$182 million is authorized for fiscal year 1968, and $234 million is authorized for fiscal year 1969. (d) The authorizations for the 4-year institutions are $420 million for fiscal year 1967, $546 million for fiscal year 1968, and $702 million for fiscal year 1969. Sufficient authorizations have been provided to assure that neither 2-year institutions nor 4-year institutions should receive less for construction than in fiscal year 1966. In addition to these grants, the committee also adopted an administration recommendation that $7 million a year, for each of the 3 fiscal years, be authorized for making payments to the broadly representative State commissions who administer the State plan provisions of the act. These funds are to be used for the proper and efficient administration of the State plans and for grants to the State commissions for conducting comprehensive planning to determine the construction needs of institutions, either singly or in consortia. Thus, for the 3-year provisions of title I an estimated $2.245 billion is authorized to be appropriated. A further change by the committee in the reported bill relates to the Federal share of construction costs. The present act provides that for 2-year institutions, up to 40 percent of the cost may be met by grant and for 4-year institutions up to 33% percent of the cost may be met by grants. Under the reported bill, for 2-year institutions, flexibility would be provided to the broadly representative State commissions who administer the programs in each State to recommend as the Federal share grants between 40 and 60 percent of construction costs and for 4-year institutions the Federal share grant could vary between onethird and one-half of such costs. This would be permissive authority, however, since language was also provided to enable the State commissions to fund construction projects at less than the proposed minimums. In the hearings record, on page 314, may be found an analysis of probable future developments in higher education in the period 196570. The material was excerpted from a publication issued by the college entrance examination board. The following excerpt from that publication is herewith made a part of the report: ** **Changes of degree and kind will occur that present interesting challenges for the economics of college attendance. 1. In 1970, students will, on the average, remain in higher education 2 years longer than they did in 1960. Families will send a higher percentage of their children to college in 1970 than in 1960. 2. In 1970, the typical student will have to gain access to some level of higher education twice, and many will have to gain access three times. 3. By 1970, because of the continuing demands for trained manpower and growing efforts to put talented women as well as men into college, the number of women in higher education will be equal to the number of men, instead of the 70-30 ratio that existed in 1960. 8. More students will be attending college on a part-time basis in 1970-perhaps 40 percent, rather than the 30 percent who attended part time in 1960. Administrative procedures and educational philosophies will require modification to deal with this trend. This is a large compound, and complex question. The amount the American public can afford to spend on higher education 5 years from now can be estimated by making a number of additional assumptions, some readily accepted, some hypothesized, about the future of higher education. By relating the estimate to the projected cost of higher education to families in 1970, it is possible to produce what may be called the national family dollar deficit for undergraduate higher education. More simply stated, this is the total amount of money American families presumably will find it impossible or extremely difficult to pay out of their individual pockets for their children's college education. For 1970, this deficit is projected as $3,339,578,924. If as a Nation we wish to reduce this deficit through the use of student aid to at least the same relative point as in 1960, our total 1970 national student aid expenditure will need to be $1,903,560,000-a sum more than four times the amount spent in 1960. Where can the money come from? One possible supposition is that the various resources that existed in 1960 could be increased by a factor of four. For State, Federal, corporate, and various private sources this increase would not be unrealistic. Colleges, which provided nearly half the total aid support in 1960 from their own funds, were able to increase aid nearly 50 percent in the 1955-60 period. If they could retain this challenging trend of a 50-percent increase each 5 years, there would still be an aid deficit in 1970 of at at least $500 million. Seemingly this sum would have to come from outside the college community, either from new programs or from greater efforts on the part of the existing programs. The foregoing analysis of student financial needs in the view of the committee, clearly indicates the importance of adequate financing for physical plant required to provide these young citizens with educational opportunities. A communication from the American Council on Education, which may be found on page 271 of the hearings record states: The level of Federal support for construction proposed by the administration, and supported in our testimony, will probably just about meet this figure for the coming year. We say this because it is our impression that, at present, Federal funds represent not 33% percent but closer to 20 percent of the funding of approved projects. If this is the case, $453 million for title I and $60 million for title II will stimulate funds to start $2.565 billion in facilities construction during the next fiscal year. However, we believe that this is a starvation diet that cannot forever sustain life. If we assume that we must provide space for a 500,000 enrollment increase per year and that a more realistic cost factor is $35 per square foot, then the annual construction needs will total $4.375 billion It is at this point that a determination of the Federal We recognize apologetically that our figures have a wide spread. It appears to us, however, that there will be a need for new construction starts each year for the next 10 years of somewhere between $3 and $4 billion. We have no way of estimating what the capacity for providing nonFederal matching money may be, but we are certain that it is closer to 50 percent than it is to the current 80 percent level. In view of these estimated requirements for funding