The U.S. Senate has approved a new $250 million federal program to address the digital divide at historically Black colleges, Hispanic-serving institutions and other minority-serving universities, as part of a far-reaching higher education reform bill that also simplifies the federal financial aid application.

The Senate added the technology initiative to the Higher Education Act Amendments of 2007, a bill that would target more funds for need-based financial aid as well as other improvements in federal higher education policy. Through the new program, minority-serving colleges could purchase hardware, software, wireless technology, digital networks and other infrastructure. They also could use proceeds to offer students universal access to campus networks.

Under debate on Capitol Hill for much of the decade, the bill cleared the Senate with no opposition. “It has been a long climb up the mountain,” says U.S. Sen. John Warner, R-Va., a long-time proponent of the measure.

Warner says the legislation meets an urgent need he first noticed in the 1980s when visiting Virginia’s six HBCUs. “I noticed the absence of so much infrastructure in these struggling institutions that other institutions had in abundance,” he says.

More than 200 HSIs, 100 HBCUs and 30 tribal colleges would be eligible for grants. The measure still needs approval from the House of Representatives.

The MSI provision was one of many amendments to the HEA bill, which cleared the Senate by a 95-0 vote on Tuesday. Other changes in the Senate HEA bill would:

Increase the maximum Pell Grant to at least $5,400 within five years;

Simplify the Free Application for Federal Financial Aid, cutting the form from seven pages to two;

Forgive the loans of student borrowers who work in public service careers for at least 10 years; and

Prohibit payments from educational lenders to schools or school officials.

To help students with the burden of repaying loans, the bill also would cap monthly loan payments at 15 percent of an individual’s discretionary income.

In an effort to control costs, the measure would set up a nationwide watch list of institutions whose annual increases are far above their peers.

“As we provide more aid to students, this bill recognizes that colleges need to do their part to keep college costs down,” says U.S. Sen. Edward Kennedy, D-Mass, who chairs the Senate’s education panel.

Another provision would create an early notification program so students learn in advance how much federal aid they likely would receive. Under this pilot initiative, many students would receive a financial estimate by their junior year of high school.

- Charles Dervarics