Subscribe
Jobs
Cars
Real Estate
Apts
Classifieds
Shop
If the federal government were only now creating a college student aid program, there’s no way it would create the behemoth system of grants, tax credits, deductions and interest subsidies that currently exists.
To that end, a panel of college and university officials convened by the College Board began working two years ago to tear up the current model.
“We need a student aid system that is simple and clear and puts the money in the hands of the students who need it,” said Sandy Baum, a Skidmore College professor of economics and co-chairwoman of the study group, during a telephone conference last week. “We also wanted to keep students at the center of the picture.”
Their plan, conceived without the influence of special interest groups or financial aid practitioners, reinstates the original promise of federal student aid, yet preserves the political features that middle-class families and their representatives in Congress will demand. The presidential candidates would be wise to seize it as an example of the changes the U.S. must make to halt its frightening decline in college attainment rates.
Some recommendations from the plan:
•Eliminate the Free Application for Federal Student Aid and instead determine awards from IRS information or income-based benefits eligibility.
•Combine all grant programs into Pell Grants and base the awards on family size and adjusted gross income. The maximum Pell Grant would be adjusted annually with the Consumer Price Index.
•Combine all education tax credits and deductions into a simple, non-refundable tax credit available for college-related expenses beyond tuition and fees.
•Establish higher education savings accounts for children from low-income families, similar to 529 savings programs, to get students thinking about college from an early age.
•Create block grants for colleges to use to help low- and moderate-income students succeed.
Don Hossler, professor of Educational Leadership and Policy Studies and director of Projects on Academic Success, at Indiana University-Bloomington, was a College Board representative who worked with the “Rethinking Student Aid Study Group.” He said he is pleased with the final product.
“We’re not naïve enough to think this is the best plan, but this is, indeed, the best set of recommendations perhaps any group could come up with,” Hossler said. “It really was a non-partisan process driven by thoughtful people.”
He cited several features as important ones, including the simplification it brings to the process and the elimination of student loan subsidies, which show no evidence of having an influence on a student’s decision to attend college. The college savings account plan, which will include something like a Social Security earnings statement to show students from low-income families how much they have available for college, takes the concern of college costs off the table for those families.
Hossler, who has done research on college retention and success, said the College Board recommendations that would provide incentives for helping low-income students succeed, have the potential of “saving institutions from themselves.”
“We’re in a world where there is a merit arms race for high-ability students,” he said. “What we are really doing is rearranging the deck chairs on the Queen Elizabeth II. … This would create incentives for colleges to not concentrate on those students. It would ratchet down the merit arms race.”
There’s much to like and much to consider with the College Board plan. Parents, students, higher education officials and all other interested parties should begin the debate immediately.
