Congress looks toward another Pell grant increase

(U-WIRE) COLLEGE PARK, Md. — Low- and middle-income students could see more federal financial aid if a congressional overhaul of current higher education funding becomes law.

The House of Representatives’ Committee on Education and Labor unanimously agreed on legislation that would, among other things, increase the amount of Pell Grant money available as need-based aid for undergraduate students.

The bill, known as the College Opportunity and Affordability Act, would raise the maximum Pell Grant scholarship to $9,000 per year from the current $5,800 cap, said Rachel Racusen, a spokeswoman for the Committee on Education and Labor.

However, the provision in the bill that could prove most helpful to students would hinge upon universities being able to afford a tuition freeze.

The House’s bill stipulates that the federal government would match the need-based grant money the states provide only if the state didn’t cut higher education funding. States that decreased funding would be ineligible to participate in the fund-matching program, Racusen said.

Public universities in Maryland have seen a tuition freeze for the past two years, but the state’s projected $1.5 billion debt for next year left politicians unable to promise they wouldn’t raise tuition.

Brit Kirwan, chancellor of the University System of Maryland, said it was too early to comment on next year’s tuition, but he said the legislation is not aimed at system institutions because it has done a good job keeping tuition from rising over the past few years.

“The university system gained a national reputation for being good at cost containment,” Kirwan said, adding that it proved it could cut wasteful costs from its budget rather than raise tuition or decrease the quality of student services.

While the system managed to finagle a tuition freeze the past two years, the average American university saw a 6 or 7 percent tuition hike, Kirwan said.

Kirwan said despite his uncertainty about next year’s tuition, if the House’s bill passes, “I have no doubt that we would be a beneficiary” of the increased financial aid.

While he was excited at the prospect of more aid to make college more accessible for all students, Kirwan said he had a major concern about the bill. It would establish a “higher-education price index,” and if a college or university’s tuition grew faster than the index, that school would be placed on a watch list.

Kirwan said he is concerned about the watch list because a public university’s ability to keep tuition from growing too sharply depends heavily on the state’s willingness to adequately fund higher education.

“The reason we’ve been able to moderate, and in fact freeze, tuition is that we’ve worked with the state,” he said. He added that he worried the watch list system placed too much responsibility on individual schools and didn’t put enough pressure on states to fund those schools.

The College Opportunity and Affordability Act is the second of two major higher education bills to go through Congress this year.

President Bush signed the College Cost Reduction and Access Act of 2007 into law in September, which poured more money into the Pell Grant program, enough to fund a maximum grant of $4,800 per year instead of $4,050. The maximum grant amount will continue to increase and will reach $5,400 by 2012.

The College Opportunity and Affordability Act was meant to renew the Higher Education Act, which has been renewed and modified several times since it was first passed in 1965. The act expired in 2004, and Congress opted to extend it eight times since then but not pass an official reauthorization until this summer.

The Senate renewed the act with some modifications, but the House opted to make major revisions. The bill still needs to be passed by the full House before both chambers will begin reconciling the major differences between their versions of the legislation.

By Megan Eckstein
The Diamondback (U. Maryland)

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