Washington

President Bush's plan to give $250-million in federal funds to community colleges for job training received a chilly reception on Thursday by some Republicans on a key Congressional panel, who voiced concerns that the plan was too costly and that the money would go to institutions focused too much on academics and not enough on job placement.

Rep. Ralph Regula of Ohio, a Republican who is chairman of the House Appropriations subcommittee that helps set the budgets of the Education and Labor Departments, asked Bush-administration officials at a hearing how they would ensure that community colleges focused on technical skills in using the money. The program is scheduled to be run through the Labor Department and not the Education Department, which now administers many programs for two-year colleges.

"If we get the $250-million in the budget, and that's a big if, how do you contemplate administering this through the Labor Department without adding new bureaucracy?" asked Mr. Regula. "I'm a little uneasy because when you say community colleges, that sounds academic, yet it's in the Department of Labor."

Emily Stover DeRocco, the Labor Department's assistant secretary for employment and training, told the subcommittee that one of the goals in putting the new program in the Labor Department was to "bring community colleges back" into the fold of training students for technical careers.

The Education Department's assistant secretary for postsecondary education, Sally L. Stroup, added that community colleges "walk a fine line" between educating students for academic degrees and giving them a technical education. The colleges "sometimes do want to be their four-year peers," Ms. Stroup told the subcommittee. "We are trying to change that image."

"One of the reasons we like community colleges so much is that they are good places to go to quickly get an education, and, by god, they are affordable," she said.

In her opening comments to the panel, Ms. Stroup defended the administration's lean budget request for student aid in the 2005 fiscal year, which begins on October 1. Since Congress is poised this year to renew the Higher Education Act, the law that governs most federal student-aid programs, the administration wanted to see "how programs will change before we decided to do things on our own," she said.

The other problem the administration faced in putting together its budget proposals for student aid, Ms. Stroup said, was that the Pell Grant program continues to face a shortfall, estimated at $3.7-billion in 2004-5.

Ms. Stroup also cited the shortfall when Rep. Anne Meagher Northup, a Republican from Kentucky, asked if the administration would explore letting students use their Pell Grant awards over 12 months instead of 9.

"Because of the shortfall, we would need even more money to do year-round Pell Grants," said Ms. Stroup, who added that the administration may consider a pilot program for extended Pell Grants. "There are a lot of fun things we can do with the Pell Grant program if we can get past the shortfall."