Pell Knell

Pell Knell
Even if Obama wins on education funding, students will lose.
In February, Republicans unveiled a plan to cut funding for Pell grants by 25 percent and slash the maximum award by $845—changes that would knock funding to below 2008 levels and, according to education experts I spoke to, devastate students who rely on the program for support. The White House responded by offering a preemptive compromise, asking for more modest cuts in an attempt to claim the political center and maintain the maximum grant at $5,500: It called for reductions of $100 billion over ten years, through the elimination of a rule that allows summer students to qualify for additional Pell grants and the elimination interest subsidies for graduate students. "Cuts like these are never easy,” said Education Secretary Arne Duncan, “but in the current fiscal climate they are the responsible thing to do, and the only way to ensure that we can make the investments we need to secure our future."
This may or may not succeed politically. As the White House plays a game of budgetary Uncle with House Republicans this week, President Obama will at best receive what he has asked for, and at worst acquiesce to drastic cuts that would render its slogan of “Winning the Future” utterly hollow. Yet the fact is that even if Obama wins and manages to preserve most Pell funding, students will lose: With cash-strapped states dramatically reducing the amount of support they provide for higher education, the total pool of funds looks to be shrinking precipitously, and anything short of a serious increase in federal support to fill the gap will curtail the dreams of thousands upon thousands of young Americans.
There is no aggregate figure available totaling all state-level reductions since the beginning of the financial crisis, but we do know that 43 states have made cuts to higher education since 2008, according to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. Many of these reductions are gut-wrenching: In Michigan, where state financial aid plummeted by $135 million—or over 60 percent—in the FY2011 budget. Missouri’s FY2011 budget will cut need-based aid by about 60 percent. In Iowa, spending on public universities dropped 20 percent, or $141 million, in the last two years.
In a budget bind, state legislators have long known they can hack at post-secondary education more than other services, because tuition hikes usually cover the funding gap. “It’s basically a way of raising taxes without getting dinged for it,” says Kevin Carey, a researcher Education Sector, a think tank. Sure enough, tuition at Florida’s eleven public universities has increased by 32 percent in the past two years, while the vaunted University of California has also hiked its tuition by 32 percent since the middle of the 2009–2010 school year. Many others have followed suit.
Indeed, with soaring education costs, the maximum Pell grant does less to help students afford college than it did in 1990. (It currently covers just 34 percent of tuition, fees, room, and board at public four-year colleges, according to the College Board, compared to 45 percent two decades ago.) In these conditions, there is an urgent need for more federal help for disadvantaged students—not less. The administration hopes to tie the maximum Pell grant to the Consumer Price Index between 2013 and 2017, which would amount to an estimated $425 bump, but at this point, that’s simply a wish-list item to be determined largely by future Congresses. (Paul Ryan, who will probably still chair the House Budget Committee during negotiations over spending for 2013, has just announced that he supports dramatic cuts.)
And reductions in education funding have real consequences. According to Sara Goldrick-Rab, who has seen the effects of Pell grants first-hand as Co-Director of the Wisconsin Scholars Longitudinal Study—which tracked 3,000 Pell grant recipients for the past three years—grants like these often make the difference between a college education and dropping out. “I have kids in my study who have parents taking on two or three jobs. I also have kids who are taking on two or three jobs. They are skipping breakfast,” she said. “And they’re getting a Pell, and taking away the Pell is going to make continuing in college impossible.”