Among the other "citizen proposals" submitted to the subcommittee is a report issued last month by the Carnegie Council on Policy Studies.

The Carnegie report recommends the establishment of government "tuition equalization grants" to students at private colleges in order to equalize the relative financial burdens borne by students at public and private institutions.

Like the consortium's proposals, the Carnegie report calls for the expansion of existing federally-funded grant programs, and also seeks the establishment of a "National Student Loan Bank" to replace or supplement existing student loan programs.

"One important point, however, is the great potential cost of implementing the Carnegie plan," Gibson said. "We feel that the consortium report is somewhat realistic in terms of financial expectations."

Nychis said that implementation of the consortium's proposals would raise the cost of the present O'Hara bill from "about $2.15 billion to about $2.5 billion."

Dr. Margaret Gordon, associate director of the Carnegie Council and author of the council's report, said yesterday that the cost of implementing the Carnegie plan, when spread over a five-year period, would not greatly exceed the cost of the consortium's proposals.

"We're approaching the cost factor in a different way," she said. "We're asking that as the number of Vietnam era veterans receiving educational benefits declines, that money be diverted into general financial assistance programs, and this added money would substantially reduce our program's new costs."

No Final Conclusion

O'Hara said last week that he has not reached a conclusion on the final form of this bill.

According to Buell, as it now stands, the O'Hara bill "is very different from the proposals submitted to the subcommittee by citizen's groups-there's no doubt about it."

The O'Hara bill calls for a reduction in BEOG funding, the linking of SEOG grants to academic merit as well as financial need, and a gradual phasing out of NDSL and Guaranteed Student Loans.

Under the O'Hara bill, the current $300 million funding of the work-study programs would be doubled, putting more emphasis on student work and less on student grants and loans.

Buell said that the first draft of the bill was "based upon hearings held last year," and that "considerable revisions" in the bill may be expected before it is presented to the full House for final action as part of Title IV of, the Higher Education Act.

"I can't really guess when final action will come, but my feeling is that it should be by late spring or early summer," he said.

The consortium's report, entitled "Federal Student Assistance: A Review of Title IV of the Higher Education Act," is the result of a two-year study by the consortium, whose members include all the Ivy League colleges