Welcome
Another academic year begins! The government relations staff members hope that you have all had fulfilling summers. Fall 2007 will prove to be a busy one for higher education policy making, and we hope that each one of you is ready to get involved to influence the future of institutions across the country. If anything is happening in your state capitol that you wish to share, please e-mail Nicole Byrd, government relations associate, for inclusion in the next newsletter.
Federal Update
Congress reconvened on September 4, and passed a higher education bill on September 7. Thanks to close collaboration by the House and Senate during drafting of their respective bills, the conference process went very quickly. The legislation stipulates that $750 million of the $20 billion cut from lender subsidies will go to deficit reduction, with much of the rest funding the increase in the Pell Grant program. Representative George Miller’s plan to cut loan interest rates in half remains in the bill, as does Senator Edward Kennedy’s plan to have the Department of Education auction the rights to PLUS loans. Additionally, student loan repayment is to be capped at 15 percent of discretionary income. Comprehensive reauthorization of the Higher Education Act (HEA) is expected later in the session.
Michigan Rep. Sander Levin introduced the Employee Educational Assistance Act (HR 3418) just before the August recess began; the measure was referred to the Ways and Means Committee and will be taken back up later this month.
Representative Julia Carson introduced HR 3512, a bill to push for affordable textbooks and other classroom materials for students. The bill emphasizes transparency of pricing information for faculty members during the selection of class texts and for students when enrolling in classes. The availability of alternative formats such as paperbacks is also encouraged as a way of keeping costs down, and the practice of “bundling” is forbidden unless a nonbundled option is also available.
Legislator Profile of the Month: Representative Ric Keller
Representative Ric Keller (R-FL) is currently serving his fourth term representing Florida’s 8th District. Rep. Keller is a member of the House Committee on Education & Labor and the ranking minority member of the Subcommittee on Higher Education. He is also chair of the Congressional Pell Grant Caucus. Keller opposed the White House push to eliminate Perkins loans in order to help pay for the boost in Pell Grants. Several of the representative’s Web pages tout his independence from party lines, and he likes to present himself as a policymaker who comes to decisions based on merits rather than politics.
Note from the Government Relations Committee chair, Gerry Turkel
There have been both positive and negative events over the summer. One very positive event was passage of the Higher Education Access and Cost Reduction Act. Bolstered by ongoing scandals in the student loan “industry,” the Congress elected in 2006 has shown itself to be more responsive to the needs of students and their families than to the interlocking relationships among banking interests, Congress, and the Bush Administration that dominated higher education policy making in the past. Although there is still much to be done to make higher education affordable for low and middle-income students, shifting subsidies away from lenders to students is a step in the right direction.
A negative event was the denial of entry into the United States of another respected scholar. Adam Habib, director of South Africa’s Human Science Research Council Program on Democracy and Government and a professor in the School of Development Studies at the University of Kwazulu-Natal, was prohibited from coming to the United States in August. Habib, who holds a PhD from the Graduate Center of the City University of New York, was scheduled to talk at the annual meeting of the American Sociological Association in New York; the U.S. government, however, failed to act on his visa application. Habib had held a visa in October 2006, but upon trying to enter the country to conduct presentations at Columbia University and several policy organizations, he was denied entry, and his visa was subsequently revoked. No reason was given for that visa revocation, and no reason has been given for the refusal to act on his recent visa application.
In response to the denial of entry, the American Sociological Association issued a statement that captures the implications of the government’s actions:
The American Sociological Association expresses its deepest disappointment and profound concern about the Department of State’s de facto denial of a visa. . . Such actions undermine the willingness of numerous scientists and academics from many nations to visit the United States and collaborate with their American colleagues. . . .[T]his limitation on scholarly exchange erodes our nation’s reputation as a defender of the free and open search for knowledge.
As in the case of Tariq Ramadan, who was denied entry into the United States to accept a position at Notre Dame University and, later, to give a talk at the AAUP annual meeting in June 2005, Habib is a Muslim who has criticized U.S. foreign policies, including the war in Iraq. The government has provided shifting rationales for Ramadan’s exclusion, and no rationale at all for Habib’s; in the absence of any means to scrutinize the government’s actions, and in the face of other apparent ideological exclusions, it is difficult not to be concerned that the reason for the exclusion of these scholars is that their views run counter to those of the U.S. government.
As we make headway in gaining access for students to higher education through our lobbying and educational efforts, we must also keep issues of academic and intellectual freedom at the forefront of our concerns. Denial of entry to scholars because their ideas are inconvenient for government officials is an affront to academic integrity and democracy.
Featured Articles
Reframing the Debate about what Professors Say, Inside Higher Ed, 9/11/07.
Pell Grant Increase on the Way, Inside Higher Ed, 9/7/07.
States, Colleges Work to Cut Textbook Costs, Stateline.org, 8/28/07.
Nationwide
As of press time, most state legislatures had not yet reconvened. Though many states have legislation that will carry over from the spring session, it is a bit too early to predict which pending bills will receive priority.
The California state senate passed CA SB 190, pertaining to university governance, transparency, and executive compensation. The bill, which has been forwarded to the governor for signature, expands the existing Bagley-Keene Act to extend to the trustees of California State University. Bagley-Keene requires the meetings of “state bodies” to be open to the public. CA SB 190 has been supported by the Council of UC Faculty Associations and the California Faculty Association, both of which are affiliated with the AAUP, along with other teacher and student groups.
Missouri seeks to make it easier for state legislators to teach at colleges and universities after their terms; while Alabama’s board of education decided to forbid sitting legislators to teach at public institutions after the current term.
Action of the Month
The AAUP government relations staff is formulating a questionnaire for the 2008 presidential candidates in order to gather more detailed information about their plans and priorities for higher education. We would like all members to be part of this process and encourage the submission of questions to include in the final product.
Please send your suggestions to Nicole Byrd, government relations associate, by September 30, 2007.