"More than three decades ago, when Congress was renewing the Higher Education Act for only the second time, Rep. Carl D. Perkins, chairman of the House education committee, sat down with his colleagues from the House and Senate and combed through a document comparing the chambers' bills, line by line," The Chronicle of Higher Education reports. "Today the process of crafting a compromise bill looks very different, and the forces shaping the major law governing student aid have shifted in ways both significant and subtle. The changes have given new voices a say in policy decisions and made it harder for more-established players to ward off increased federal regulation and oversight that colleges oppose. This power shift has given a small group of hard-working and intelligent but relatively inexperienced Congressional aides a huge amount of say over the shape of a bill that affects basically every college in the United States."