Affordable Higher Education News

WASHINGTON, May 21 – At Thursday’s U.S. House Education and Labor Committee hearing to examine proposals that would dramatically increase financial aid for college tuitions, student advocates spoke out in favor of major grant increases.

President Barack Obama’s higher education FY 2010 budget proposal calls for at least a $100 billion investment in student grant aid. The hearing is convened by Committee Chair George Miller (D-CA), a strong advocate for increasing grant aid and reducing excess bank subsidies to private and other non-governmental lenders. 

“We are excited that the House Education committee is seriously considering the President’s proposal to increase grant aid,” stated Tessa Atkinson-Adams, a student leader at University of California-Santa Barbara working with the U.S. PIRG Higher Education Project.

The federal government established the Pell Grant program in the early seventies to ensure all qualified students would be able to attend college.

A cornerstone to the country’s federal financial aid programs, approximately one-third of the country’s over 25 million college students receive some amount of Pell Grant aid. However, because public college budgets have been cut and tuition and fees have skyrocketed, today the Pell Grant plays a much less substantial role and students are forced to rely more on loans and credit cards.

“The Pell Grant used to cover 77 percent of the total cost of college attendance for a student of modest means,” said Angela Peoples, legislative director for USSA. “Now it only covers 35 percent.”

These days. the average graduate of a four-year public college carries an average of $20,000 in debts along with her or her new diploma.  

“The over-reliance on loans to pay for college causes students from the lowest incomes to opt out of college completely, and squeezes borrowers out of socially valuable but lower paying careers after graduation,” Atkinson-Adams noted.

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U.S. PIRG, the federation of state Public Interest Research Groups, is a  non-profit, non-partisan public interest advocacy organization. The United States Student Association develops current and future leaders and amplifies the student voice at the local, state, and national levels.