The Bush administration appears to have backed away from a proposal to help colleges that have taken in students displaced by Hurricane Katrina. In September the U.S. secretary of education, Margaret Spellings, announced that President Bush would ask Congress for $227-million to help students and colleges affected by the hurricane (The Chronicle, September 16). Much of that money was to provide $1,000 payments to colleges for each dislocated student they had enrolled. The funds were intended to help colleges meet the unexpected costs associated with educating students who typically had already paid their fall tuition to their home college and were not being charged by their host institution. Last week, however, President Bush did not include that proposal in an emergency spending plan to rebuild devastated areas of the Gulf Coast that he submitted to Congress. Mr. Bush is asking lawmakers to reallocate $17-billion that had already been appropriated to the Federal Emergency Management Agency for hurricane relief. The U.S. House of Representatives and the Senate are expected to introduce their own spending plans for the rebuilding effort within the next several weeks. Susan Aspey, an Education Department spokeswoman, said department officials \"still support\" the proposal. But privately, administration officials have told higher-education lobbyists that they have dropped the plan because Congressional leaders have shown little interest in it. Advocates for colleges say they have not given up on the proposal, but they know, in the current climate of budget deficits, that they face an uphill battle in getting any additional money for students and colleges affected by the hurricane.