college affordability

Rep Hansen Clarke has posted a video on his congressional YouTube account talking about how he supports cutting the national debt but believes we should help students cut their debt. Good for him! Way to speak out for young people!

Given the imminent threat of an economic crisis, elected officials on Capitol Hill are looking for ways to make drastic cuts in government spending. If everything is on the table that means access to Pell Grants for students who can't afford higher education is also on the table.

The U.S. Public Interest Research Group (US PIRG) has launched a campaign to urge leaders not to cut Pell and has some high power names behind its advocacy program. With tweets throughout the day with the hashtag #SavePell, members called on colleagues and Americans for support in the Pell Grant program.

NancyPelosi
Education is one of the best investments we can make in our nation's future & why we're working to #SavePell goo.gl/8YKf2

edworkforcedems (The democratic leaders of the Ed and Labor Committee)
We're doing all we can to #SavePell from cuts that would hurt our #students & economic competitiveness http://usat.ly/qSPNUL

He also had many many other tweets throughout the day about Pell Grant data and information. (see graphic below)

WhipHoyer Rep. Steny Hoyer
Dems are fighting to #SavePell, investments that will help us out-educate competitors, ensure we can #MakeItInAmerica bit.ly/r4JshZ

Whip Hoyer also asked his twitter followers how the Pell Grant has impacted their lives and then RT'd each of those stories.

SenatorCardin Senator Ben Cardin
Cardin on #SavePell day: Fighting for Pell Grants is not about the next election--it’s about the next generation. http://goo.gl/4hJUv

SenWhitehouse Sheldon Whitehouse
We must work together to #savepell grants. Our budget can't sacrifice the future of our kids or our economy. #pell

The U.S. Department of Education released state-by-state data on the Federal Pell Grant Program for the 2012-13 academic year. The data compares the current $5,550 maximum award to what the Pell program would look like under the GOP budget proposal.

Click to grow the image.

Great video from Chairman George Miller’s committee, the Education and Labor Committee, reminding the American people that his party has made college more affordable in multiple ways this Congress.

What a landmark day in Congress. After years of the government subsidizing banks that give unfortunate interest rates and basically screw over young people we have finally won. Billions of dollars was spent to lobby members of Congress to stop this. Not surprisingly Republican members overwhelmingly refused to take the side of the people over the big banks with a unanimous vote of 56 to 43 in the Senate and 220 to 207 in the house.

According to the New York Times:

"Democrats have long denounced the program, saying it fattened the bottom line for banks at the expense of students and taxpayers.

“Why are we paying people to lend the government’s money and then the government guarantees the loan and the government takes back the loan?” said Representative George Miller, Democrat of California and chairman of the Education and Labor Committee.

Democrats celebrated the legislation, a centerpiece of President Obama’s education agenda, as a far-reaching overhaul of federal financial aid, providing a huge infusion of money to the Pell grant program and offering new help to lower-income graduates in getting out from under crushing student debt. Still, the final bill is less ambitious than the original proposal."

The youth community rejoiced, particularly those who work tirelessly to engage government about the overwhelming cost of higher education to young people who now graduate with over $22,000 in debt and into a job market with a nearly 20% youth unemployment rate.

Campus Progress Senior Advocacy Associate Pedro de la Torre III released a statement touting the advocacy they did with their outreach site StudentsOverBanks.org which released an ad that aired on CNN, MSNBC, and during Comedy Central’s "The Colbert Report."

“Today Congress took action to eliminate an inefficient and corrupt student loan system and finally put the interests of students over banks. Young people overwhelmingly support health care and student aid reform, and are heartened to see that the change they voted for has become a reality.”

“Today will go down in history as the day when the federal government chose to invest in college students over bank profits,” said United States Student Association (USSA) President Gregory Cendana. “By ending wasteful subsidies to private lenders and directing over sixty billion dollars of savings into financial aid programs, this legislation will ensure that millions of low-income and traditionally underrepresented students have access to higher education.”

