Fund gap bars way to college 400,000 qualified students can't enter in fall, study says By Mary Leonard, Globe Staff, Globe Correspondent, 6/27/2002 The national study is the latest in a series of dire warnings that
financial barriers are severely limiting the entry of qualified candidates
to college, even as high schools work to better prepare students for
higher education.
Using US Education Department data, the committee found that 48 percent
of all college-qualified, low-income students and 43 percent of students
from moderate-income families will not attend four-year colleges because
of financial barriers. The panel also found that 22 percent of low-income
students and 16 percent of moderate-income students will not go to any
college. The department defines low-income families as those that earn
less than $25,000 each year and moderate-income families as those earning
$25,000 to $50,000.
''The bottom line is that a really significant number of low-income
students who graduate from high school fully prepared and meeting the
criteria to attend college can't afford to go,'' said Brian Fitzgerald,
staff director of the Advisory Committee on Student Financial Assistance.
''It belies the consensus that if we just fix elementary and secondary
schools, we've solved our education problems.''
Fitzgerald said financial aid issues will grow more severe over the
next decade, a bulge made up disproportionately of minorities and
low-income students. Over a 10-year period, the report shows, 4.4 million
high school graduates will not be able to attend four-year colleges, and 2
million will attend no college at all. Those who continue their education
are likely to enroll in community colleges or trade schools, the report
said.
This year, 1.68 million graduating high-school seniors were
academically prepared for college, Fitzgerald said.
The committee, whose members are appointed by Congress and the
Education Department, was created in 1986 to advise federal policy makers
on student financial-aid issues.
The panel recommended that the federal government increase the number
and size of Pell grants, the primary source of federal aid for low-income
college students.
Nearly 4.5 million students receive Pell grants, and Congress is
preparing to add $1 billion to the current budget of $10.3 billion,
because of a shortfall in the grant program this year.
President Bush has proposed $10.9 billion for Pell grants in fiscal
2003, an amount the White House says is adequate. But some Democrats say
that figure represents a cut in funding and would not be enough to provide
all students the aid they need.
''We must find the resources to reverse these trends,'' said Juliet
Garcia, chair of the advisory committee and president of the University of
Texas at Brownsville. ''No new financing strategies will solve it. Only an
increase in grant aid will work.''
Garcia said it is a myth that financial aid packages combining
government or institutional grants, loans, and campus work cover college
costs or meet the needs of half of all college-qualified students. The
report estimates that on average, low-income families face $3,800 annually
in college expenses beyond financial aid. Without student loans and jobs,
the families' unmet need would be $7,500, one-third of their income,
Garcia said.
While the Pell Grant program has grown substantially in recent years
and the maximum annual award now stands at $4,000, it has not kept pace
with rising college tuition charges, and its purchasing power is less than
it was in the late 1970s, the advisory committee said. The situation is
likely to get worse, higher-education groups say, because the recession
has cut deeply into state budget revenues and appropriations for public
colleges and universities are being pinched.
Tuition increases were held to 5 to 6 percent annually over the last
five years, but are headed for double-digit increases on many campuses
this fall, and state grants to students have been trimmed.
''There is a $40 to $50 billion hole out there in funding that should
be available to public colleges and universities, and it's a big problem
in nearly every state,'' said Edward Elmendorf, senior vice president of
the American Association of State Colleges and Universities. ''It's not
going to go away in 2003, and it might even get worse.''
Gurleen Singh, 20, of Malden, entered Northeastern on a $24,000
financial aid package that included government and school grants. She also
worked 10 hours a week and tried to borrow textbooks from friends to
reduce costs. For her second year, she applied for aid again but received
an offer of $6,000, even though her family income dropped and tuition was
more than $15,000, plus room, board, and fees. Singh said she had to drop
out of school, move in with her mother, and now attends the University of
Massachusetts at Boston with the help of a $1,000 Pell grant.
''Northeastern told me that they had just run out of funds and that
they give preference to starting freshmen,'' Singh said. ''It has been
horrible to have to stop halfway and adjust to a whole new college
atmosphere.''
Jeff Andrade, deputy assistant secretary for post-secondary education
in the Bush adminstration, said the advisory committee was right in
identifying the problem of financial access to college for the neediest
students but ''dodged ... and was afraid to tackle'' the issue of soaring
college costs.
''College costs are out of whack, not the resources that we have made
available,'' Andrade said. The Pell grant program has grown by $3.3
billion since President Bush took office, he said.
Andrade said the Bush administration is committed to targeting
Pell grants to the neediest students and said it would use the renewal of
the 1965 Higher Education Act, set to begin in Congress next year, to
explore ways to lower college costs.
Senator Edward M. Kennedy, the Massachusetts Democrat who is now
chairman of the Senate committee that will review the reauthorization,
said the report was ''definitive proof that we need to do more, much more,
to ensure that every child who graduates from high school prepared for
college has the financial resources to earn a bachelor's degree.''
Globe Correspondent Emily Ramshaw contributed to this report. Mary
Leonard can be reached at mleonard@globe.com.
This story ran on page A1 of the Boston Globe on
6/27/2002. |