Student Aid and Fiscal Responsibility Act- still in the Senate

This act is currently in the Senate. Most of the language is related to student loans, but there is a portion of the bill that will provide competitive grant funding to the tune of $3.5 billion for “College Access and Completion” for community colleges. For more information, you can call Chairman George Miller's Committee on Education and Labor Office at (202) 225-3725 or check out these links:

• http://edlabor.house.gov/newsroom/2009/07/chairman-miller-introduces-leg.shtml - initial press release - July 2009
• http://edlabor.house.gov/documents/111/pdf/publications/SAFRA-CommunityColleges.pdf  - pdf describing act
• http://www2.ed.gov/news/events/higher-ed-transcript-20100211.doc  - transcript of budget clarification call - Feb 2010

This is related to President Obama's college graduation initiative, where his goal is for the U.S. to have the highest proportion of college graduates in the world by 2020. Here is a link to a the President's explanation of this concept:  http://www.whitehouse.gov/the_press_office/Remarks-by-the-President-on-the-American-Graduation-Initiative-in-Warren-MI/

Complete College was established in 2009, Complete College America is a national nonprofit working to significantly increase the number of Americans with a college degree or credential of value and to close attainment gaps for traditionally underrepresented populations.  The organization was founded to focus solely on dramatically increasing the nation’s college completion rate through state policy change, and to build consensus for change among state leaders, higher education, and the national education policy community.

You can find some great state-by-state college completion data on their website:  http://www.completecollege.org/ . It's definitely worth taking a look!

UPDATE: http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2010/03/15/safra  This article from 3/15/10 says there could be trouble for this bill! Last Friday, the American Association of Community Colleges sent out an urgent message "warning of the initiative's possible demise and asking them to call their Congressional representatives."  Here is a link to that message on their site: http://www.aacc.nche.edu/newsevents/News/articles/Pages/031220101.aspx .   I talked to David Baime, dbaime@aacc.nche.edu, about the article this morning, and he said there have been no confirmed reports of the funding being cut yet, so it's not too late to contact your Senator to express your support for community colleges.  He said that if you plan to reach out to politicians in your area, please do so ASAP.