Rich Williams, Higher Ed Associate at the US PIRGs was similarly enthusiastic:

"The federal Direct Loan program will increase student protection from aggressive private loan marketing. Lenders used inducements to convince financial aid offices to push private student loans on students and families. These private loan products are more akin to credit cards with variable interest rates as high as 18% and limited repayment options and benefits. Originating loans from the federal government will give the time students need to assess their financing options in a fair setting.

“This legislation helps renew the promise of student aid programs for the tens of millions of students who rely on grants and loans to achieve a college education. We applaud Congress for prioritizing the Pell grant program, and education, and we look forward to President Obama’s final signature.”

These groups should be commended for their advocacy and their hard work to bring a grassroots force to back up members of Congress who took a stand for our nation's youth. Congratulations to students across the country who will have things a little bit easier in the future.

Millennials (young Americans born 1982-2003) rate the quality of education and the cost of college near the top of the list of issues about which they are most concerned, just behind jobs and the economy. This week, President Barack Obama responded to those concerns with the release of his plan to fix the No Child Left Behind Law and focus the federal government's efforts even more on ensuring school's deliver the results and outcomes that Millennials and their parents expect from America's institutions. The announcement capped a remarkable series of events that saw Democrats joining parents and educators across the country in taking important steps to address those educational needs, providing Millennials new hope that their investments in politics and civic engagement will finally pay off.

NDN's newest survey research indicates that Millennials, unlike all other generations, rate education generally, and the cost of a college education specifically, as two of the top four critical problems they believe government must address and fix. Clearly, Millennials, like older generations, see a need to improve public education in America. And, in fact, Millennials perceive this need from a very personal perspective. While the Millennial Generation is slightly more positive about the overall quality of education in the United States (41% positive/50% negative) than older generations (32%/62%), they give significantly lower grades to the education they have personally received than older generations. Seventy percent of Millennials believe that the poor quality of public education stems from a lack of money and the way schools are managed and organized. Unlike the majority of older generations, Millennials are about evenly split on whether or not unions and work rules are a major problem in our system of public education. In response to attitudes like these, an increasing number of urban school districts are beginning to abandon the strategy of incremental reform and adopting more radical and dramatic changes to address the concerns of Millennials and their parents.

In Rhode Island, the Central Falls school board fired all the teachers, the principle and the administrators in an under-performing high school where half the 800 students were failing every subject and only seven percent were proficient in math. Unable to reach agreement with the teachers on how to pay for the changes needed to break this cycle of mediocrity, the board invoked the "turnaround option" sanctioned by the Obama administration's school reform initiative, which allows school boards to start over at failing schools with a brand new set of teachers and administrators. Given the President's unwavering support for systemic reform of schools that fail to educate children embodied in his Race to the Top initiative, the White House's support of the school board's actions should not have come as a surprise to those still trying to protect the status quo.

In Kansas City, Missouri the school board, that previously had stood in the vanguard of those believing primarily in racial integration and increased per pupil spending as the solution to the problems of education in urban environments, decided to try a completely different approach. Less than third of Kansas City elementary school students are now reading at or above grade level and no more than a quarter of most of their schools' students have achieved the levels of proficiency required for the skills they will need in life. Faced with these results, and the prospect of running out of money by next year, the board voted to close about half of the district's schools in order to "dramatically enhance education for each of our students by combining our very best teachers and very best resources in fewer schools," as Kansas City's School Superintendent put it.

But perhaps the most dramatic news of the week came from Detroit where a coalition of nonprofit organizations, Excellent Schools Detroit, announced its plan to replace Detroit's failing public schools with 70 new ones and make a $200-million investment over the next ten years in order to achieve its goal of graduating 90% of Detroit kids from high school by 2020 and having 90% of graduates go on to college. Currently, about 58% of students in Detroit's school system and 78% of those enrolled in charter schools in the city graduate from high school, while fewer than 25% enroll in college.

