Washington -- Higher education found itself trapped-recently between conflicting air masses -- an icy blast from a howling winter and the hot air of a fractious Congress-White House debate.
The budget impasse between the Clinton White House and the Republican-controlled Congress left the higher education establishment in a lurch:
* 140,000 student loan applications for the current semester were unprocessed:
* More than $100 million in National Science Foundation funds earmarked for 1995-96 research projects remained unspent:
* $1 billion in National Institutes of Health grants have not been awarded: and
* With passport offices shut down visiting scholars are stranded without entry visas or other travel document services.
The impact amounts to a rude wake-up call for students, faculty and administrators, according to education observers.
"A lot of [federal fund] recipients on campus are getting a political education and realizing the role that the federal government plays in their lives. It's more than just the Post Office and the Army," said Dr. Arnold Mitchem, executive director of the National Council of Educational Opportunity Associations.
He and other higher education advocates here say that the shutdown has forced those who inhabit a world that generally views itself as only remotely connected to the daily swirl of federal policy-making apparatus to realize that it is inextricably tied to the vagaries of debate inside the Capital Beltway.
"I think most people on college campuses certainly did not think the shutdown would last long," said Larry Zaglaniczny, assistant to the president of the National Association of Student Financial Administrators.
"Too often, people just take things for granted. These shutdowns make people more aware of how things work," Mitchem said.
The result is likely to be a surge of grant request approvals before the impasse hits the Jan. 26 deadline for Congress and the White House to reach an agreement on a plan to achieve a balanced federal budget by the year 2002, said William "Bud" Blakey.
