WASHINGTON – University System of Maryland Chancellor William E. Kirwan positioned the state as a national model by presenting alternative solutions for lowering tuition and expanding accessibility for low- and moderate-income students at a national education summit Wednesday.
The summit — aimed at exploring ways to fight rising college price tags amid federal and state budget cuts — brought more than 300 educators together from across the nation as legislators on Capitol Hill pursued a $14.5 billion reduction in funding for federal student aid.
“I think we’re all alarmed and dismayed by the actions taken by Congress relating to student financial aid,” Kirwan told Capital News Service. “To make this magnitude of a cut is just very hard to understand and makes you wonder what our nation’s priorities really are.”
Kirwan opened the summit — sponsored by the Lumina Foundation, a private, Indianpolis-based organization focused on improving higher education — with a solutions-oriented speech about Maryland’s efforts to internally drive down costs, rather than relying on state and federal funding.
Citing the schools’ “effective and efficiency” effort, Kirwan said the University System made $40 million in cuts this year by centralizing many of the administrative operations.
University officials from the system’s 13 institutions will meet before next year to discuss more academically-oriented ways of cutting costs, such as encouraging students to graduate in four years and offering alternatives to traditional classroom learning, said Kirwan.
“I feel we are taking very important steps,” said Kirwan. “We haven’t found all the solutions, but there’s no question we are out in front of most other states in dealing with the question of college costs.”
Finding significant cost-cutting measures also prompted Gov. Robert Ehrlich to boost state investment, upping funding for the University System from nearly $758 million in fiscal year 2005 to more than $808 million in 2006. State funding for the University System was cut by nearly $119 million between fiscal years 2002 and 2004.
Despite these successes, Kirwan cautioned that student aid is still a vital component for low- and moderate-income students and dwindling funds are a problem that needs to be addressed.
“I think it is a scandal what is happening in higher education with financial aid,” he said.
There has been a 20 percent rise in demand for a college education with the “baby boom echo” — a phenomenon that created a new generation of low-income students, many of whom are the first in their family to go to college, said Kirwan. But often these are the students least likely to receive student aid as colleges have trended towards merit-based, rather than need-based, aid allocations.
“Those dollars are going to students who would be going to college anyway, for the most part,” said Kirwan. “Unless that dynamic changes . . . you can just see we are creating a permanent underclass of people in our society over time.”
The summit came just one day after students rallied on Capitol Hill in opposition to the House version of a budget reconciliation bill currently on the table. Charged with carving out new dollars to fund Hurricane Katrina recovery efforts and the ongoing war in Iraq, the proposed budget includes $14.5 billion in cuts to student financial aid over the next five years.
The “cuts” are actually reductions in growth, said U.S. Rep. Roscoe Bartlett, R-Frederickt.
“There are no ‘cuts’ in federal funding for student loans,” in the budget, Bartlett said. “There are reductions in the projected rate of growth. Those savings to taxpayers will be achieved by reducing subsidies to lenders while increasing the benefits to students.”
The Senate version proposes $37 billion in cuts over 10 years in health, labor, pensions and education spending. While it is unclear what percentage is allotted to higher education, the bill provides $8 billion in increased grants for low- and moderate-income students over five years.
Congress is aggravating the problem “by attempting to solve the country’s problems on the backs of low- and moderate-income students,” said Eddy Morales, president of the United States Student Association, before about 100 Georgetown and Howard University students decked out in “Stop the Raid on Student Aid” T-shirts.
Morales, who also attended Wednesday’s summit at the Ronald Reagan Building and International Trade Center, said many low- and moderate-income students who are hesitant about taking on debt may choose not to attend college.
“Tuition is going up; states are disinvesting in aid; and now the federal government is trying to make one of the largest cuts in this program’s history,” he said. “Students feel like they’re getting it from all three ways.”