The state that got the most money from FIPSE last year was Mississippi, with more than $12 million in a dozen relatively large grants. The state's junior senator, Sen. Thad Cochran, is the second-ranking Republican on the Senate Appropriations subcommittee on labor, health, human services and education.
Pennsylvania -- the home state of the subcommittee's chairman, Republican Sen. Arlen Specter -- got the largest number of earmarks, 58, for a total just less than $12 million. By comparison, California received $8 million in 28 earmarks.
Some money goes to projects that match FIPSE's mission -- to support revolutionary methods of teaching students after high school. Many more help schools purchase equipment, especially computers.
Then there are projects such as Alaska Christian College, which received $431,520 this year after getting $397,640 in 2004.
The school, on the Kenai Peninsula, had 37 students last year. The Education Department said the college saw its mission as "helping Native Alaskan students to improve skills needed to make the transition from local, generally inadequate 'bush' high schools to college-level work."
But the Freedom From Religion Foundation, an advocacy group in Madison, Wis., contends that the school is a Christian mission. In April, the foundation filed suit in federal court to prohibit the Education Department -- which is not allowed to support religious education with federal funds -- from awarding grants to religious programs.
The foundation's claim appears to be bolstered by an Education Department evaluation of the school produced for the litigation. "The first-year students take a common curriculum that is almost entirely religious in nature," the evaluation says. "The president suggested that they just didn't know that earmark funds could not be spent for religious purposes."
The earmarks were inserted by Rep. Don Young (R-Alaska). "We evaluated the merit of what they do and submitted the request," said Pamela Day, Young's senior legislative assistant.
FIPSE's normal evaluation process would not have approved such an application, several former FIPSE staff members said.
At Mt. San Jacinto Community College in California's Inland Empire, Dean of Student Services Joanna Quejada received a FIPSE grant in 2001 by applying for one through the merit-based contest. She said she had no idea how to get an earmark.
"If there was a way to do that, I'm not aware of it," she said. "If we did, we'd all be in good shape."
Not all California schools missed out on the earmarks. The biggest of the state's 28 grants was $570,400 for the University of San Francisco's Harney Science Center. The Sweetwater Education Foundation in San Diego County received $535,680 toward college scholarships for at-risk students. Cal State Chico, Palo Verde Community College in Blythe, and Touro University in Vallejo each got $496,000.
Longanecker said earmarks proliferated when one party controlled the House, the Senate and the White House. But he said neither party was immune to temptation.
The Strom Thurmond Wellness and Fitness Center was the only earmark in 2005 for a project named for a Republican. Four Democrats -- former President Clinton, the late Sen. Paul Simon of Illinois, former Rep. John Brademas of Indiana and the late Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan of New York -- were commemorated on campuses around the country with FIPSE earmarks of $1 million or more.
