U.S. Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings delivered remarks today to the Federal Student Aid Conference in Las Vegas, Nev. Secretary Spellings discussed action taken by the Administration to promote college accessibility, affordability, and accountability, as well as the work that remains to be done. Following are the Secretary's remarks as prepared:

Thank you, Jim [Manning] for introducing me. It's a pleasure to be here with you and financial aid professionals from across the country.

As the mother of one daughter in college and another headed there soon-hopefully!-I want to thank you for everything you do.

The saying goes, what happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas. But I encourage you to take everything you learn here home to your colleagues. Because families need your help! They need you to help them navigate a financial aid system that's been called "confusing, complex, inefficient, and duplicative," by my own Commission on the Future of Higher Education.

I know they can count on you, because I've seen you in action. Students and families rely on your dedication and commitment.

Now, with just a few weeks left in my tenure, I would love to stand up here and tout our accomplishments. I would love to link arms, sing "Kumbaya," and talk about how great everything is, take a few questions, and wave goodbye.

But I can't. I have to be honest. Yes, we've done many good things together. We've made some important reforms. But there's still a lot of work to do.

Our students face a perfect storm: growing admission anxieties, rising tuition costs, and a historic credit crisis. In these rough seas, education is their lifeline to a better future. We've got to do everything we can to make sure it doesn't slip away.

We've all seen the headlines: "Parents Worry Anew Over Paying College Bills." "Value of Higher Ed Weighed." "How Much College Loan Debt is Too Much?"

A recent story in the Washington Post featured Danielle Price, a high school senior from Virginia. She has a 3.3 GPA, and she scored 1700 on the SAT. Her parents are divorced, and her mom, a social worker, makes $47,000 a year.

One school offered them $2,000 in aid, but charged them $24,000 for tuition, room, and board. Funny. I thought housing prices were falling.

Last year, tuition rose 6.4 percent for public, four-year institutions and 5.9 percent for private colleges. It's no wonder that Forbes Magazine asked, after the mortgage bubble and the housing bubble, is the "College Bubble" next?

On the other hand, tuition actually declined by 0.8 percent for community colleges. That's a measure of relief for students who are rightly anxious.

So let me tell you what we're doing to help them.

First, let me assure you and families across the nation that federal aid is, and will continue to be, available.

I've taken a number of steps over the past year to ensure that students have continued access to aid, regardless of market conditions. Using authority granted by Congress, we are providing short-term liquidity for FFELP lenders. So far, we have purchased nearly 10 billion dollars in participation interests. We also offered lenders the option of selling their 2008-09 loans to the Department over the coming year.

Both of these programs helped to prevent market disruptions that could have delayed the plans of thousands of students, and we will replicate them for the 2009-10 school year.

In addition, two weeks ago I announced that my department will create conduits to provide a safety net for the years ahead. They will purchase any non-consolidated FFEL loan originated since 2003, then use these assets to sell commercial paper. Should there be a disruption in the issuance of the commercial paper, the conduits will pay the Department a fee for the promise of purchasing these loans.

I also recently announced a loan purchase program to make sure no student gets stranded between first and second disbursements. Under this program, the Department will purchase up to 6 and a half billion dollars in additional loans at 97 percent of the principal interest.

Currently, my Department is limited by law as to the types of loans we can safeguard. We are not able to purchase FFEL consolidation loans, which account for a big chunk of student loans. So I want to thank the Treasury Department and the Federal Reserve for their timely announcement last week. Going forward, the Federal Reserve will extend up to 200 billion dollars in loans to holders of asset-backed securities, including auto loans and student loans. Under the Troubled Asset Relief Program, the Treasury Department will extend 20 billion dollars in funds to support this effort.

Lastly, I have ensured that the Lender-of-Last Resort program is ready should it be needed, and expanded the capacity of the Direct Loan program to accommodate additional volume.

These are extraordinary measures, in response to extraordinary challenges presented by the markets. So far, our actions are working. But in the long term, to help students survive this perfect storm, we need to build a better ark.

I'm proud to have been part of an administration that is helping more students go to college. We created two new grant programs to encourage students to take rigorous high school coursework and to major in math and science fields. We awarded record numbers of AP Incentive grants. We're getting ready to distribute new TEACH grants for those willing to serve in our neediest schools. And, with bipartisan support, we raised the maximum Pell Grant award from about thirty-seven hundred to more than forty-seven hundred dollars. Today, about 1.5 million more students are now receiving Pell Grants.

Sadly, many students, up to 8 million in fact, don't even apply for aid, in part because of all the red tape. We believe most would have been eligible for assistance.

I know many of you share my frustration with the student lending process. Imagine the frustration for families going through it for the first time!

Let's walk through it with a fictional student, "Susie Smith." Susie is a high school senior. She's going to class, as usual. In addition, she's studying for her SAT and ACT, and maybe paying for costly prep courses. She is also working on college applications, which means filling out forms, writing essays, and chasing down references.... which in my house means lots of nagging from mom.

She turns in her college applications early, in the Fall of her senior year. Good. But now she has to wait until January to begin the student aid process.

That's when she can fill out the Free Application for Federal Student Aid, or FAFSA. It's 6 pages long, with more than 100 questions. It asks you how old you are three different ways.

Now, we've made some positive changes to the form for the 2009-10 year. But it's still a real "pain in the assets." Not long ago, Congress asked my department to recommend ways to simplify the process. In that same bill, they added 7 new questions to the form. That's Washington for you!

Once Susie submits her FAFSA, then what happens? My department tells her in a week or two whether she's eligible for federal student aid. Or, better yet, she receives her Student Aid Report in 3-5 days if she submitted it online through FAFSA on the Web. I'm proud of our work to make FAFSA on the web more user-friendly. You can file, sign, and even update it online.