The plan includes a push for mayoral control of Detroit Public Schools, but more importantly the establishment of an independent commission to grade every school in the city, including charters, every year against a uniform set of standards and outcomes focused on achieving educational excellence. The new Standards and Accountability Commission will establish a competitive public education marketplace complete with report cards grading each school's progress against an agreed upon set of standards that will enable parents to become smart shoppers for their child's education. The commission will also suggest closures in order to weed out failing schools, half of which, under the plan, would be closed or replaced with schools under new management by 2015. Like the Kansas City solution, the plan does not rely on increased funding from the state but rather the commitment of Detroiters to the future of their children. The idea was greeted with cheers from everyone except the members of the current school board.

Meanwhile, back in the U.S. Senate, a flurry of phone calls and emails from Millennials across the nation, convinced a majority of Democratic Senators to join in an effort to rescue Pell grants for students attending college from dramatic cuts that would have reduced payments by 60% for eight million students and eliminated the money altogether for another half a million. The House had already passed the Student Aid and Fiscal Responsibility Act, which would reform the student loan program by eliminating the current subsidies to private lenders who make student loans guaranteed by the federal government and invest the money saved in increasing the size and availability of Pell Grants. But six Democratic Senators, who should know better, had argued that the nation couldn't afford to continue to make these investments in its future and should instead continue to underwrite the bank's profits, even as students on campuses across the nation demonstrated to protest increases in tuition at cash strapped state universities.

Since Republicans were united in defending the interests of banks over Millennials, the only way to enact President Obama's student aid reform proposal was to include the concept in the budget reconciliation package, central to efforts to finally pass health care reform, which only requires a simple majority in the Senate for passage. After hearing from their House colleagues on the political benefits and policy importance of the concept, even budget hawks like North Dakota Senator Kent Conrad, chairman of the Budget Committee, agreed to find a way to bundle the two items by adjusting the education portion to account for a revised Congressional Budget Office cost analysis. The principle driver of the increased costs of the program is the popularity of this type of college financial aid among Millennials struggling to stay out of debt and still get the education they need to get a good paying job. By combining ways to reduce the cost of college with a major expansion of health care in the reconciliation package, Democrats have taken a major step forward in solidifying the support of all elements of the Democratic Party's 21st Century majority coalition-from young voters to minorities.

This new coalition presents the best opportunity for Democrats to solidify a dominant majority coalition since FDR and the New Deal. But key members of the coalition, especially Millennials, are currently not convinced that voting in 2010 will make much of a difference, given the results they have seen from Congress in the first year of the Obama administration in the election of which they played such a significant role. But these recent events suggest the country is finally beginning to listen to the voice of this new generation and address its concerns. As educators and parents at the grass roots of this revolution begin to have an impact in cities across the nation, the best thing that Democrats in Congress could do before this week is out is pass both health care and student aid reform as part of their budget reconciliation process. Doing so would finally begin to align the nation's budgetary priorities with its future and bring hope for Millennials that changes they can believe in will continue to flow from their investment in the country's political process.

The Student Aid and Fiscal Responsibility Act (SAFRA) is by far the greatest step ever taken in Washington to combat the control of giant banking moguls over our country's youth. Consistently, we have seen the cost of higher education climb pricing many young people out of the opportunity for a better future. At the same time assistance available to young people has actually gone down.

Twenty years ago, 60% of young people who were able to pay for college on Pell Grants today that number has dipped to half of that. The bill is the first meaningful step in a long-term solution to the predatory private lenders who take advantage of students.

