National Dialogue Calls for Increase in Federal Need-based Financial Aid
Feature Story by civilrights.org staff - 1/22/2003
The College Board and Pathways to College, two leading organizations in the fight for equal educational opportunity, held a National Dialogue on Student Financial Aid on January 15, 2003. This higher education briefing, entitled "Challenging Times, Clear Choices: An Action Agenda for College Access and Success," focused on the need for the federal, state, and local governments, along with colleges, universities and the private sector to invest more equitably and efficiently in providing financial aid for students from lower socioeconomic backgrounds pursuing postsecondary education.The National Dialogue has been a year long effort which brought together numerous leaders in higher education, in addition to hundreds of students, financial aid experts, education associations, higher education institutions, and interested individuals from around the nation in order to discuss the barriers to expanding access to higher education opportunities in America and propose solutions to this problem.
"No student should be faced with a broken promise," says College Board President Gaston Caperton. He was referring to the failure of the government to fully implement the Higher Education Act of 1965, which was intended to guarantee that no student would be deprived of a college education due to lack of money.
The most crucial barrier to higher education is the lack of financial aid available to those millions of qualified students from low-income areas that are unable to attend college simply due to absence of funds. The College Board calls on national, state, and local governments to take responsibility in eliminating these obstacles by making necessary changes to provide for all qualified students, regardless of socio-economic background, to have an equal chance at attending a postsecondary institution - an equal opportunity to access and success.
Currently, students from low-income backgrounds attend college at half the rate of students from higher income backgrounds, much of which can be attributed to the lack of financial aid to students that express need. The College Board and Pathways to College Network are urging the government change the current financial aid policies which they argue are not suitable for modern times and needs. Instead of decreasing grants and increasing loans, academic institutions and the government need to increase need-based financial aid for low-income students in order to give them the opportunity to gain access to and success in college.
"Millions of completely talented and fully qualified students can't go to a public university today because we've let Pell grants fall so far behind the costs of college, and too many state governments are shifting from need-based aid to aid for high-scoring students and raising tuition costs so that families can't keep up with them," stated panelist Gary Orfield, co-director of the Harvard Civil Rights Project.
The Blue Ribbon Panel has developed ten primary recommendations for the federal, state, local governments and colleges, universities and the private sector to act in addressing the necessity of need-based aid, including substantially increasing Pell grant funding, simplifying the financial aid application process, assuring that growth in "merit" programs is not at the expense of need-based funding, and reaffirming commitment to need-based student aid.
