[caption id=”attachment_107496″ align=”aligncenter” width=”3600″] Sen. Lamar Alexander, R-Tenn. (AP Photo/Wade Payne)
[/caption]
Republican Senators Lamar Alexander, Roy Blunt and Ben Sasse teamed up to write an op-ed for USA Today Monday, praising President Obama for his focus on higher education, but offering him some better ways to go about it.
As the three former university presidents put it, “Obama was in the right church but the wrong pew when he proposed providing free community college tuition for some students.”
Alexander, Blunt, and Sasse believe that the Tennessee program on which the $60 billion Obama “free” community college proposal is based is a good idea, but creating an arduous federal program is not.
Instead, they believe the focus should be on improving the federal financial aid that is already out there.
They urged the president and Congress to enact the bipartisan legislation introduced this month by six senators that would “reduce the Free Application for Financial Student Aid (FAFSA) form from 108-questions to just two questions, allow high school juniors to learn how much in federal aid they are eligible for as they start to look at colleges, streamline the federal grant and loan programs by combining two federal grant programs into one Pell Grant program and reducing the six different federal loan programs into three, restore year-round Pell Grant availability and provide flexibility so students can study at their own pace, discourage over-borrowing, and simplify repayment options.”
“Community colleges are the best buy and the most nimble part of higher education. If you want to change those two things, the surest way to do that is a new federal program that misses the mark. Instead, we recommend letting other states do for themselves what Tennessee has done if it fits their circumstances,” the senators wrote.
“The right way for the federal government to help is pay for new Pell Grants that will be applied for and awarded if other states emulate ‘Tennessee Promise’ and if Congress reduces paperwork and allows students to use Pell Grants year-round.”
