HIS PLAN: MORE HARM THAN GOOD?

By Stacy Perman

Here comes Bill Clinton, a self-proclaimed "education junkie," to the rescue. Riding on the national wave of anxiety about college costs and growing concerns about the state of education, the President has unveiled a $50 billion proposal to make higher education more affordable and to increase enrollment by giving tax breaks, tuition grants and scholarships. The centerpiece of this plan is the Hope Scholarship, modeled after Georgia's successful lottery-funded program, which would give a tax credit of $1,500 to families in each of the first two years their child attends college, earns at least a B average and stays off drugs. Alternatively, families could deduct up to $10,000 from their taxable income. Both tax breaks would be calculated on a sliding scale that would phase out families making between $50,000 and $100,000 a year.

But don't toss that mortarboard in the air just yet. The President's plan could become part of the problem as well as part of the solution. Many education professionals fear that the scholarships, aimed at the middle class, would benefit too many families that don't need the help and encourage colleges to raise tuition even higher. "It's just plain hucksterism," says Robert Zemsky, director of the University of Pennsylvania's Institute for Research on Higher Education. "Lots of people told the White House and the Education Department that this was nuts. I imagine every treasurer of every private university in America is just licking his chops."

Almost every senior Clinton aide at first opposed the plan, which was championed by Dick Morris. Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin and National Economic Council chief Laura Tyson were worried that it would unleash a tax-cutting war with Bob Dole and help mainly families of those who would go to college anyway. Lawrence Gladieux, an analyst at the College Board, agrees. "It is tax relief, but it's not effective in closing gaps in educational opportunity," he says. Sensitive to that charge, Clinton at the last minute tacked on a substantial increase in Pell grants, which pay college costs for some 3.7 million of America's neediest students. But critics are worried too that getting more people into college will lower education standards at public institutions, which spend more on each student than they collect in tuition and don't have big endowments to fall back on. Already in Georgia total state spending on colleges is up, while spending per student is down.

Republicans in Congress, wary of the President's proposal as a budget buster, have raised questions about administering the Hope Scholarships. Will parents append college transcripts to their tax returns? Submit drug tests? Is a B from State U. on a par with a Harvard B? And what about grades K through 12? G.O.P. majority leader Dick Armey said last week, "I want to make sure that the President's program doesn't subsidize two years of remedial learning for what should have been learned in the first 12 years." But such remarks from the party that recently wanted to abolish the Department of Education are the best proof of all that Clinton has the momentum on this issue. Says a White House aide: "We're very happy to hear them talk about subjects like that."

--By Stacy Perman. Reported by John F. Dickerson and J.F.O. McAllister/Washington

With reporting by JOHN F. DICKERSON AND J.F.O. MCALLISTER/ WASHINGTON