Kennedy Hears Tuition Plan Opposition

When Sen. Edward M. Kennedy '54 (D-Mass.) brought his plan for fighting rising college tuition costs to a public hearing in Boston yesterday, he ran into opposition from some unexpected sources - some students, a college president, and the department of Health, Education and Welfare (HEW).

Kennedy, in his capacity as chairman of the Senate subcommittee on education, arts, and humanities, took testimony at Boston University on the Tuition Advance Fund (TAF) bill, which he is co-sponsoring. The plan calls for federal student loans up to $15,000 for undergraduate education; after graduation, participants would repay 150 per cent of the loan through a salary withholding plan at an annual rate of 2 per cent through their working careers.

Available only to sophomores, juniors and seniors, the TAF would create a "revolving education fund" much like Social Security provides a revolving retirement fund. The TAF plan, first formulated by John Silber, president of Boston University, would supplement existing government loans and replace the controversial tuition tax credit plan which died on the Senate floor earlier this month.

Dr. Mary F. Berry, assistant secretary for education at HEW, said that preliminary estimates indicate the TAF will cost nearly one and a half times the projections made by Silber and Kennedy. Berry--who argued with Kennedy over the effectiveness of current student programs--cited an outside analysis estimating the TAF would cost $7 billion a year for 43 years; Silber later said a more likely figure would be $45 billion a year for twenty years.

While stressing that she was not speaking for the Carter administration, Berry added that HEW suspects that inflation would result in "a huge effective subsidy from the taxpayer" and that some aspects of the plan "would intrude into decision--making processes of private institutions."

Several students and John B. Duff, president of the University of Lowell, criticized shifting the burden of paying loans from parents to students, a portion of the plan which Kennedy lauded.

"In this kind of tax climate it seems inconceivable that TAF could be added to existing programs." R. Jerrold Gibson, Director of the Harvard Office of Fiscal Services, said last night. "Students would effectively be forfeiting grants to take out loans." he added.

Three students, a number of parents, and Silber spoke in favor of the plan at the hearing.