idaho to check employee names against the list obtained by the newspaper.

The law also calls for states to develop their own strategies for combating diploma mills.

Enactment of the Higher Education Opportunity Act comes five years after the last major overhaul of higher education programs, enacted in 1998, expired. It also comes a year after Congress took other steps to help families and students cope with soaring college costs, including cutting interest rates on student loans, raising Pell Grants and redirecting billions of dollars from lender subsidies to programs targeting students more directly.

This bill focuses more on transparency: It requires the Education Department to publish detailed data about college pricing trends on its Web sites and requires the top 5 percent of colleges with the greatest cost increases over three years to explain those cost rises to the Education Department.

Textbook publishers must share pricing information with professors and “unbundle” materials so students can buy only those materials they need for their classes. The practice of bundling textbooks with supplementary materials such as CDs is one reason textbooks cost about $900 a student every year, according to a 2005 government study.

Among other provisions, the 1,100-page bill:

•Strengthens restrictions on lenders, guaranty agencies and colleges offering or accepting payments and gifts as a condition of making student loans.

•Allows service members to defer payments, interest-free, on federal loans while they are on active duty. Provides in-state tuition for service members and their dependents who have lived in a state for more than 30 days.

•Simplifies the federal aid application process and provides more protections and disclosure for students taking out private loans.

•Increases Pell Grants from $6,000 in 2009 to $8,000 for 2014, and allows low-income students to receive the grants year-round, not just for fall and spring semesters.