Good Morning Everyone,
Congratulations and thank you all
for a great PDS and Chapter Meeting.
The rest of this email is simple
an FYI. Enjoy and share with many.
Dear Colleagues:
Below is the article, “Pell
Grants: Glass Half Full,” which appeared in Inside Higher Education on
June 1, 2009 and that some of you saw in San Antonio. This piece
summarizes, I believe, the current access perspective concerning postsecondary
education for low-income students in the U.S.
A great deal of attention is
being devoted to education reform, with resulting focus on new initiatives,
innovation and experimentation, and great emphasis on data collection.
This obsession with data needs to be tempered with the reality that data collection
alone does not produce improvements in educational attainment. A case in
point in the U.S. is Florida, which has showcased its new K-20 education data
warehouse. Tom Mortenson's State Data Books show that Florida ranks 25th
in terms of low-income college participation rates.
Moreover, according to the National Center for Public Policy and Higher
Education, Florida has one of the lowest high school graduation rates in the
U.S. (Measuring Up: National Report Card on Higher Education, 2008). Measuring
Up gave Florida an F in affordability and a D in college participation.
It is our belief that investing in data collection without
improving the education of the nation’s poorest students will seriously
undermine this Administration’s ability to achieve its goals. It is
imperative that you raise questions about "data collection for it’s
own sake." The Florida example needs to be pointed out. Washington must be
made to understand that there is "no reform without resources!"
Sincerely,
Mitch
June 1, 2009
President Obama’s avowed goal is to
provide an “education so that every child can compete in the global
economy,” and in so doing to restore the United States’ leadership
role by having the highest proportion of college graduates in the world by the
year 2020. He’s recognized that one of the mechanisms necessary to
achieve that is to transform Pell Grants into an entitlement.
The Pell Grant program is the sine qua non
of equal educational opportunity. It represents one of the most important
mechanisms developed in higher education to ensure low-income students are
afforded financial access to postsecondary opportunities. By all accounts, Pell
Grants historically have contributed to allowing millions of low-income
students unparalleled access to higher education in the last four decades, and
yet they have been vulnerable to funding shortfalls and their value has
frequently lagged behind college cost increases. Therefore, proposing to make
the Pell Grant an entitlement is a smart step by the Obama Administration. This
constitutes a much-needed, long-overdue reform.
However, unless the administration changes
course, it is likely to squander this terrific opportunity for the United
States to boost both its academic and economic competitiveness. The
administration risks compromising this critical investment in human capital by
failing to dramatically enhance investment in college retention and completion.
So the president’s reform measure, as it
now stands, resembles nothing so much as a doctor’s prescription to treat
a complex condition — in this case, barriers to postsecondary access and
attainment — with a single medication. In isolating an important and
necessary pre-condition — the provision of financial aid — but
failing to consider other dimensions of this phenomenon, the treatment is
doomed to failure.
Unless and until the administration addresses
the full spectrum of causes, it will not achieve its goals. And until it takes
a holistic approach to student aid, its enormous investment in Pell Grants will
not be fully leveraged.
Simply put, the Obama administration’s
definition of student aid is far too narrow. What is desperately needed instead
is a more comprehensive view of student aid that reflects the recognition that
low-income and first-generation students face multiple barriers — class,
cultural, informational, academic, and social — to postsecondary
education, and not just a lack of funds. Merely providing financial resources
through mechanisms like the Pell Grant alone will not solve the problem of
getting first-generation and low-income students through college. Congress
recognized this more than a quarter of a century ago in the Education
Amendments of 1980 when it proclaimed the principle that the TRIO programs were
“an integral part of the student assistance programs aimed at achieving
equal educational opportunity.”
“Without the information, counseling, and
academic services provided by the TRIO programs,” the House Report went
on to say, “disadvantaged students are often unable to take advantage of
the financial assistance provided by the other Title IV programs, and more importantly,
such students do not develop their talents by gaining access to postsecondary
educational opportunities and completing a course of study once they have
embarked on it.”
By investing in financial aid but not providing
increases for TRIO and GEAR UP, the Obama administration is failing to raise
the aspirations of low-income students and to equip them with the tools
necessary to persist in their studies and, ultimately, achieve college degrees.
Thus we have to conclude that in this budget, the Administration is, perhaps
unwittingly, undermining its own policy goals.
There is ample evidence that financial aid alone
has never been and can never be the “silver bullet” to guarantee
educational opportunity. And the public investment in Pell Grants has grown so
large that there is a real liability to taxpayers unless it can be properly
leveraged. In fact, just over the last eight years, Pell Grants have seen a 214
percent increase in funding (from $8.8 billion FY2001 to $18.8 billion in
FY2009).
Looked at another way, in constant terms,
funding for Pell Grants in the last three decades has grown by 143 percent. Yet
the disparity in bachelor’s degree attainment rates between students from
the top and bottom quartiles of family income has nearly doubled since 1970,
according to Tom Mortenson in “Family Income and Higher Education
Opportunity, 1970-2006."
Through a comparison of college completion rates
of Pell recipients who did and did not receive support services, we know that
Pell Grants alone do not suffice to retain low-income and first-generation
students. Data from the U.S. Department of Education show that six years after
beginning a postsecondary program, students who have participated in TRIO
Student Support Services have a higher rate of earning a baccalaureate degree
(30.9 percent) than other low-income college students, regardless of whether
they received (21 percent) or did not receive (8.9 percent) Pell Grants.
Yet the president’s budget continues the
pattern of previous years of level funding. Funding for TRIO and GEAR UP
programs that provide such vital supports to low-income and first-generation
students has essentially been flat for the last seven years. By virtue of this
stagnant funding as well as rising costs, TRIO programs serve 25,000 fewer
students now than in 2003.
Here’s what we know for certain: This
year, an estimated 1.6 million low-income students will begin their pursuit of
a postsecondary degree. If previous trends continue, only 176,000 of these
students will earn a baccalaureate within the next six years. And if the
president’s budget proposal is enacted, about 20,000 students already in
college will lose support services, thus increasing the likelihood that they
will fail to earn degrees.
Is it possible that President Obama is ignoring
his campaign promise to support TRIO, GEAR UP, and the first-generation and
low-income students the programs serve across the country? During a May 2008 speech in
Denver, then-candidate Obama said the key to improving the lives of
American families was to “expand college outreach programs like GEAR UP
and TRIO.” If these “promises” are to become reality,
President Obama must act decisively to assume responsibility for
students’ success now. America simply does not have time to “wait
and see” while the futures of hundreds of thousands of low-income
students hang in the balance. Their futures are our own.
Arnold Mitchem is president of the Council
for Opportunity in Education.