The passage of budget bill H.R. 1 by the House of Representatives should be deeply distressing news to anyone concerned about the future of education – and our country.
The bill proposes significant cuts in the Pell Grant program and other financial aid for college students. The Pell program provides need-based grants to low-income undergraduate students and certain graduate students.
The grants typically go to students from families earning less than $40,000 a year. About 6.3 million students received Pell Grants last year, including more than 127,000 undergraduates from The City University of New York – nearly half of our undergraduate student body.
For these students, the House’s proposal to reduce the maximum Pell award by $845 is perhaps the final blow to what has been a series of hits to their ability to afford a college education.
Over the last couple of decades, state support for public universities has been declining. Between 1987 and 2008, the average share of public universities’ operating revenues from state sources dropped by almost 14 percentage points. The country’s recession has only exacerbated that regression.
As a result, colleges and universities have been forced to cut programs, reduce financial aid, and implement furloughs. They have also increased fund-raising efforts and turned to public-private partnerships to finance building projects. And most have also raised tuition. For example, in just the last year, tuition jumped by 28 percent at the University of California-Davis, by 16 percent at the University of Georgia, and by almost 10 percent at the University of Maryland.
As funding decreases and tuition rises, the responsibility for supporting public higher education continues to shift from the government to students. Add to that a reduction in Pell grants and other aid, historically a safety net for low-income students, along with a proposal by the president to eliminate one of two scheduled Pell Grant awards in 2012, and the dream of a college education increasingly becomes a dream deferred – or altogether dismissed – by many students.
In fact, Harvard researchers Claudia Goldin and Lawrence Katz have shown that in the last quarter century, educational attainment has slowed considerably. Over the last three decades, the eight-year completion rate among college goers has fallen from 51 percent to 45 percent.
In the first three quarters of the 20th century, educational attainment in this country increased nonstop. This was also, not surprisingly, a time of great economic growth. Our nation’s economic well-being increasingly depends on the existence of a well-educated workforce.
Indeed, President Obama has called for a greater number of college graduates in the United States, noting that “nearly eight in 10 new jobs will require workforce training or a higher education by the end of this decade.” For students without personal or family wealth, reductions in state aid, increases in tuition, and cuts to federal financial aid increasingly put that education and those jobs out of reach.
Our country’s future depends on the education of its people. We must re-imagine how to provide the necessary financial support for our public institutions, without shifting the financial burden to students in the form of tuition and fees. And we must ensure that every deserving student has the opportunity to earn a degree and contribute to our workforce, our communities, and our growth.
Matthew Goldstein is Chancellor of The City University of New York.
