With student voting in last week's midterm elections up 118 percent on campus since 2002, the new Democratic majority in congress may start to pay attention to student concerns, the director of a financial-aid reform advocacy group said.

"The fact that more young people voted for both sides is a sign that it's going to be harder and harder for politicians to ignore young people's interests when they make decisions on Capitol Hill," said David Halperin, the director of Campus Progress, an organization that pushes for financial aid reform.

Halperin said he thought the freshman class in Congress would bring about some of the changes his organization has been encouraging.

"More of the Democrats agree with our position on student aid than Republicans do," Halperin said. "It seems to me that the mandate here of more youths voting and more progressives in Congress will push more legislation through."

Deadlock and turmoil along party lines may prevent any higher education reform from getting through Congress any time soon, said College Republicans President Todd Taylor.

"I would hope the new Congress would try to find some sort of plan in debt forgiveness and some sort of plan to curb the growth in tuition," he said. "But do I see

anything getting done in the next two years? Probably not."

College Democrats Press Secretary Eliot Schmidt said he thought higher education would be a bipartisan issue.

"A lot of Democratic candidates ran on a platform of making higher education more affordable," he said. "It is in the interest of both parties; it just hasn't been on the radar."

Kyle Ferlic (sophomore-industrial engineering) said he thought the shift in power might create politicians who care more about students' concerns.

"[Because] a lot of the changes have been liberal, I think they'll probably take a lot more of that into account," he said.

Sandy Postrion (junior-health policy administration) said she knew little about the current political climate but was concerned with the cost of tuition.

"There's been a lot of articles lately about how Penn State's tuition is one of the highest," she said. "I think the change in Congress might affect it."

With only a week having passed since Election Day, it may be too soon to know how the new Congress' agenda will shape up, said Pennsylvania Higher Education Assistance Agency spokesman Mike Reiber.

"Obviously the new Democratic leaders have proposed issues," he said. "I think they've identified financial aid and student loans as something they want to work on, but other than that, nothing has been put on the table."

Halperin said Campus Progress supports various issues related to the cost of higher education that he hopes to see receive legislative attention.

"We're interested in one of the things that the Democratic leadership is interested in, which is cutting interest rates for loans," he said.

Halperin said Campus Progress also supports the practice of direct government loans to students, an idea that surfaced during the Clinton administration but has received little attention.

"Unfortunately, not even on the Democratic side everyone supports that," he said. "If more schools participated in direct lending, a lot more money would be available from general federal funding to pay to decrease interest rates and put more money into Pell Grants."

Pell Grants are a type of federal aid awarded to students who fill out a Federal Application for Student Aid and who have a family income of generally less than $20,000.

A spokesman for Rep. John Peterson, R-Pa, who has just been re-elected to represent Centre County and the rest of Pennsylvania's 5th district in the U.S. House of Representatives, said he has plans to improve non-traditional higher education while in office.

"Pennsylvania obviously has no problem with world-class academic instruction," his spokesman, Chris Tucker, said. "But in our 17-county district, we don't have a single community college."

Tucker said although building a community college would be a local venture, Peterson's support of vocational and technical training in local high schools aligned with his commitment to educational improvement.