House Panel Hears College-Access and Affordability Challenges

The U.S. House Committee on Higher Education, Lifelong Learning, and Competitiveness conducted a hearing March 8 on “How Students Finance a College Education.”

Jamie Merisotis, president of the Institute for Higher Education Policy, urged Congress to consider increasing the maximum Pell Grant to at least $6,000. Merisotis, however, voiced opposition to plans to pay for Pell-Grant increases through cuts in other student-aid programs.

Merisotis also urged a broader partnership with the private sector through promotion of private scholarship support. One way to stimulate those dollars, according to Merisotis, is to permit federal Leveraging Education Assistance Partnership funds to encourage private-sector aid, as well as state aid, for higher education.

Merisotis also urged the following steps:

• Support Upward Bound, Talent Search and GEAR UP programs.
• Strengthen the capacity of minority-serving institutions.
• Embrace investment in higher education for immigrants.
• Support a system of higher-education accountability consistent with the complex life circumstances of today’s college students.

Economist David Breneman told the panel that “the country is sending decidedly mixed messages to young people, encouraging them on the one hand to prepare for college, and then pricing many of the less wealthy either out of the market, or forcing them to alter their choice of college.”

Breneman said that the competing priorities of state-government budgets mean that the days of low or no tuition will never return. He also noted that the trend toward providing tuition tax credits broke the long-standing pattern of concentrating federal student-aid funds on the lowest-income students. Breneman also advised the panel that efforts to curb college costs through greater competition aren’t likely to work because traditional postsecondary institutions compete based on quality, prestige and selectivity, not price.

Don Soifer, executive vice president of the Lexington Institute, told the panel that, with college costs typically rising at twice the rate of the Consumer Price Index, “federal student financial aid cannot be relied upon to keep pace.” He suggested the following policy options:

• Make university operations more transparent.
• Extend Pell Grants to permit low-income high-school students to take university classes.
• Consider online learning at all grade levels — to bring specialized subject-matter expertise especially to communities where the traditional manufacturing base is no longer thriving, as well as to provide a cost-effective resource for remedial education of college students.

Ross Wiener, of the Education Trust, decried the shift in federal financial-aid policy during the last 15 years away from helping low-income students. Wiener noted that federal expenditures on non-need-based student aid have grown exponentially faster over the past decade than expenditures on need-based aid. He advocated the following steps:

• Increase Pell Grants as the top policy priority.
• Replace the Free Application for Federal Student Aid with notification of projected grant aid to prospective low-income students, using income-tax returns and other government records.
• Consolidate aid programs, such as the Pell Grant and Supplemental Educational Opportunity Grant, that benefit low-income students.
• Make loan repayment contingent on family income.
• Require nonprofit colleges to demonstrate a commitment to educating more low- and middle-income students.

In his opening remarks, the chairman of the subcommittee, Rep. Rubén Hinojosa, D-Texas, said that overcoming the barriers of preparation and financial-aid awareness are not enough to ensure college success. “We know that cost is a major obstacle,” Hinojosa said.

The panel conducted the hearing to inform legislation to complete the reauthorization of the Higher Education Act.