Problems with the College Opportunity and Affordability Act

I'm going to be traveling and at a meeting most of the afternoon so today will be a little light on content. Back tomorrow.

Over at Campus Politico, Ben Adler paints a picture of the not so rosy side of the recently passed College Opportunity and Affordability Act:

When the House overwhelmingly passed the College Opportunity and Affordability Act last week, the Democratic leadership found itself in a self-congratulatory mood. House leaders were quick to praise measures to improve the lives of students through cheaper textbooks and greater transparency in the financial aid process, with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) declaring that the House was “making college even more accessible and affordable for the middle class and those who aspire to it.”

But student activists are giving the legislation mixed grades. Although they are pleased with the provisions that made it into the reauthorization of the Higher Education Act, they are disappointed with those that did not. Chief among their frustrations: The final package did not include an amendment, offered by Rep. Danny K. Davis (D-Ill.), that would have made student loans, like many other forms of debt, dischargeable in bankruptcy, and it did not repeal a provision of the 1998 Higher Education Act that strips students of their federal aid if they are convicted of any drug offense.

This wasn't the only problem with the bill. It also included a provision that would require colleges to begin making plans for filtering networks for P2P activity - essentially making college administrators the police of the entertainment industry. There were threats that the bill would include penalties in the form of removed federal funding from universities who failed to comply. Thankfully, that particular provision didn't make its way into the final bill.

Taken to it's logical conclusion, though, this could wind up as the digital age version of the drug provision of the Higher Education Act, which prevents any student with a drug conviction from receiving federal financial aid. The whole thing is even more disturbing when you realize that the MPAA and RIAA have wildly inflated their claims about file sharing among college students, and are generally just engaged in a bad-faith, scare campaign as part of their strategy to rescue a failed business model.

Universities shouldn't violate the privacy of their students in order to prop up a failed business model for the entertainment industry. Thankfully, things didn't go that far in this version of the bill, but they will keep pushing this, and they have better (and more) lobbyists than students do, so this is something we'll need to fight.

This is a great chance for the College Democrats, USSA, and the Free Culture movement to work together.