Unfortunately, Susie won't learn how much federal aid her family may receive. It's up to the school to calculate that.

However, some schools will wait until the family files its tax return. More weeks lost.

Then there's the "verification" process. By law, schools have to verify 30 percent of applications. But they can choose to verify all of them. And some schools do. If Susie's form is flagged, her parents have to bring in their W-2 forms and tax returns, which help prevent fraud and abuse. But it doesn't make the process any easier.

Finally, Susie might have to fill out a "Profile" aid application form. It's required by many private, independent colleges. One more hurdle to clear.

But all this might not even matter. Why? Because Susie's school may wait until she is accepted for admission before determining her aid package. We're talking May 1st or later.

She may not receive her aid "package" until deep into the summer. And it leaves her without a backup plan. It denies her parents the leverage to negotiate a better deal. And it makes it harder to come up with another source of aid, like a home equity loan.

This is just the process for federal aid. There are also state aid, scholarships, and private loans. More time, more forms, more hassles. That is, if her family even knows about these sources of aid. But far too many do not.

You'd think we were trying to keep Susie out of college! And Susie and her family have to go through this process every single year. If she happens to transfer, she risks losing credits, money, and time.

In a good economy, this is inconvenient, at best. In a downturn, it's downright unacceptable.

Susie deserves better-and so do you.

I'm proud that I helped launch a national dialogue to improve the 3 A's - access, affordability, and accountability. I'm proud to have launched College.gov and the FAFSA4Caster. And I'm proud that many schools are answering my commission's call to "develop... new and innovative means to control costs, improve productivity, and increase ... supply."

The American Council on Education, the Lumina Foundation, and the National Association of System Heads are helping to prepare more students for college. So are states like Indiana, Massachusetts, Michigan, New York, and North Carolina.

I recently spoke with Peter McPherson of NASULGC - soon to be known as the Association of Public and Land-Grant Universities. He tells me that more than 300 institutions now publish data to help families compare their offerings. And the Gates Foundation recently announced the goal of doubling the number of low-income students who earn degrees by age 26.

But, as you know, so much more remains to be done. Improvement starts with putting the student first.

I've proposed to pare down the FAFSA to just 27 questions, and to streamline the process to give families real-time feedback on how much aid they can expect to receive. This would help put students in the driver's seat, with more time to investigate their options.

It would also free up an additional 1.75 million hours of your valuable time. That's 1.75 million more hours that you could devote to better serving your students!

Reform will require Congressional action. Within the next few weeks, at Congress's request, I'll send them a report outlining my recommendations.

Overall, I suggest we keep a few core principles in mind:

• First, we must recognize that this system exists for one reason: to serve students and families. And it should work in ways that are convenient for them. Imagine if we asked car buyers to go through the financing process we use for college. Today's auto industry woes would seem tame in comparison!

• Second, federal aid should always target the neediest students first. But, as you know, it often doesn't. Take the Perkins program, which channels aid in ways that are often based more on precedent than the needs of students and families.

• Third, eligibility should be based simply on income and family size-because those are reasonable, understandable variables. A simple table would allow families to gauge eligibility in advance.

• Fourth, students should get the same amount of aid, regardless of which school they choose. Knowing how much aid they can expect will increase their bargaining power to shop around and find a deal to suit their individual needs.

• Finally, federal, state, and local policymakers should work in tandem to put the consumer first. Instead of adding layer upon layer of bureaucracy, let's peel back the onion to create a system that's simple and easy to use.

I'm hopeful that President-elect Obama will adhere to these principles as he fulfills his promise to streamline financial aid.

He should know that today, the average college graduate is more than $20,000 in debt. That's $20,000 farther away from buying a home and starting a family. And $20,000 less likely to give back through teaching or public service.

I am sure President-elect Obama can empathize. He paid off his last student loan in January 2004, 13 years after earning his law degree. And he had to write a best-selling book to do it!

I don't want that for my daughters. And I know you don't want it for your children or students.

Remember, this is not a one-size-fits-all world. Fewer and fewer students fit the so-called "traditional" model of four years in one major at one university. Many have to work part-time to pay the bills. Their parents might have to work overtime or take out a second mortgage.

It is not unreasonable to ask what they are getting in return! They have questions: how long will it take Susie to get her degree? What are her chances of getting a job in her chosen field? And how does it compare to other colleges? And they deserve answers.

Let me make one other point. It is not unreasonable to expect our K-12 education system to prepare these young students for college. There is nothing sadder than seeing students graduate from high school, sometimes with honors, only to learn that they must now take remedial courses to get up to speed.

Many of these students are African American or Hispanic and attended high-poverty, inner-city public schools.

What does it say about us when we still tolerate an achievement gap between these students and their peers?

What does it say when African Americans between age 25 and 29 are half as likely to earn a college degree, and Hispanics are about 3 times less likely?

What does it say that we are not challenging these schools to change their ways or close their doors?

We know we are at a truly historic moment in the life of this country.

We saw it on election day. We saw that America can live up to the ideals contained in its founding documents.

We learned, if there were any doubters, that people of every background and circumstance can achieve greatness in the greatest country on earth.

But it takes a quality education to do it. And I applaud you for working with me to make it happen.

Thank you. I would be happy to answer your questions - and I also want to hear from you. What are you hearing from students and families? What do you recommend the Congress keep in mind as they overhaul financial aid?

For more information on Federal Student Aid, please visit www.studentaid.ed.gov and www.college.gov.

For more information on recent actions taken by the Department of Education to ensure students and families have continued access to federal student loans, please visit http://www.ed.gov/news/pressreleases/2008/11/11202008.html.

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