H.R. 4137 would amend and extend the Higher Education Act of 1965.

== Detailed Summary ==

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College Opportunity and Affordability Act of 2007 - Amends the Higher Education Act of 1965 (HEA) to revise and reauthorize various programs.

Revises the definition of institutions of higher education (IHEs) to include schools that enroll students who are also enrolled in secondary school.

Establishes new college cost and assistance information resources for students, parents, and the public.

Bars certain business arrangements, inducements, and conflicts of interests between IHEs and student loan providers.

Establishes a new Teacher Quality Partnership grant program under title II for high-need local educational agencies (LEAs), high-need schools, and IHEs, replacing the Teacher Quality Enhancement Grants for States and Partnerships program.

Creates a new Part C (Enhancing Teacher Education) to title II providing grants for: (1) a Recruiting Teachers With Math, Science, or Language Majors program; (2) a Community Colleges as Partners in Teacher Education Grants program; (3) a Centers of Excellence program for teacher education at certain minority-serving institutions; (4) a Teach For America program; and (5) the establishment of State Early Childhood Education Professional Development and Career Task Forces.

Revises title III Institutional Aid programs providing grants to IHEs serving high percentages of minority and low-income students to establish new grant programs for Predominantly Black Institutions, Asian American and Native American Pacific Islander-serving institutions, and Native American-serving nontribal institutions.

Establishes a YES Partnerships grant program to engage minority youth in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics.

Revises and reauthorizes title IV Student Assistance programs.

Alters the Pell grant maximum and allows year-round grants.

Broadens the array of students eligible for Academic Competitiveness grants and National Science and Mathematics Access to Retain Talent (SMART) grants.

Eliminates Academic Achievement Incentive Scholarships and Learning Anytime Anywhere Partnerships programs.

Turns the Robert C. Byrd Honors Scholarship program into: (1) scholarship and loan forgiveness programs for mathematics and science students; and (2) a program providing grants to partnerships between IHEs and LEAs to improve the teaching and learning of critical foreign languages.

Increases the information to be provided to federal student loan borrowers by IHEs, lenders, and guaranty agencies.

Expands the child care provider loan forgiveness program under the Federal Family Education Loan and Direct Loan programs to include individuals employed in certain areas of national need.

Expands the types of public service occupations for which Perkins loans may be canceled.

Excludes certain military housing benefits from title IV need analyses.

Requires the development of simplified and electronic student aid application forms and a system providing students and parents with early aid information and eligibility estimates.

Establishes a program to encourage the development of articulation agreements among IHEs within states and across state lines.

Establishes an Accreditation Ombudsman to address the grievances of those involved in the accreditation process.

Revises the title V Developing Institutions grant program for Hispanic-serving institutions. Establishes a new grant program for graduate programs at such institutions.

Revises and reauthorizes title VI International Education programs.

Establishes a new: (1) Preparing for Early Foreign Language Instruction program providing grants to partnerships between IHE foreign language departments and LEAs; and (2) Science and Technology Advanced Foreign Language Education grant program for IHEs.

Revises and reauthorizes title VII Graduate and Post-Secondary Improvement programs.

Establishes Patsy T. Mink graduate fellowships for women and minorities studying to enter the professoriate.

Establishes new Fund for the Improvement of Postsecondary Education programs.

Replaces the Urban Community Service grant program with an Urban-Serving Research Institutions grant program.

Establishes programs to support disabled students' access and transition to postsecondary education.

Creates grant programs to increase nursing school capacity and provide nurses with the scholarships and release time needed to qualify as nursing school faculty.

Establishes a new title VIII creating additional HEA programs to: (1) reward IHEs that make no more than inflationary adjustments to their tuition; (2) provide students with work experiences related to their educational objectives; (3) assist IHEs in implementing articulation agreements; (4) help low-income students complete postsecondary education and training; (5) help students move from developmental studies into, and through, occupational studies; (6) assist Project Grad USA implement education reform services; (7) improve the college enrollment rates of secondary schools; (8) thwart diploma mills; (9) enhance student safety and emergency management at IHEs, and provide IHEs with disaster loans; (10) promote rural development through partnerships between rural IHEs and other rural entities; (11) improve science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) education, especially for Alaska Native and Native Hawaiian students; (12) create a national database on financial assistance for STEM studies; (13) promote the training and job placement of real time writers; (14) assist IHEs in implementing model programs to address veterans' needs in postsecondary education; (15) support IHE sustainablity programs; and (16) promote the study of modeling and simulation.

Revises and reauthorizes various programs under the Education of the Deaf Act of 1986, the Higher Education Amendments of 1998, the Higher Education Amendments of 1992, the Tribally Controlled College or University Assistance Act of 1978, and the Navajo Community College Act.

Creates a grant program for two tribally controlled postsecondary career and technical institutions under the Tribally Controlled College or University Assistance Act of 1978.

Repeals certain programs under the Higher Education Amendments of 1998.

