Ending a decade-long wait, President George W. Bush signed a bill to reauthorize the Higher Education Act of 1965, an act aimed at making education more accessible and affordable to students.

Passed on August 14, the College Opportunity and Affordability Act of 2008, the extension of the Higher Education Act, will govern most federal financial aid policies and will work to make the financial aid process more transparent to students.

While the act contains more than 100 amendments, two of the provisions most applicable to Washington University students, according to Director of Student Financial Services Bill Witbrodt, are the year-round availability of Pell Grants and the increase in the monetary amount of the grants.

Pell Grants, part of a federal grant program sponsored by the Department of Education, will increase from $4,800 to $6,000 in 2009 and will increase to $9,000 through the 2013-2014 academic year.

The provision also enables Pell Grants to be used toward summer school, which can help students graduate earlier and ultimately alleviate student loans.

“We don’t have financial aid in the form of scholarships for summer, so people who are eligible for Pell Grants can use these,” Witbrodt said.

Although the exact numbers are not yet known, due to the change in the University’s financial aid policy last year, there are more Pell Grant recipients this year than last year. The University’s new policy enables students from families earning less than $60,000 a year not to take out student loans. Instead, the students receive a grant from the University that does not have to be repaid.

“That enabled a lot more needy students to enroll here,” Witbrodt said.

According to Witbrodt, because the University is a top-tier private university with a generous financial aid program already in place, many of the provisions will not have an impact on the University’s students.

“Wash. U. already has such a generous financial aid program that even if the Pell Grants didn’t increase we would still make sure our students receive the necessary aid,” Witbrodt said.

The Higher Education Act will also enact laws to help regulate the costs of textbooks by ensuring that professors have all the necessary information available to them when choosing textbooks for their students.

Publishers will now have to release not only the price of the book but also the copyright dates of the last three editions and a description of any significant changes made between editions.

“It will make sure that professors have the information they need to choose the textbook that will be best for students in terms of both their education and their wallet,” Pedro de la Torre, an organizer for education advocacy group Campus Progress, said in an e-mail to Student Life.

“The changes between editions are almost always extremely small, but coming out with new editions allows the publishers to reduce competition from the used book market, which is much cheaper for students.”

In addition, de la Torre says the bill will require books and supplemental materials that are sold together to be available for sale separately as well.

“These ‘supplemental materials’ are rarely used in classes, and in many cases are little more than an attempt to get more money out of students,” de la Torre said.

While the act is intended to eliminate conflicts of interest between financial aid offices and student loan companies, de la Torre says that a drawback of the act is that it does not require universities to report which students are receiving scholarships or financial aid provided by the school.

“Over the past couple decades, schools have been giving a smaller share of these funds to students with documented financial need, and more to students from higher income backgrounds,” de la Torre said.

One of the act’s weaknesses is that it does not require loan companies to report their potential recipients to the appropriate universities, making it more difficult for respective financial aid offices to counsel their students, de la Torre said.

Other clauses of the act include a program on the Department of Education’s Web site that will allow students to compare tuition prices and financial aid policies for different schools.

Witbrodt says that he and the financial aid office are still sifting through all the information of the amendments, but that the Higher Education Act is an overall positive movement for higher education.

“Everything about the act is done in a positive way for the benefit of students,” Witbrodt said.

“This is another step in the right direction; it’s a very small step, but at least we are still waking in the right direction. It is important for the students to remain engaged. Some of the best provisions of the bill are there because students have remained involved,” de la Torre said.