Among other things, the bill will

• Invest $40 billion to increase the maximum annual Pell Grant scholarship to $5,550 in 2010 and to $6,900 by 2019. Starting in 2011, the scholarship will be linked to match rising costs-of-living by indexing it to the Consumer Price Index plus 1 percent.
• Strengthen the Perkins Loan program, a campus-based program that provides low-cost federal loans to students, by providing the program with more reliable forms of credit from the federal government and expanding the program to include significantly more college campuses.
• Keep interest rates low on need-based – or subsidized – federal student loans by making the interest rates on these loans variable beginning in 2012. These interest rates are currently set to jump from 3.4 percent to 6.8 percent in 2012. (This compares to loans that Courtney mentioned whose loans can have a 7.2 percent or even 10 percent interest rate).
• Provide loan forgiveness for members of the military who are called up to duty in the middle of the academic year.
• Convert all new federal student lending to the stable, effective and cost-efficient Direct Loan program. Beginning July 1, 2010, all new federal student loans will be originated through the Direct Loan program, instead of through lenders like Sallie Mae that are subsidized by taxpayers in the federally-guaranteed student loan program. Unlike the current lender-based program, the Direct Loan program is entirely insulated from market swings and can therefore guarantee students access to low-cost federal college loans, in any economy.

This was one of the biggest promises the President made to young voters this past election, and it came dangerously close to being thrown under the school bus by elected officials willing to sell out to any bidder. Luckily, youth across the country emailed, called, and tweeted elected officials begging for the change they were promised. The result was a commitment to the original bill that stops these wasteful subsidies and moves the program under the already existing Direct Loan program, and the Student Aid and Fiscal Responsibility Act will be folded in with the health insurance reform bill.

There must be reform, and Washington MUST choose students over the banking industry. Washington subsidized the banking industry with as much as $87 billion over the last 10 years, which has lead to a nationalization of the banking industry that continues to make CEOs richer while young people face a race to the bottom.

The best investment Washington can make in its future is with an investment in the nation's youth. With young people who are trained and well educated our country can spur a new cycle of innovation capturing the entrepreneurial spirit of a generation. But with tens of thousands of dollars in debt, these students can't take any risks even if they could begin a new cycle of growth and progress in these dire economic times.

This bill is the first major step in what could be the greatest overhaul in education. There is such possibility ahead, and nested in that is the glimmer of hope we'd nearly lost to the banking lobby.

Crossposted from Firedog Lake

From the Press Conference this morning. For details on this and what has been going down with reform on student loans see the earlier blog post.

Rep. George Miller

Rep. Xavier Becerra

Rep. Jim Clyburn

UpdateII: The Washington Post is now reporting that the US Senate may add the student loan overhaul in as a part of the health care bill that they hope to pass through reconciliation.

"The move would create a potential double victory for President Obama, who has championed both causes as among domestic priorities. And Senate Majority Whip Richard Durbin (D-Ill.) said Thursday, "There was a stronger feeling for including" the education proposal. Some senators disagreed with the strategy, Durbin said, adding that a final decision has yet to be reached."

UPDATEI: All of the youth groups are going all hands on deck with this. Here's how you can help:
Step 1: Call 1-888-254-5087
Step 2: Ask for your senators
Step 3: Use the script:

"Hi, my name is____. I a am calling today to urge Senator_______ to support students by putting Student Aid Reform in the Budget Reconciliation process. If student aid reform is not included, the maximum Pell Grant will be cut by thousands of dollars. 500,000 students will lose their Pell grants and 8,000,000 students will see their awards cut by 60%. This is UNACCEPTABLE.

Will Senator______ support students by including student aid reform in the budget reconciliation process?

Thank you for supporting students, have a good day.

Proposed Tweet: URGENT: Call 1-888-254-5087 to ask your Senators to support #SAFRA in the reconciliation bill. They ARE deciding today!! CALL NOW!

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Forgive my cynicism but... it figures. Once again the Sallie Mae lobby has bought their way into the overhaul in student lending that the President promised would happen in this Congress.

From the New York Times

"But Democrats in the Senate, where the private student lending industry has strong allies, predicted on Wednesday night that the education bill would not be part of an expedited budget measure containing the final revisions to the health care legislation. Some Democrats said that such a move would stall the student loan changes at a minimum for several months, and perhaps kill the overhaul altogether.

