Making College Affordable Again

Ah, high school graduation season. We remember it well: envelopes mailed, decisions made, fates sealed. According to popular perception, the gap between the fifth-ranked school and the 50th spans worlds and fortunes—with those attending the most elite schools virtually guaranteed lives of bounty and witty banter over dry martinis, and everyone else consigned to a marginal existence, where hard toil yields no better than mediocre results.

But indulging in this glittering game of high-stakes college hype may blind us to a troubling reality: rising costs and shrinking access are pushing higher education out of reach for millions of young Americans.

The G.I. Bill, which expanded access to higher education and helped spur the rise of the great American middle class, turned 62 in June, making this a fitting moment to examine two related trends that are undermining higher education’s effectiveness as an engine of upward mobility.

First, financial aid has failed to keep pace with rising college costs, limiting access for low-income families.

Second, to finance a college education, students and families are borrowing more money on worse terms, and students are dragging more debt into the real world than ever before.

America needs a gut-check: We need to ask ourselves what the purpose of higher education is in our society. If part of the answer is to create opportunity and ensure that America remains a nation where anyone can build a better life for themselves, then we need public policy reflective of this goal.

Americans made just this statement 62 years ago. The G.I. Bill, direct thanks after World War II for soldiers’ sacrifices in defending our country, offered veterans funding for four years of college. But the principle it enshrined in public policy is timeless: Higher education is among the most powerful means of social and economic mobility and should be accessible to everyone.

Decades later, too many students believe that college is out of reach for them. Between 2001 and 2010, an estimated 2 million young people will forgo higher education because of the prohibitive costs of college.

According to the College Board, public universities’ average tuition and fees have more than doubled since 1986, while the effectiveness of the Pell Grant aid program for low-income students was cut by half. New programs are less effective in helping low-income families; for instance, a majority of the federal tuition tax benefits go to taxpayers with incomes of $50,000 or higher.

Meanwhile, more of the aid burden is shifting onto the backs of students and families. Most federal aid used to come in the form of grants; now, only 40 percent does. Today, 67 percent of students borrow money to pay for college.

While manageable debt can feed economic growth, today, 39 percent of all student borrowers graduate with unmanageable debt, according to the Department of Education. Since 1991, the number of students who delay buying their first house, having kids and getting married because of educational debt has gone up by 52 percent, 75 percent and 100 percent, respectively.

In short, education may still be a tool kit for building a better life. But the kit is becoming harder to obtain, and its tools less effective.

We need to re-assert our commitment to the principles that the G.I. Bill represented. Workable models exist: The state of Indiana, for instance, runs a program that pays for unmet financial need at a state school for graduating high school students with a GPA of 2.0 or higher who don’t use drugs or alcohol. Former U.S. Sen. John Edwards has launched a similar program, funded through private donations in North Carolina. Meanwhile, Harvard, Stanford, Yale and the University of Pennsylvania have embraced plans to offer free tuition for qualified low-income students.

These programs are laudable but piecemeal. We need to solve this problem on a national scale instead of relying on the generosity of elite schools with large endowments, private individuals or a patchwork of state-level programs.

Eventually, we should implement a national program modeled after these programs, which are proving effective at expanding access, especially in low-income communities. In the short term, Congress could expand access by raising the maximum Pell Grant to $5,100 and ease the debt burden by cutting interest rates on student loans in half.

The most common argument against these simple actions is that we can’t afford it. This is simply untrue. We can afford them, but we need to make them a priority.

That means making different choices than the ones we’re making now. It means putting the expansion of opportunity ahead of tax cuts for the wealthy. It means using taxpayer dollars more efficiently, by ending the corporate welfare system that funnels billions of dollars in subsidies to banks and lenders when a more efficient lending system exists. According to a conservative estimate from the Congressional Budget Office, we could save $13.4 billion over 10 years if a quarter of American schools switched to the more efficient system.

Lack of money is a legitimate roadblock along millions of students’ paths to higher education. It is not a legitimate reason to fail to make America stand for the principles we enshrined in the G.I. Bill.

(Oh, and by the way, congratulations class of 2006! College rules.)

This article originally ran in the Charlotte News and Observer.

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