Bringing People Together To Make College More Affordable

Senator Coleman has long been a champion of efforts to make college more affordable for today's youth. Today the Star Tribune wrote about the efforts in Washington to make college more affordable, specifically a bill that could land on the President's desk this spring:

Last month, the House overwhelmingly passed a reauthorization of the Higher Education Act of 1965, which has been pending since 2003 and extended several times since then. The reauthorization is designed to streamline the federal aid process.

It also aims to boost the amount available for Pell grants and increase overall federal student aid by billions of dollars.

The bill also calls for creation of a website that students and families could use to compare the cost of attending different schools, and it requires more transparency with regard to private lenders.
(Conrad Wilson, “Congress poised to come to the aid of cash-strapped college students,” Star Tribune, March 20, 2008)

Senator Coleman was proud to support a similar measure in the Senator that passed overwhelmingly back in July. However, that's not all Senator Coleman is doing in Washington to help make college more affordable:

Separately, Sens. Norm Coleman, R-Minn., and Richard Durbin, D-Ill., introduced a bill last summer to curb textbook costs, and such a provision was included in the House version.

"The rising costs of textbooks are a key factor in making it more expensive to attend college," Coleman said in a statement. "My legislation will help students purchase more affordable textbooks by making sure they have complete information about course requirements and enable them to purchase what they need without costly supplemental materials."
(Conrad Wilson, “Congress poised to come to the aid of cash-strapped college students,” Star Tribune, March 20, 2008)

For more information on Senator Coleman’s plan to make text books more affordable, check out this piece in the Minnesota Daily – the newspaper for the University of Minnesota. And be sure to check ColemanForSenate.Com for updates on Senator Coleman's bipartisan text book legislation.