A letter report issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "Twenty-one percent of grant-eligible applicants who did not use the District of Columbia's tuition assistance grant (TAG) funding to attend a participating college or university may have encountered such barriers as college entrance requirements and the absence of minority outreach programs. Whether enrollment caps at colleges posed a barrier for applicants is unclear. In the program's first year, 516 of the nearly 2,500 eligible applicants did not use the grants. About 21 percent of the institutions in which applicants expressed interest restrict the number of out-of-state students that they will accept, although the extent to which this played a role in limiting access to these institutions is unclear. Enrollment at the University of the District of Columbia (UDC) changed little during the TAG program's first year. The TAG program and UDC appeared to serve different freshmen populations, which may account for the TAG program's minimal impact on UDC enrollment. Although concerns about TAG program administration were largely resolved with the revision of program regulations in December 2000, other administrative issues may hinder program operations, including the determination of applicant eligibility and the distribution of information on …

A letter report issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "U.S. dairy farmers produced 167.7 billion pounds of unprocessed, raw milk in 2000. Federal and state dairy programs influence the minimum prices paid to farmers for raw milk. These prices are based on how the raw milk is to be used. Minimum prices set for raw milk to be used for making drinking milk (fluid milk) are higher than those for milk used for manufacturing cheese, butter, and other dairy products. About 70 percent of the raw milk produced in the United States is regulated under the U.S. Department of Agriculture's (USDA) federal milk marketing order program. The 1996 farm bill established another pricing program -- the Northeast Interstate Dairy Compact (NEDC) -- which is run by a commission that sets a minimum price for raw milk sold as fluid milk in six New England states. The NEDC works in conjunction with federal and state dairy programs to establish an alternative minimum price for raw milk in the Compact states. When the monthly NEDC minimum price exceeds the federal marketing order or state minimum price, the NEDC price becomes the minimum price. Congress is now considering …