. . .ironically making college less accessible to poor/lower-middle-class kids (outside of the small percentage who are good/lucky enough to get in to wealthy elites or get full-tuition/full-ride scholarships).
I wonder, if the money that currently goes in to Pell Grants (and similar state-level fin aid grant programs) went to fund public colleges instead (the Federal money maybe with strings attached that required states to match), would that lead to greater or less accessibility to college for poor & lower-middle-class kids?
As it is now, while the Federal and state grant program for the poor + Federal loans + work-study was enough to cover the cost of everything at one of the more expensive flagships in this country 20 years ago, that combination will be enough to pay for everything only at a few flagships these days.
Certainly, the private for-profit schools (many of which are little better than scams) would be hit hard, but that would be a good thing in my book.
And I haven’t even touched the Federal guarantee and forgiveness of massive (mostly grad school) loans. What if that money was diverted to fund publics as well?
Depends on whether that extra funding would be enough to bring the net price for students from lower and lower-middle income families into their affordability range (about $10,000 per year at most with current direct loan and work earnings expectations), and whether states have policies to use the money that way (or if the strings attached to the money force them to have such policies).
State defunding of post-secondary education probably has more local causes, such as increases in higher priority spending and pressure to lower (or not raise) taxes.
Higher priority state spending includes the greatly increased prison space that is the result of both the crime wave that peaked in the early 1990s and the longer sentences enacted in reaction to the crime wave.
I agree with UCB, reduce state funding has much more to do with the state level budget issues. Politicians love to fund education, it’s popular, but many cost are out of their control (such as raising healthcare cost, and underfunded state employee retirement funds), and raising taxes is never popular.
States always have budget problems and not enough money to go around. They didn’t radically defund other budget items because they couldn’t get away with it. They did defund state universities because they could.
With Fed dollars replacing state dollars, you could seriously cut back funding without significant political blow back. Of course that is what will happen.
The Fed dollars didn’t replace state funding (other than a small growth in the PELL amounts). Instead colleges raised tuition and found ways to cut cost or create revenue (more adjuncts, more OOS students, combine departments…)
Fed backed Student loans may have increased, due to the tuition increases, but I’m not sure how much that would have been.
Arguably, the argument that more Federal aid meant less state support for publics is weaker (than that it raised prices), but he’d argue that as states have cut back on direct funding of publics, the Federal government should step up direct funding (in favor of grants) and encourage state funding of publics with matching funds.