You turn on the news today, and you see that President Bush has decided to increase student financial aid and reduce student loan debt. Sound too good to be true? Don't worry, it is. Instead of taking real steps to make higher education accessible to more students, the president is spending the day talking up a "youth initiative" that's heavy on character and light on practical solutions. Earl Hadley of the Campaign For America's Future says the president is trying to play the public for April Fools.
Earl Hadley is education coordinator for the Campaign for America's Future .
President Bush has decided to fulfill his campaign promise and significantly increase college financial aid for working and middle-class families. April Fool! Sorry, but the maximum Pell grant—the primary form of federal financial aid—remains at $4,050, more than a thousand dollars under what Bush promised when he was campaigning. Bush actually proposed a $100 increase for Pell grants in this year’s budget—an increase that barely keeps up with inflation. Too bad college costs far outpace inflation.
Today, Bush and the first lady are visiting a school in Washington, D.C., and chatting about their at-risk youth initiative. The “youth” are sure to hear a lot about overcoming the odds, not having sex and making good moral decisions. What struggling students need, however, is not lessons in morality from the Bush family. They need adequate college preparation and financial aid.
The 'Renewing Our Schools, Securing Our Future' education task force recently reported that for every 100 ninth-graders, only 38 percent enter college and only 18 percent earn a college degree by the time they turn 26. This speaks to not only an across-the-board failure to fund education, but also to the Bush administration’s leadership failure over the past four years.
Bush convinced Democrats that he was serious about education reform and got them to sign onto the No Child Left Behind Act, but the president has been ducking full funding of the law since it was enacted in 2002. States are now required to identify schools where students are doing poorly academically, but schools aren’t given the resources they need to help these students. Added up, President Bush is $39 billion behind on money owed to America’s children—millions of students could have received tutoring, after-school programs and other needed assistance if Bush had kept his word on funding NCLB. As long as the “education” president fails to do his job, it should come as no surprise that so few students enter or graduate from college.
Just as schools need more than simple identification of the problem for improvement, the students Bush is speaking to today need more than just being told to “do the right thing.” Students—particularly struggling students—require help in preparing for college, and, once they’re accepted, assistance in paying for school. While Bush had no problem paying the application fee and tuition at Yale, lots of working- and middle-class students aren’t as lucky (or connected) as the president. Bush simply ignores these needs of the students he’s preaching to today. With this most recent budget, Bush proposes canceling funding for a number of college-prep initiatives—programs that reach more than a million students. His budget also freezes funding for work-study aid and kills a low-interest loan program aimed at the poorest students.
In response to these facts, Bush will point to his proposal to increase the amount students can take out in loans, but will ignore the reality that the last thing poor students need is to graduate with more debt. The president will ignore a recent Department of Education study showing that college debt has already increased dramatically for families over the past decade. Bush will ignore the fact that his budget will stop students with loans from locking in lower interest rates through consolidation, and actually increases the cost of taking out a loan. But most of all, Bush will ignore the fact that just a small portion of the tax breaks his budget proposes—$1.4 trillion, going mostly to the wealthy—could provide students with substantial financial aid instead of debt.
Even if Bush feels he has to kiss up to the wealthy, he could help students in need simply by placing the weight of the presidency behind two bipartisan initiatives that would increase financial aid at no cost to taxpayers.
For starters, Bush could support the multi-billion dollar increase in higher education funding, recently added to next year’s spending limits by the Senate. Because the House voted for cuts in spending, the Senate proposal may not survive negotiations between the two houses of Congress. With a quick call to Republican leadership in the House, President Bush could guarantee that struggling students receive the financial aid and college preparation they need.
Second, President Bush could support the STAR Act sponsored by Sens. Kennedy, D-Mass., and Smith, R-Ore., and Reps. Miller, D-Calif., and Petri, R-Wis., which would provide $17 billion in college scholarships by reducing government subsidies to student loan corporations. The STAR Act is already riling up Republican leadership in the House, but a two-minute endorsement today by the president would end their opposition.
Or Bush could simply support a bill submitted by Sen. Obama, D-Ill., to increase the maximum Pell grant to $5,100—exactly what Bush promised five years ago. But the president will not support any of these initiatives today. He’ll be content doing a photo-op with the wife, he’ll be content in putting tax breaks before college scholarships. If history tells us anything, President Bush will never demonstrate a serious interest in helping students prepare for or pay for college—even on April Fool's Day.
