Some universities are suffering from an embarrassment of riches.
Last week, Senators Max Baucus (D-Montana) and Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) requested financial aid data from 136 universities with large endowments.
The senators want to investigate whether colleges are doing all they can to make higher education affordable.
It's a fair question. But Congress' eagerness to intervene has led to some poorly-designed policies in the past.
For instance, we urged the Senate Finance Committee last semester to refrain from setting arbitrary mandates requiring universities to spend a certain percentage of their endowment on financial aid.
Still, the last two months have shown that many colleges and universities are committed to expanding financial aid for students - if only to keep up with their peer institutions.
Duke, Harvard, Yale, Swarthmore, Cornell, Dartmouth and, of course, Penn have all recently announced impressive expansions of existing financial aid programs.
Loan-free programs and expanded aid for middle-income and upper-middle class students are quickly becoming the norm for the nation's top-tier universities. Simply put, the market is doing its work.
Competition between schools pushes them to offer more lucrative aid packages to remain affordable and attractive to students.
The last thing Congress should do is hurriedly pass misguided legislation that unnecessarily micromanages university finances.
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