Burnt Orange Report

Where's the Relief for College Students?

By John Pruett

Hurricane Katrina relief and rebuilding efforts (read no-bid contracts to Halliburton and other Republican donors). Ongoing war in Iraq and Afghanistan. Corporate giveaways to oil companies. No increase in taxes; or, more accurately, tax-breaks for the wealthy. Result: record deficit spending by the federal government.

Everyone knows the federal budget is out of control and unsustainable. But, how can Congress balance it with so many priorities on the table? Well they have one solution: cut financial aid spending for college students. You see, for Republicans, social spending to improve people’s lives equals “big government,” whereas things such as war and corporate subsidies fall under “economic growth” and “national security.”

Further infuriating my "bleeding heart," these financial aid cuts, if passed, will be the largest for higher education in US history. The House bill proposes $9 billion in financial aid cuts, while the Senate bill includes up to $14 billion in similar cuts. If passed as they are, these would be the largest college financial aid cuts in our nation’s history.

Congress must fail to see the sick irony of their own legislation. As if Hurricane Katrina’s devastation of New Orleans didn’t do enough to point out the inequities of poverty in this country, Congress could be effectively stripping away the opportunities that allow the poor to escape their desperate situation.

Many of those left behind in New Orleans either did not have the means to get out, or, if they could evacuate, did not have the resources to sustain themselves elsewhere. How many of the Katrina victims from 9th Ward had college degrees, professional jobs, and owned cars? How many of those who got out before the storm had these things? I leave it to you to decide.

An editorial in the Star-Tribune states:

The political calculus, apparently, is that it's better to ask today's lower-income college students to pay for disaster relief twice -- through higher college costs today and higher federal debt service tomorrow -- than it is to ask today's taxpayers to pay for it now. As Minnesota U.S. Rep. Betty McCollum objected last week, "Everyone knows we want to start the healing process for those areas. But you don't do it by shortchanging our children's educational future. That's the economic future of our country."

And, to make matters worse, the problem with providing college opportunities for low-income children is not a new one. No surprise there. It’s not as if federal financial aid budget has been adequate up until this point.

Here’s an excerpt from a Seattle Post-Intelligencer article:

Despite the lofty goals of presidents and policy-makers, over the past 30 years the poor have made little progress earning bachelor's degrees, increasingly the key to better jobs and middle-class security.

In 2003, 8.6 percent of the nation's poorest young adults earned bachelor's degrees by age 24, barely up from 7.1 percent in 1975, according to Postsecondary Education Opportunity, a higher education research group. This trend persisted even as more students enrolled in college overall.

"I am worried that we will become a stratified economy, like many in Latin America where the prosperous and the advantaged stay prosperous, and the poor and disadvantaged stay poor," Harvard University President Lawrence Summers said in an interview.

Today the struggle to attend college extends beyond the poor, now threatening many middle-class families. Need-based aid typically goes to students from the poorest families first, whereas many middle-class students unable to depend on their parents’ incomes for support are left out. With tuition costs rising at universities across the nation, the federal government should consider extending aid to middle-income families, not cutting the limited funds that already exist.

Have state governments done anything to fill the gap? Well here in Texas, the legislature has relied on universities to offset rising tuition costs with increased financial aid. However, a recent report by the State Auditor’s Office found that this system isn’t going far enough.

The Houston Chronicle sums it up:

To cushion expected tuition increases for middle-class families who don't qualify for most forms of financial aid, lawmakers told universities to give special consideration to students whose only assistance likely would be student loans.

According to the audit, only Texas Tech University performed that calculation. That left more than 62,000 students at four-year universities without financial assistance for which they should have been first in line.

Hmm…62,000 students. No small number. Where shall they turn for help?

I’m disgusted by conservative politicians who twist the language of “hard work” and “pulling yourself up by your bootstraps” to justify stripping away needed social programs. Have we as a country learned anything from the Katrina disaster? Education is one of the primary means of social progress and of improving people’s lives. Without it, the poor stay poor while the rich get richer. What’s happening to the American dream?