Forum on Education Abroad: House Committee Approves Study Abroad Legislation, Similar Bill Introduced in Senate

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Wednesday, March 28, 2007

House Committee Approves Study Abroad Legislation, Similar Bill Introduced in Senate

The House Foreign Affairs Committee approved the Senator Paul Simon Study Abroad Foundation Act of 2007, by voice vote with no amendments. H.R. 1469 currently has 18 cosponsors: Representatives Howard Berman (D-CA), Earl Blumenauer (D-OR), Jerry Costello (D-IL), Peter DeFazio (D-OR), Lincoln Diaz-Balart (R-FL), Eliot Engel (D-NY), Alcee Hastings (D-FL), Rush Holt (D-NJ), Darlene Hooley (D-OR), Eddie Bernice Johnson (D-TX), Betty McCollum (D-MN), Jim McDermott (D-WA), Donald Payne (D-NJ), David Scott (D-GA), John Shimkus (R-IL), Diane Watson (D-CA), Robert Wexler (D-FL), and David Wu (D-OR).

The same day, Richard Durbin (D-IL) and Norm Coleman (R-MN) introduced a similar bill, the Senator Paul Simon Study Abroad Foundation Act, into the Senate. Co-sponsors include Senators Christopher Dodd (D-CT), Chuck Hagel (R-NE), Barack Obama (D-IL), John Kerry (D-MA), Pat Roberts (R-KS), Robert Menendez (D-NJ), Thad Cochran (R-MS), Joe Lieberman (I-CT), Carl Levin (D-MI), Gordon Smith (R-OR), Ted Stevens (R-AK), Daniel Akaka (D-HI), Saxby Chambliss (R-GA), Debbie Stabenow (D-MI), Olympia Snowe (R-ME), Maria Cantwell (D-WA), Max Baucus (D-MT), John Warner (R-VA), Mark Pryor (D-AR), and Edward Kennedy (D-MA).

Introducing S. 991, Durbin noted, "The bill has been renamed the Senator Paul Simon Study Abroad Foundation Act so that all future generations will remember Senator Simon's commitment to international education."

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posted by Forum on Education Abroad at 12:00 PM   

1 Comments:

Anonymous said...

The U.S. education abroad community, particularly in the context of the Alliance for International Educational and Cultural Exchange, NAFSA, and NASULGC (and to a lesser degree, our peers within the Forum and AIEA), has invested significant effort over the past five-plus years getting to this point. It’s a worthy moment to consider where this exercise has taken us, what needs still to be done, and what if any impact it may have on our professional responsibilitiesâ€"and the lives of future students who may benefit from a new program, such as the one contemplated by the late Senator Paul Simon and refined by Lincoln Commission.

Since the process of making public policyâ€"and creating a new Senator Paul Simon Study Abroad Foundation to oversee the conduct of a new scholarship and institutional aid scheme recommended by the Lincoln Commissionâ€"can't be fully judged until a law is enacted and money is spent, the short answer to the question of practical implications is “nothing.” I should add the caveat that the debate and deliberations about Simon’s proposalâ€"notably through the Commissionâ€"has certainly drawn encouraging attention to study abroad in general and the positive (even needed) values many ascribe to that activity. So "nothing" minimizes the utility of having the conversationâ€"it's just that no student has yet directly benefited.

This observation is of importance for two reasonsâ€"first, the process isn't completed, so advocates for a Lincoln Fellowship program need to stay focused and engaged in getting to the finish line; and second, it's premature to be counseling students (and institutional sponsored program offices) to get in line for monies that may never exist!

Briefly, where have we been? Though the antecedents of this program are scattered throughout the collective work of our colleagues over many years, the key point of instigation began when Paul Simon in his active non-retirement began to discuss with friends and colleagues the notion of engaging American students in the worldâ€"through an audacious idea Simon hoped would be the new Morrill Act and GI Bill. He took his idea to the Alliance in July of 2003. Among the first to take up Simon's call was NAFSA, which through its then sitting Strategic Task Force on Education Abroad, centered its November 2003 report, Securing America's Future: Global Education for a Global Age, around the Simon initiative. I had the good fortune of working on that effort as the working chair of the task force; Simon was the Honorary Co-Chair.

Among Simon's specific suggestions for operationalizing his idea was the creation of a commission to study the specifics of such a new grand program and to make recommends to Congress and the Administration about how best to proceed. Simonâ€"through his network of former colleagues in the Senateâ€"put this idea on-track in the weeks prior to his untimely death in 2003. With Congress's agreement to create the Lincoln Commission (and its eventual success in naming commissionersâ€"including several our colleagues), the recommendations for a new program were fleshed out and reported in November 2005, Global Competence and National Need: One Million Americans Studying Abroad.

Since the report was filed, groups like NASULGCâ€"now headed by former Commission chair, Peter McPherson, the Alliance, and NAFSA have been seeking congressional action to authorize the creation of a new program consistent with the priorities of the Commission report. An initial bill was introduced in the Senate last summer (nearly half of the Senate signed on as co-sponsors including original co-sponsor Richard Durbin who holds Simon's former Senate seat and sat on the Commission). New legislation was needed with a new Congress seated this past January, so the recently reported approval of the Simon Foundation legislation in the U.S. House of Representatives marks not only the beginning of that process (the Senate also now has a version of the bill, reintroduced by Durbin and colleague Norm Coleman this week), but a meaningful step further than we made last year. This step is a necessary, but not nearly sufficient, step along the path to creating a new Lincoln Fellowship program.

At this stage of the legislative process, it appears reasonably likely that the U.S. Congress will pass a bill to create the Lincoln Fellowship programâ€"and the associated commitment to foster institutional change through grants to U.S. institutions and consortiaâ€"and send the legislation to the President. The program has an authorization level of up to $80 million per year. If enacted, it would create one of the largest programs in international educationâ€"though well short of the size Simon originally conceived.

But even if enacted, not a dollar is guaranteed to be spentâ€"part of the truism in (U.S.) politics that it's never over until it's over. Congress must each year agree to appropriate funds to undertake such a programâ€"it need not spend any money (as was the case with the famously created but unfunded International Education Act from a generation ago); it could choose to spend something less than $80 million per year; orâ€"in fairness to the wide discretion of each piece of individual legislationâ€"Congress could set aside the authorization limit and spend any amount it favored. This latter option is almost assuredly not going to happen; the likely outcome is one of the first two.

It is doubtful that any student we are currently advisingâ€"even a second-semester Freshmanâ€"will be able to use any Lincoln scholarship support. It's conceivable that if monies are appropriated this year for fiscal year 2008, scholarship funds probably could flow to students as early as the fall of 2009â€"but that would be remarkably quick. It's more likely that we are talking about a potential flow of assistance for students and institutions no earlier than the 2010-2011 school year.

So questioning the practical implication of this legislation is on the markâ€"if only to reflect on what's happened so far and what still needs to take place.

- Carl Herrin, principal of Herrin Associates

Thursday, March 29, 2007 4:01:00 PM EST  

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