Mr. Obama’s plan would end a program in which the government pays private, for-profit student lending companies to make risk-free loans using taxpayer money. Instead, the proposed overhaul would broaden the government’s existing direct-lending program, saving billions of dollars that the president had proposed using to expand Pell grant scholarships for low-income students.

But the education bill is strongly opposed by some Senate Democrats, particularly those in states where for-profit student lenders are major employers. In a letter to the majority leader, Senator Harry Reid of Nevada, six Democrats said they disliked the president’s proposal.

"We write to make you aware of our concern with provisions of contemplated student lending reform that could put jobs at risk," the senators wrote. "Increase our nation’s commitment to higher education funding is a priority, but we must proceed toward this objective in a thoughtful manner that considers potential alternative legislative proposals, while still delivering an equivalent amount of savings over the next ten years."

Oh happy day. Ed and Labor Chairman George Miller isn't giving up his strong support on behalf of students and is about to hold a press conference in a few minutes. Once the video is available and there is further info I'll post it.

From the release:

" At 11:45 am eastern today, U.S. Sen. Tom Harkin (D-IA), chairman of the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, and U.S. Rep. George Miller (D-CA), chairman of the Education and Labor Committee, and other House leaders will hold a press conference on the urgent need to include student loan reform as part of the reconciliation bill.

The student aid bill would make historic investments in our economic future by increasing Pell Grants, making college more affordable and helping more students graduate – and all at no cost to taxpayers."

The Obama administration celebrated the anniversary of the passage of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, or economic stimulus, by pointing out the gradual recovery of the United States economy has resulted in “saving or creating two million jobs.” But young Americans continue to bear the brunt of what is still America’s worst recession since the Great Depression.

From December 2008 to December 2009, the employment of 16-24 year olds in the U.S. fell by 1.78 million, or a third of the total estimated drop in employment of 5.4 million. Only 41% of Millennials are working full time, a drop of 9 percentage points in the last few years, even as the proportion of older workers employed full time remained fairly stable.

The experience with hard times of Millennials, born 1982-2003, is one of the main reasons why they strongly support the classic liberal solution of effective government intervention in the economy. Recent Pew research, for example, indicates, that far more than older generations, a large majority of Millennials (71%) agrees that the government should guarantee that every citizen has enough to eat and a place to sleep. Millennials are also the only generation in which a majority (54%) disagrees with the contention that if something is run by the government it is usually inefficient and wasteful and a plurality (49%) rejects the belief that the federal government controls too much of our daily lives.

A recent study by UCLA professor Paola Giuliano, and her colleague Antonio Spilimbergo, clearly documents the impact of recessions on people who are between 18 and 25, “during which most beliefs on how society and the economy work are formed.” Their research found that individuals who experienced recessions much milder than our current Great Recession during these formative years believe that “luck rather than effort is the most important driver of individual success, support more government redistribution, and have less confidence in institutions.” Other research shows that people who think luck is the primary driver of success are more willing to increase taxes to pay for a more activist government. Giuliano and Spilimbergo’s findings support the observation that lies at the heart of William Strauss and Neil Howe’s generational cycle theory, namely that the

“values, attitudes and world-views” acquired during this period of early socialization “become fixed within individuals and are resistant to change.”

The research of Giuliano and Spilimbergo also suggests that the Millennial Generation’s economic liberalism comes with a healthy dose of skepticism about the ability of institutions to help them meet their profound economic challenge. To fully restore Millennial confidence, government will need to take effective action to deal with the economy and reaffirm America’s tradition of economic mobility and rising middle class incomes. Beyond whatever short-term benefits President Obama’s stimulus program has provided, longer term more structural changes in the economy will need be made — starting with education.