of higher education academic facilities construction, the committee feels that the amounts proposed over the administration requests are modest. Since an authorization bill should, however, be an estimate of the cost of meeting a social need as opposed to an appropriations bill which allocates scarce resources in order of policy priority, it is the feeling of the committee that the authorizations contained in this bill as introduced were an understatement of the need. One measure of the extent of this need is to be found on the following table prepared at the request of the committee on the backlog of applications. The committee also took into consideration the reluctance of colleges to go to the trouble and expense of preparing applications when authorizations to fund the requests are held at relatively low levels. The committee recommendations for funding are presented, however, in the hope that more adequate data can be prepared before the further expiration of this act, which will enable the Congress to come to grips with this problem in a more comprehensive manner when the act is further revised and extended. JUNIOR AND COMMUNITY COLLEGES In changing the authorization language in the bill, thus providing separate authorizations for the 2-year and the 4-year institutions of higher education, the committee did so, in part, because of the impression made upon it by the testimony and correspondence it had received reflecting the growth of such institutions and the climate of public acceptance as evidenced through the support given to these institutions in the several States. This development, in the committee view, should continue to receive Federal encouragement where appropriate. As an aid to the committee in its future review of legislation affecting this segment of higher education, the committee suggests to the Office of Education that it review its present practices for the collection and array of statistical information on enrollment so that a clear picture may be given to it in the next session on the first-year enrollments and relative rates of growth of the 2-year institutions, the 4-year institutions, and the 4-year institutions with partial graduate offerings, and finally the university with full graduate complements, and the geographical variations, if any, of such factors. It is the belief of the Committee that the Office of Education could perform a most useful service in the compilation of this and related statistical material such as the per-pupil costs of construction of academic facilities and related student services, buildings, including housing, in each of the types of institution. Because of the interest in the program which has been evinced, it is the further hope of the committee that the Office of Education will give serious thought to the strengthening of the service it can provide to the junior and community college field through the addition of specialists knowledgeable in the field. ARCHITECT'S FEES The original definition of eligible development cost for Higher Education Facilities Act projects excluded from eligibility for Federal participation "any cost incurred before or under a contract entered into before the enactment of this Act" (December 16, 1963). This provision works an unintended hardship with regard to architectural fees for those institutions which entered into long-term architectural agreements for the orderly and coordinated planning of structures as a part of long-range campus development plans. To remedy this situation the committee bill includes an amendment of the definition of development cost, to provide that in the case of a facility included in an application approved after June 30, 1966, the development cost may include the cost of the architectural and engineering services performed after the enactment of the Higher Education Facilities Act, whether or not the cost was incurred under a contract entered into before such enactment. MULTIPURPOSE CONSTRUCTION COMMENTS Information was presented to the committee which indicated that funds appropriated under title I had been considered by the Office of Education as being available for the construction of facilities to meet either undergraduate or graduate needs and the extent to which title I funds were requested and used for each of these needs was not re quired to be disclosed by the applicants. As a result, there are indications that some facilities constructed with title I funds were designed primarily for graduate use, but the extent of such use of title I funds'is not known. The Office of Education has now issued instructions which provide, in effect, that not over 20 percent of the space in multipurpose-building projects constructed in part with title I funds can be planned for graduate use. As it appears that at some institutions facilities planned for joint undergraduate and graduate use would be desirable and in some cases necessary in the interest of economy, the committee believes that the instructions which have now been issued by the Office of Education are consistent with the original intent of the Congress for implementing title I of the act. However, it is the committee's view that the Commissioner of Education should identify graduate facilities constructed with the aid of title I funds and furnish information in this regard to the Advisory Committee on Graduate Education for its use in carrying out its responsibilities under title II of the act. DEVELOPMENT COST-PARKING FACILITIES Another problem area in administration of the Higher Education Facilities Act has been the eligibility of parking facilities. In administering the act the Office of Education has interpreted the definition of development cost as permitting participation in the cost of parking facilities or space necessary in connection with the direct occupancy of the academic facilities for which assistance is requested. However, general student parking facilities per se (either by themselves or as a part of an academic facility) have not been considered to qualify under the definition of an academic facility. The committee understands that the Office of Education has agreed that, where specified amounts of parking space in a structure are required by municipal ordinance or regulation, such amounts of parking space will be considered eligible under the act. The committee concurs in this interpretation of the definition of academic facilities contained in the act. The following tables set forth the State-by-State distribution of grants under the committee authorizations recommendation. |