By: Ben Adler

November 8, 2007

With the House Education and Labor Committee set to undertake reauthorization of the Higher Education Act this week, it is shining a light on an oft-neglected corner of K Street: the lobbyists who work on higher education and other youth issues.

On stage right you have the student lending companies that go about influencing legislation the old-fashioned way.

They hire highly paid registered lobbyists to camp out on Capitol Hill and push for the industry’s positions while backing them up with campaign contributions.

They typically advocate more subsidies for providing student loans or, under the new Congress, opposition to cuts to their subsidies.

In the middle, you have a constellation of nonprofits that compose the “higher education lobby.”

With 1 DuPont Circle as their de facto headquarters, these groups represent the administrations of colleges and universities.

Their interests are generally more funding for student tuition and research with as little federal oversight or demand for accountability as possible.

Then, on the left side, you have the barely existent lobby that represents the millions of college students who are affected by federal higher education policy.

From inside the 16th Street office of the United States Student Association, offered at a discounted rent by the AFL-CIO, you probably wouldn’t think you were in a Washington power center.

The warren of cubicles is occupied by jeans-clad recent college graduates; the president’s office door is decorated with a newspaper clipping touting the football victory his alma mater, Florida State University, earned over Boston College.

But this organization — with only a 10-person staff and one lobbyist — has managed to become a serious player in Washington higher education policy.

“I think the world of USSA,” said Barmak Nassirian, a lobbyist at the American Association of Collegiate Registrars and Admissions Officers, one of the higher education associations that frequently work with USSA to lobby for increased student aid.

“They and U.S. PIRG [a public interest research group that emphasizes college student issues] have been absolutely incredible in terms of the impact they’ve had with the resources they’re working with.”

USSA was founded in 1947 in the hopes of imitating the students unions across Europe.

Over the years its influence has waxed and waned as more or fewer student government and state student associations have affiliated, affecting its budget and the size of its constituency.

USSA President Gabe Pendas readily admits that he envies the greater power enjoyed by foreign students unions such as the Canadian Federation of Students, which offers a breadth of services and helps fight to keep Canadian college tuitions well below the rates in the United States.

Pendas also admits that between the late 1990s and 2003, USSA experienced a period of declining revenue that, compounded by the fact that the Republican Congress was generally inhospitable to its requests, made for a frustrating lack of influence.

But now, say Pendas and observers such as Nassirian, USSA is clawing its way back and taking advantage of the new Democratic congressional majority’s sympathetic ear to achieve results on the Hill.

Nassirian points to the recent budget reconciliation bill, also known as the College Cost Reduction and Access Act, which cut federal subsidies to student loan companies and put the savings into increasing Pell Grants for lower-income college students.

USSA used its annual Lobby Day in March to press for increasing in Pell Grants and lowering student debt, which became major components of the final legislation.

In June, U.S. PIRG brought 25 of its student leaders from around the country to lobby the Hill for larger grants to low-income students, lower subsidies to lenders and a scaled repayment system based on income.

The final legislation “redirected $20 billion from excessive lender profits to the American people,” said Nassirian, the group’s grown-up ally.

As he saw it, “they went up against Goliath there and came out looking good.”

The lenders, naturally, dispute that characterization.

“Students were a nominal player in this debate,” says John Dean, a lobbyist for the Consumer Bankers Association, which represents for-profit student lenders.

“This debate was really about fulfillment of a campaign promise [by congressional Democrats]. College cost is seen as a national crisis. They didn’t do it to satisfy a student demand; they did it to go back to their districts to tell parents, ‘We are doing something to keep college affordable.’”

Dean also noted that the students got an unexpected boost when President Bush surprised the lending industry — and perhaps even the students — by endorsing the proposal.

But Luke Swarthout, the only registered lobbyist representing students in Washington (he works for U.S. PIRG, which has 100 student chapters), contends that it was the work of the student lobby that helped make cutting college costs a political imperative.

“Part of our work is to engage middle-class people who aren’t students in students’ concerns,” explains Swarthout. “It was a hot issue out there, thanks to the work that students had done.”

In late February, for instance, more than 1,200 people attended a U.S. PIRG event at Arizona State University, with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and members of the Arizona congressional delegation, that focused on higher education and other issues.

“The turnout and media coverage showed the speaker and House members the widespread support for a pro-student agenda on higher education,” Swarthout said.

Education staffers for congressmen on both sides of the aisle who supported the CCRA say the student lobby plays an important role in pushing legislation to reduce college costs.

“Part of the reason the subsidies [to lenders] have survived so long was that the only people who understood them were the ones who benefited,” said Tom Culligan, legislative assistant to Rep. Tom Petri (R-Wis.).

\“USSA and [U.S.] PIRG were able to understand the issue inside and out and articulate it. They put it in a fiscal responsibility context as well as a student interest.”

President Bush signed the loan bill into law on Sept. 26, which means students can expect the maximum Pell Grant award to be $490 more when they go back to school next fall.

Of course, higher education isn’t the only policy area where younger Americans struggle with being underrepresented on the Hill.

About a year ago, Andy Stern, the president of the Service Employees International Union, began talking about creating a membership organization for younger Americans that would mimic AARP.

With seed money from SEIU, a group called Qvisory Tools for Life was born. Its website will launch within a couple weeks.

Eileen Quigley, the president of Qvisory, says that in addition to providing information and services to help young Americans deal with the challenges they face in the new economy, the group will give them a voice in Washington.

The first issue it plans to tackle is the high rate of credit card debt among young people.

A cynic might say that Qvisory won’t get very far in going up against the deep-pocketed credit card companies.

But if the student lobbies could go to war with the banks and win, maybe they have shot after all.

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