Amends the Omnibus Crime Control and Safe Streets Act of 1968 to establish a loan forgiveness program for prosecutors and public defenders.

Amends the Stevenson-Wydler Technology Innovation Act of 1980 to establish a Minority Serving Institution Digital and Wireless Technology Opportunity program at the Department of Commerce.

Private Student Loan Transparency and Improvement Act of 2007 - Amends the Truth in Lending Act to impose specified consumer protection and disclosure requirements on private educational lenders.
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== Status of the Legislation ==

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Latest Major Action: 2/6/2008: Rules Committee Resolution H. Res. 956 Reported2/7/2008: Passed/agreed to in House. Rule provides for consideration of H.R. 4137 with 1 hour of general debate. Previous question shall be considered as ordered without intervening motions except motion to recommit with or without instructions. Measure will be considered read. Specified amendments are in order. It shall be in order to consider as an original bill for the purpose of amendment under the five-minute rule the amendment in the nature of a substitute recommendedStatus: On passage Passed by the Committee on EducationYeas and Labor now printed in the bill.Nays: 354 - 58 (Roll no. 40).
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== Points in Favor ==

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== Points Against ==

Page 411 of this 747-page bill is "Section 494(A): CAMPUS-BASED DIGITAL THEFT PREVENTION" wherein the bill's meaning takes a serious detour from its title. To prevent college students from illegally accessing copyrighted material, the section says all schools shall (when you see the word "shall" in a law, it's a requirement, not a suggestion):

1) Have "a plan for offering alternatives to illegal downloading or peer-to-peer distribution of intellectual property" and

2) Have "a plan to explore technology based deterrents to prevent such illegal activity."

The craziest thing about this is that noncompliant schools would lose all their federal funding, for all their students. No more Pell Grants. No more federal financial aid. No more student loans. This is not just draconian punishment for students who break the law, this punishes all students at that institution even if they did nothing!

Beyond that, both requirements actually work against the point of the bill itself -- implementation would likely raise school fees.

If a school requires students to sign up with an "alternative system," this means (for now) a for-profit company. Who pays for the subscription? And if a school has to use filtering software, who's going to pay for that? If schools have to prove compliance, they will have to make it mandatory -- folding it into school fees is the simplest way. How does that contribute to "Affordability?"

There's no good reason for fee hikes because the requirements could never solve the "problem." Let's back up: what's the problem and why are schools being forced to solve it?

If the problem is illegal (and there is legal) downloading and uploading and its effect on the industry, why are colleges being required to stop it? The RIAA and the MPAA often state that college networks are major sites of infringement -- but their own numbers don't back that up. The MPAA's own estimation is that 18.4 percent of copyright infringers overall are college students, who are responsible for 44 percent of lost revenue from copyright infringement.

Calculating "lost revenue" is tricky -- how to calculate what would have been paid if someone hadn't downloaded a song? What if it made them buy an album, or merchandise? What if downloading was easier than ripping a paid-for CD, LP or cassette?

But sticking with the MPAA's semi-bogus numbers, educational technology nonprofit Educause points out that "since less than 20 percent of college students live on campus and use the residence hall networks, this means that less than 4 percent of the infringers are using campus networks, and they are responsible for less than 9 percent of the losses. Over 91 percent of the claimed losses are on commercial networks." Get that: 4 out of every 100 infringers (even trusting the industry assessment of infringement, which usually is not too carefully defined) are on college networks. And yet this is so important that Congress will subvert federal education funding?

Further evidence of this entertainment industry power-grab is described in a letter against Section 494(A) signed by the President of Stanford University, the Chancellor of the University System of Maryland, the Vice President of Yale and the President of Penn State, which describes how representatives of the entertainment industry would be the ones to provide the data identifying which schools are "violators." Punishment would be based on these numbers, which would put the Secretary of Education basically under the direction of the entertainment industry! (PDF)

Equally cheesy is the requirement that schools endorse a particular music service. Since they would have to prove compliance in order to keep federal funding, what would be easiest is to fold the cost of membership to something like Napster or Ruckus into everyone's school fees. All these companies are limited: they may not have the music you want, or their files (like Napster's) are crippled with digital rights management software (DRM) so the files can't by played on iPods.

So you might be paying for a service that isn't guaranteed to have music you want or files you can even play. In fact, Educause points out that many universities have already considered working with existing companies only to reconsider based on complaints from their students. If the industry can't come up with a music service students want, why should Congress require state universities to subsidize the current failures?

And if they do use filtering software to monitor activity on college networks, how are those filters going to separate out all the legal activity from the illegal activity? College networks are obviously the site of many educational uses of all kinds of files, how will the filters know when the use is educational? How will students they allow access to public domain works? And what does filtering software -- essentially a way to tracking what you do online -- mean for students' privacy rights? These issues are too important to be packed into a few lines in an educational funding bill.

The above was originally written by Larisa Mann for WireTap.