House Republicans recently introduced a bill outlining measures they will seek as they begin formulating legislation to reauthorize the Higher Education Act of 1965. House Democrats have not yet made their proposals.

“This is a little bit unusual,” said Dan Mann, director of the Office of Student Financial Aid. “Usually the committee Republicans and Democrats come up with something together.”

Republicans on the House Committee of Education and Labor said in a press release that the Cost Reduction and Access Act “will restore the Higher Education Act to its original mission of providing access to college for low- and middle-income students.”

The bill includes proposals for increasing the limits on the amount of federal loans that a student can borrow and capping the maximum Pell Grant at $6,000.

However, Mann said that while schools might support these proposals, they probably will not make it into the final reauthorization legislation.

“I don’t think they’re very realistic without a funding mechanism to make it happen,” he said.

The Higher Education Act of 1965 established the current federal financial aid, loan and grant programs. The act was last reauthorized in 1998 and was supposed to be reauthorized in 2003. Reauthorization is a legislative process in which Congress makes changes to and reviews previous legislation.

“In my career, every time they reauthorize, they’ve added something new usually because there are new representatives, new research and new ideas,” Mann said.

But as a result of President Bush signing the College Cost Reduction and Access Act and the Higher Education Reconciliation Act into law, the Higher Education Act’s reauthorization may not create as many changes in programs and policies as previous reauthorizations.

“The impact of reauthorization won’t be as big,” Mann said. “I think reauthorization will address what wasn’t covered in (the Higher Education Reconciliation Act) and (the College Cost Reduction and Access Act).”

Mann also said that the chances of the reauthorization passing this year is very likely because the Senate has already passed its version and House is looking to prepare its own.

“I think it’s got the best chance it’s had since 2003,” Mann said.

The legislation also encourages the passing of a proposal that would require the secretary of education to identify colleges that receive the most copyright violation notices due to peer-to-peer file sharing.

Mike Corn, director of Security Services and Information Privacy for Campus Information Technologies and Educational Services, said that it is unlikely that the measure concerning copyright violations will make it into House committee’s final proposal. But, he said it is still an issue that may be brought up in Congress.

“There’s a struggle going on right now to decide what’s the best way to deal with that,” Corn said. “There are those who feel the best way to deal with it is to have universities such as ours devote a lot of expensive resources to either blocking entirely or somehow restricting illegal file sharing.”

Mann said that a better indicator of what will be in the House’s version of reauthorization of the Higher Education Act will be from the Democratic portion of the committee.

“Since (the Republicans) are a minority party, it’s much more important to see what the Democrats are going to propose,” Mann said.