As we all remember from AP US History, President Johnson signed many pieces of progressive legislation into law during the Great Society. One of these bills may be argued to be the single most important bill regarding higher education in the history of the United States: The Higher Education Act of 1965. The act funds our public institutions of higher education across the country and allocates grants and low-interest rate loans for students who otherwise would not be able to afford to pursue the American Dream. Sounds great, right? Well, Congress needs to reauthorize it every few years and the last time they did so was in 1998. For all the non-math majors out there like myself, that was almost a decade ago!

Turn on CNN. Listen to the candidates. Are any of them talking about the fact that this past Tuesday, President Bush decided to veto the bill after the House passed it with bipartisan support 274-141? It gets worse. President Bush vetoed the bill because "this puts a balanced budget in jeopardy and risks future tax increases…this bill continues to fund programs that are duplicative and ineffective." Oh, I’m sorry that this bill would cost $205 billion (over the course of 5 years) more than the White House expected. Rep. David Obey points out that "the same president who is asking us to spend another $200 billion on the misguided war in Iraq and is insisting on providing $60 billion in tax cuts next year to folks who make over a million bucks a year, is now pretending to protect the deficit by refusing to provide a $6-billion increase to crucial domestic investments in education, health care, medical research and worker protections that will make this country stronger."

I don’t know about you, but my parents cannot afford to send three children to four-year public universities at $25,000 per year per child. In fact, because this has not been reauthorized in the past decade, the costs of attending college are higher than ever. To learn more about the Higher Education Act (now called the College Opportunity & Affordability Act), the United States Student Association has put together a spiffy factsheet.

All hope is NOT lost! We still have a couple weeks left during this session to pressure Congress to vote to overturn President Bush’s veto. We only need 16 votes to do it and 20 Congressional representatives did not even vote the first time. As a growing percentage of the population and the electorate, we need to send a clear message to Congress that we are watching them and that education ought not be a privilege but a basic right in the United States of America.