Tired of paying more for college every year? Congress feels your pain. Last week, lawmakers passed a new financial aid bill intended to increase the total funding to Pell Grants by cutting subsidies to private student lenders. The bill, which comes on the heels of legislation passed this summer to curb preferential treatment of lenders by universities, is proof that the Democrats may yet be capable of following through on their campaign promises. However, this modest increase in aid for lower-income families doesn't go far enough to alleviate the burden of the increasing cost of going to college.

The new legislation will cut subsidies to private lenders by $21 billion, while routing $11 billion to increase the maximum amount of the Pell Grant from $4,310 to $5,400 per year. With tuition at the University now at $5,149 for in-state students and $15,556 for out-of-state students per semester, most of those receiving the Pell Grant will also need additional grants and loans. Thus, their prospects of avoiding a mountain of debt upon graduation are only mildly improved.

The bill will also cut interest on need-based federal loans in half, helping students repay their debt more quickly. While this is a major improvement, there is still a significant difference between the amount of financial aid awarded to students and the amount most students need to cover tuition, housing, textbooks and other school expenses.

Even with these gains, students will continue to encounter obstacles within this flawed system of financial aid, which hasn't been significantly amended since the Higher Education Act of 1965. Bolstering Pell Grants is an admirable step, but the criteria for eligibility remain too strict to help everyone. For example, last year, only 3,350 out of the University's nearly 40,000 students benefited from Pell Grants. Generally only those whose expected family contribution to college costs is less than $4,000 are eligible for the grant.

Many students must pay their entire cost of college while failing to qualify for adequate financial aid because of the dubious "expected family contribution" listed on the Free Application for Federal Student Aid. This EFC factors into the amount of aid the student qualifies for regardless of whether parents actually supply it. This is particularly relevant at the University, where students are suffering another tuition hike this year.

Even the improvements expected to come from the new legislation won't be fully phased in for five years. To truly ease the burden, we need an overhaul not only of the grant system but also of federal loan programs. In 1993, then-President Bill Clinton proposed the Student Loan Reform Act, which would have offered federal financial aid with manageable interest rates. One of its most attractive characteristics was that it would have offered reasonable aid without wasting money on subsidies to intermediary private lenders. But the Republican Congress was unreceptive to the idea of a program that would have handled almost 50 percent of all student loans and curtailed private loans in favor of federal ones.

While the increase for Pell Grant funding shows that Congress is making an effort to ease the financial burden of students, more can be done. We need to reform the current system to focus on direct federal loans and prevent more students from falling into unmanageable amounts of debt to private loan companies. So what's stopping our Democratic Congress from revisiting Clinton's idea?