Higher education remains an important antidote to low wage employment in such economic circumstances, but only if students complete their chosen field of study. Yale economist Lisa Kahn has found that “the labor market consequences of graduating from college in a bad economy are large, negative and persistent,” resulting in lower wages, in less prestigious jobs for extensive periods of time. Her research suggests that even college graduates fortunate enough to get a job still suffer a 6 to 7 percent initial loss in income for every one percent drop in employment. Even though the differential diminishes over time, her research found such unlucky graduates still experiencing a statistically significant 2.5% loss of wages fifteen years later.

Even so, those who get a four year college degree earn on average 35% more than those who leave college without getting a degree. Getting one or two years of post-secondary education and receiving an associate’s degree from a community college or a certificate from a career college also boosts wages above what they would have been without such a degree. One Florida study found that holders of certificates in particular occupations such as health care or IT earned 27% more than those who attended, but failed to complete, college. Associate degree holders earned 8% more than those who had no post-secondary education.

One major reason students aren’t able to get a degree or certificate is that three-fourths of associate degree or certificate seekers end up working to help cover their education and living costs. Meanwhile federal support for higher education has failed to keep up with rising costs so that more and more students find themselves financing their education with student loans of one type or another. In Indiana, for instance, 62 percent of those who do manage to graduate carry student loan debt averaging $23,264 per student. The loan burden in that state is even higher for graduates of for-profit, private colleges who leave school with an average debt burden of $32,650.

Increasing Pell Grant funding and the value of college tuition tax deductions are two steps government could take to address this problem. Reforming the student loan program to eliminate subsidies to banks as President Obama has advocated, and including student loans under any consumer protection agency that might be created as part of financial regulatory reform would also help address this problem that would fit with Millennial’s liberal perspectives.

The other major reason students fail to complete their post-secondary education is the inadequate preparation for college, especially in math and science, they receive in high school. This is something that parents of Millennials will tolerate no longer. As Neil Howe points out,

"when these Gen-X "security moms" and "committed dads" are fully roused, they can be even more attached, protective and interventionist than Boomer [parents] ever were. . .They will juggle schedules to monitor their kids' activities in person. . . [and] will quickly switch their kids into - or take them out of - any situation according to their assessment of their youngsters' interests."

These “stealth-fighter parents” have already begun to move one of the largest and most consistently poorly performing school districts in the country, Los Angeles Unified, forcing the district to grant them more say in school curriculum and governance. Their success led California’s usually dysfunctional legislature to pass a “parent trigger” law empowering a majority of parents in a demonstrably failing school attendance area to fire the principal and half the teachers as part of a turnaround initiative. Congress should incorporate this very interventionist idea into its reauthorization of the framework federal education law when it comes up for renewal this year. It should also expand funding for the Obama administration’s innovative Race to the Top initiative, which rewards schools that improve student learning performance rather than simply subsidizing mediocrity.

All of these ideas will be resisted by those who believe that individual success is solely based upon effort and initiative and don’t believe in the efficacy of government efforts to revive the economy. Others with a stake in the status quo will argue against some of these ideas. But Millennials, whose lifetime of liberal economic beliefs have been forged by their experience with the Great Recession, will resist entreaties from those who offer only laissez faire economic policies or who try to delay dealing with these problems. They want government to act quickly and effectively, before they and their siblings are doomed to never enjoy the American Dream.

Crossposted with permission from NewGeography

Tonight Demos is hosting a much needed discussion on higher education and the needs of youth who are increasingly faced with high costs, unstable job markets, and an uncertain future.

"As today's young adults struggle to balance the rising costs of a postsecondary education with countless other financial obligations, many public universities are burdened with budget cuts, intensified admissions competition, and debt. These factors collectively drive up the cost of tuition and make a previously accessible college degree virtually unaffordable to many. The stakes of these new economic challenges are high; they make it more difficult for low- to moderate-income students to graduate, undermine the quality of education that students receive, and in the process, hamper the best path to upward mobility for the next generation of young adults."

Watch a live stream of the event below or the event page here

Live TV by Ustream