President Barack Obama released his proposed budget for the upcoming year Monday. The $3.7 trillion behemoth is massive and involves various efforts to shift money around, some cuts, some increases — the usual.
Included in this budget are two provisions that are relevant to both undergraduate and graduate students at OU.
The first provision is one which eliminates summer school Pell grants — federal money provided to students of low-income backgrounds. The elimination of summer Pell grants is particularly problematic because poor students are more likely to work during semesters and therefore need summer credits to stay on schedule.
The inevitable rise in tuition or fees that will be coming to OU and other schools across the country will multiply the impact of these cuts. Raising costs and cutting aid is a sure way to increase the burden on the poorest students.
In addition to the Pell grant change, loans taken out by graduate students will begin gaining interest as soon as they are taken out. Graduate students will not have to pay off the interest until they are out of school, but upon graduation, with this subsidy removed, their debt burden will be considerably higher.
These two measures fly in the face of the rhetoric of educational investment. It is unclear how education is supposed to benefit from legislation that makes it less accessible to poorer students and increases the already record-high debt that students have when they leave college.
When you combine these provisions with other figures relevant to college graduates, the picture becomes even grim. The percent of recent college graduates who have managed to secure full-time jobs has dropped from 83 percent in 2007 to 74 percent in 2010, and those statistics say nothing about the kind of full-time jobs these graduates are moving into (no doubt many are under-employed).
So, to sum it up: the price of college is going up, the aid to pay for college is going down, debt for college students is at record levels (average debt is $24,000) and employment prospects for graduates are diminishing.
Those figures basically speak for themselves. The government, and society in general, is trying to pay for this recent financial crisis on the backs of students. Instead of increasing taxes on the rich, the class whose risky speculation caused the problem, it is the students who must shore up the budgets of the federal and state government.
This is nothing new, nor is it limited just to students. Consider attacks on Medicaid in Texas, a program which helps poor people get health care. Did poor children and public workers cause a bubble that wrecked the economy? No, but they sure will be called upon to pay for the aftermath of it.
Making sure everyone but the super-rich pay for economic pitfalls is so common a strategy that every time I hear people talk about “shared sacrifice,” I cannot help but laugh. Once again, students, workers, teachers and poor people will all be asked to tighten our belts and pay more.
I wish I could say I am confident that it is only these cuts that we will suffer, but I am sure slashing Pell grants and graduate student aid will be the tip of the iceberg.
— Matt Bruenig, philosophy senior
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noonespecial 1 year, 3 months ago
A few issues with your column...
The elimination of Pell grants in the summer will coincide with increased grants for the regular school year. A larger number of poor students will be able to take advantage of these now. Poorer students would also be able to take full time internships/summer jobs to help pay for their college as well. Also, I like how you insinuate that one cannot work sufficient hours during the school year to pay for it. It's not fun, but it is doable; it's called hard work, something you obviously no nothing about.
Graduate student loans are already subsidized by the federal government through artificially low interest rates. Graduate students also have more opportunities to make money while in school through fellowships, research positions, etc. Also, you don't NEED to take student loans to graduate. I was able to do so with very minimal help from my parents (all they could afford) by aggressively seeking out scholarships and working throughout the year. The financial return on education many times does not cover the added cost of student loans/opportunity cost of not entering the workforce immediately.
Finally, the majority of underemployed individuals are those working less than 40 hour weeks against their preference. So odds are that most of the full time working college graduates are not underemployed.
We need fundamental change for the education system. We need to rethink about sending our children to college with massive amounts of debt so they can "discover themselves" while they get that major with virtually no career opportunities (unless you count more college and debt!). If we want universities to be this last bastion of a liberal education and social growth, we should increase the number and prestige of trade and technical schools to train the large number of students who have no business being in a traditional four year university in the first place. At least Obama is willing to think creatively and try new things. This weak article does nothing but finds a scapegoat and whines about it.
bruenig 1 year, 3 months ago
The total amount of pay out on Pell Grants is supposed to go down as a consequence of this move. Were this merely budget neutral shifting around of payments, then you might have a point. But as it is not, you don't. The net impact will be less money for poor students period.
The second point you made was good ole bootstrapping yawn stuff. It doesn't really require a response because we have empirical evidence on who takes summer classes; so as much as your down home wisdom rings true to your ears, those with more serious interests in policy analysis should disregard it.
On internships, few are paid, and it is actually demonstrated that poor students have diminished abilities to take internships since, of course, they need money. This provision does nothing to help poor students take internships nor anything to hurt them either. Just a red herring, a staple of bad scattershooting arguments like the one you have attempted here.
The reason interest rates are lower on student loans is because of the legal frameworks that make it nearly impossible to discharge the debt. Those laws permit the interest rates to be lower, but they do not cost the government anything. Calling them a subsidy when they cost the government nothing is comically absurd.
As far as the actual subsidy is concerned, Obama has clearly decided that money for graduate students is less important than money for rich people (oh but education is important too right?!). You can say rich people deserve the money more even though they caused the problem. But, you can't try to get out of the fact that, all things equal, Obama has said he wants to spend less of our public's money helping graduate students.
Your claim that graduate students don't need loans was funny. Some can get funding; some can't. But to suggest they don't need the loans is to suggest that people are just taking out loans for no reason. Are you even reading what you are writing? Now, to be fair, you are probably falling prey to the typical bad reasoning that is inculcated in the United States. You note that there are fellowships which can pay for some graduate studies, and then fail to grasp that that does not mean that it funds ALL graduate studies. The basic facts are that a significant number of graduate students do need to take out loans to at least partially finance their education, and now the president has decided that they should pay more for those loans so that the rich people who ruined the economy can get tax breaks. Bravo Obama.
The last thing I will take issue with is your claim that Obama is thinking creatively. I don't know what is creative about this. It is a pretty standard move. Have budget problems, punish poor people, working people, teachers, students -- anyone but the rich.