December 11, 2008

At Congressional Hearing, Colleges Plead for More Money for Student Aid and for States

Washington — Colleges got a chance today to make their case for a share of the billions of dollars in economic-stimulus legislation at a hearing on Capitol Hill.

Sandy Baum, a professor of economics at Skidmore College and senior policy analyst at the College Board, spoke for colleges at the House Appropriations Committee hearing, which also featured three governors, a food-bank administrator, and the chief executive of Michigan’s Community Action Agency.

Ms. Baum argued for additional Pell Grant aid and more money for the states, many of which have been forced to scale back their spending on education and infrastructure as tax revenues have dropped.

“I urge you to make higher education a clear focus” in crafting a stimulus bill, Ms. Baum said. Lawmakers are expected to vote on the multibillion-dollar economic-stimulus bill in January, after President-elect Barack Obama takes office.

In her testimony, Ms. Baum argued that expanding access to higher education was a “good economic policy” because it would temporarily reduce the supply of excess labor, while helping unemployed workers gain the skills needed to land 21st-century jobs.

“Our economy will reap the benefits for a long time,” she said, and if the United States doesn’t expand access to higher education, “we will feel that pain far beyond the time the economy begins to recover.”

In a question-and-answer session that followed the testimony, the committee’s chairman, David R. Obey, a Democrat of Wisconsin, played devil’s advocate, asking the panelists if they were using the recession as an excuse to secure money they had sought before the economy soured.

Ms. Baum answered that it was “certainly a reasonable question because everyone has been saying all along that we need more money for student aid.” But she argued that it was “obviously in the short-term and long-term interests of the economy to have [unemployed workers] using their time constructively” by furthering their education.

At the end of the hearing, Mr. Obey said Ms. Baum and the other speakers had “made it quite clear” that an economic-stimulus bill must deal with economic recovery, but also with the “human fallout” from the crisis. —Kelly Field

Comments

1. Let’s see, when the economy is strong higher education asks for more money and when the economy is flat or weak higher education asks for more money. It is this kind of attitude that will ultimately lead to Congressional micro-managing of endowments and curricula, as if state micro-managing weren’t already bad enough.

   And why would Rep. Obey be playing “Devil’s Advocate” when asking such a legitimate question? Devil’s Advocate assumes it is a question that otherwise wouldn’t be asked; why shouldn’t it be in this context?

   — J. Ward    Dec 11, 03:16 PM    #

2. With Santa Obama on the way, every pig is waiting at the trough. Bailouts and handouts for everyone! Just send the bill to your kids and grandkids!

   — TRB    Dec 11, 07:39 PM    #

3. The universities should invest in their students. If you give your students a super affordable education and with practical skills so that they can start up the next generation of Siemens, Nokias, IBMs, Motorolyas, Microsofts, SGIs, Hughes Aircrafts, … then they will feel good AND BE able to support and contribute to the next generation of Endowments. Not only should the endowments be used to endow professorships, but but also endowed scholarships. A good football teams needs to have FULL ride scholarships. GREAT word class and competitive physics, mathematics, chemistry, molecular biology, bioinformatics psychology, anthropology, … departments start with their undergraduate students (good conditions, interactions with professors, other faculty and staff). The undergraduate majors need to be treated like the star QBs, RBs, centers, … When they are treated like cattle, like they are at many SO-CALLED Flagship state universities, …. Our economy is stuffed due in large part by a gross failure of the large public universities. For 49 states large flagship universities to get failing grades on afford ability and quality of undergraduate education, tells the WHOLE world something is drastically wrong. Maybe the top RIUs (Research Intensive Universities) should drop their Undergraduate Education completely and focus on getting at least one thing correct. Then leave the undergraduate education for other universities which do very little or no research. We specialize in most fields, but TOO many universities try to do too much, with the end result and product of not doing anything at a super high level, especially the undergraduate education. It has shown itself to be the case, as fewer and fewer of our undergraduates are able to and fully prepared to start up and establish their own businesses. With the large multi nationals laying off American workers and college educated graduates in large (unprecedented) numbers, universities in the USA need to respond. We are NO LONGER training and educated workers to work in American industry!! WE ARE Training and Educating (or should be) them to MAKE AND ESTABLISH OUR INDUSTRY!! This is a great challenge, and even a GREATER CHALLENGE then doing research in our respect fields. We require GREAT Leaders at our Flagship Universities and also Deans and Departmental Chairs who not only have this vision, but have clear business plans and are able to push through the required changes. This has and is happening at the flagship Technical Universities in Sweden (Chalmers), Denmark (DTU) and now in Finland (HUT). Of course it is earlier in these Nordic countries, since the average person/resident is much higher educated, more socially responsible and also more flexible than we are in the States. But then there is also a collective willing to help each other and work together, which these countries needed to do after WWII. But the real challenge is for the these countries to maintain and improve upon their standard of living, highly educated population and to continue to encourage and develop their very world competitive bio, nano and telecommunications sectors (Nokia, Eriksons, Novo Nordic, Novozymes, …). We can learn something from our Nordic friends as their economies appear to be much less affected by the bad investments in Wall Street, southeast Asia, China, … When one invests in one’s young people and local, state and federal AT HOME industries and internal markets, one is not as exposed as we are in the States and the Aussies have been (30 percent drop in the value of their currency in the past year, after years of super high grown and inflation in the housing sector).

   — KJJ    Dec 12, 12:47 AM    #

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