Higher Ed. Amendment needed

Last week, the U.S. Senate passed a bi-partisan amendment to President George W. Bush's budget. The Higher Education / Job Training Amendment will help poor and middle-class families obtain a college education.

In his proposed budget, Bush made drastic cutbacks to higher education. The cutbacks would have significant consequences on programs such as Gaining Early Awareness and Readiness for Undergraduate Programs (GEAR UP) and TRIO in addition to grants and loans. Bush's budget proposal would freeze the Pell Grant maximum award for the third straight year at $4,050, enough to pay just 34 percent of the average annual cost of attending college - down from 42 percent in 2001.

However, the Senate has sent a bi-partisan message to the president through passage of the Higher Education Amendment sponsored by Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.). The Amendment offers three major improvements to Bush's budget.

The first part of the amendment will restore funding to job training and vocational-education programs. The Higher Education Amendment will give an additional $2 billion to the programs and will ensure Americans have the opportunity to work after school.

Second, the Higher Education Amendment will try to keep America competitive in the areas of math and science by encouraging more students to become teachers in these areas of shortage. Under the amendment, new teachers of math, science and special education will be guaranteed up to $23,000 annually in loan forgiveness for the first four years of teaching. Such an incentive will help to cure teacher shortages in these subject areas.

Since 1975, the United States has fallen from third to 15th in the world for the number of scientists and engineers produced by the education system. America ranks No. 29 in the industrialized world for math and science education. Instead of encouraging more students in science and math, the president's budget actually would make this country less competitive in the world. The Higher Education Amendment reverses this decision.

Third, the amendment will allocate $1.6 billion in discretionary spending to restore Bush cutbacks to TRIO, GEAR UP, Law Enforcement Against Prohibition, Perkins loans, and provide for cost of college increases in work-study, graduate education and Supplemental Education Opportunity Grant scholarships. Most importantly, the amendment will also allocate a $1.5 billion increase to the Pell Grant program, which will raise the maximum grant to $4,500. The increase to Pell Grants is immediate.

Programs like TRIO and GEAR UP are essential to helping students from disadvantaged backgrounds have an equal chance of going to college. TRIO provides low-income Americans with financial and academic counseling, career advice, tutoring, special assistance with study skills and advice on choosing a college. GEAR UP provides grants to states in order to offer special college preparatory assistance to students in poor school districts. Funds are also used to supply scholarships to low income students.

Most importantly, increasing Pell Grants is essential to helping students fund college. Over the last several years, the federal government has shifted away from grants to loans in helping to fund a college education. As more loans are provided, students will continue to accumulate more debt. The use of loans does not help families from poorer backgrounds because they lack the income base to adequately and easily pay off loans. In reality, loans are not really a form of financial aid. If the federal government really wants to make higher education accessible to all and aid students in reducing the costs of college, the president and Congress should provide more funding for grants.

Certainly, loans are helpful to many students who seek to attend college. Nonetheless, many students from disadvantaged economic backgrounds are fully qualified to attend college, but must first analyze the expected price of a four-year education. The loan process is complicated and loans do not reduce the costs of college for these groups - loans simply defer the costs.

When making the decision to apply to college, students decide where to apply based on the perceived costs of college. If students expect to receive just loans, the cost of college is perceived at its face value. Only if receiving grants or scholarships is the perceived cost actually lowered. Only if the perceived cost is lowered will qualified students from poor backgrounds apply for college.

The Higher Education Amendment is a small step to increasing the amount of federal grants. In reality, given dramatically rising tuition costs, the small increase in grants is still not an adequate measure to help students from disadvantaged backgrounds attend college. Congress cannot allow Pell Grants to increase at rates slower than the dramatically increasing costs of college.

Many people may criticize the Higher Education Amendment for inflicting great costs - higher taxes or a rising national debt. However, such a statement is false. The amendment sets forth these additional expenditures and it specifies a method to pay for the programs. The approximately $5.4 billion the amendment allocates will be paid for by closing corporate tax loopholes previously approved by the U.S. Senate, but not enacted per the conference report - average Americans will not bear the costs. By closing the loophole on big corporations, the federal government will raise an adequate amount of revenue to fund the programs.

Given the three components of the Higher Education Amendment, poor and middle class families will now be better served than had the president's budget been passed in its original form. For this reason, Congress should follow the Senate's lead in passing the amendment. With any luck, leaders in the House will ensure the amendment's passage so Republicans do not kill the amendment in Conference Committee.

There are a number of reforms that can be made to the higher education system. If America wants to remain competitive in a global economy, higher education must be more easily accessible to all and students must be better equipped to enter the workforce. Sen. Kennedy said it best, "It is more important to help families pay for college and help all Americans be equipped for the jobs in the global economy than it is to maintain corporate tax loopholes."

Clearly, the benefits to society of restoring and expanding these higher education programs outweigh the costs to society of closing the corporate tax loopholes.

Sources:

http://kennedy.senate.gov/~kennedy/statements/05/03/2005318403.html