Making College More Affordable

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“This bill is truly a testament to the hard work that the students I’m in front of today and students around the country have put into bringing attention to this critical issue,” said Andrew Friedson, student body president at the University of Maryland.

This year has seen a wave of federal legislation aimed at increasing college accessibility and affordability. In January, the House passed the College Student Relief Act, halving interest rates on student loans, and in June it passed the College Cost Reduction Act, a budget reconciliation measure which would provide “the largest investment in higher education since the GI Bill—at no new cost to taxpayers.” The Senate passed its version of the budget reconciliation last Friday just after midnight with overwhelming bipartisan support.

The specific terms of the legislation will not be final until a committee of Senate and House members draft a compromise version, but the final bill will increase need-based financial aid through a number of programs, including a raise in the maximum Pell Grant, expanding loan forgiveness for students who go into public service, and helping students who are trapped in a cycle of mounting debt as the cost of tuition rises faster than the rate of inflation.

As Congress works on the reauthorization of the Higher Education Act, the proceedings on Capitol Hill have received considerable attention from the mainstream media. But the work being done in Congress was set in motion by the work of student activists at college campuses around the country.

Christine Lindstrom, higher education program director at the Public Interest Research Group, said many student advocates began gearing up for a campaign to make college more affordable when the Higher Education Act went up for reauthorization in 2003. PIRG teamed up with the United States Student Association to run a campaign to “Stop the Raid on Student Aid.” Other student advocate groups, including Campus Progress, quickly joined the campaign and the organizations teamed up to form the College Affordability Coalition.

In fall 2005, PIRG launched Student Debt Alert, a public education campaign geared toward “decision makers on campus and at the local, state and federal levels.”

“Most people knew college was unaffordable but didn’t know what that meant,” Lindstrom said. “It’s hard for decision makers to act or to get people to care if they don’t know the consequences of unaffordability [sic] and what it looks like.”

Thousands of students around the country joined the campaign, including 6,000 who shared their personal stories in an online student debt yearbook that put a human face on the problem of student debt. To draw publicity to the issue, student activists staged rallies on their campuses with giant inflatable ball-and-chains emblazoned with the word “DEBT” provided by their state PIRG chapter. At 20 colleges and universities, students assembled task forces of university administrators, financial aid officers, and local legislators to assess the impact of loan debt at their school.

Andrew Bossie, student body president at the University of Southern Maine, presented his school’s task force report to the Department of Education in April 2006. He also shared his recommendations with Sen, Susan Collins, Rep. Tom Allen and Governor John Baldacci. This fall, Bossie and other USM students led an initiative to put a question forgiving some student loans for Maine graduates on the 2008 ballot.

In addition to Bossie, 100 other students testified and 1,500 sent postcards to the Department of Education on the impact of loan debt and how the problem could be remedied. The Department of Education did not adopt many of the students’ recommendations. But in July 2006, the Democratic Party made “College Access for All” one of its “Six in 06” campaign platforms.

Lindstrom points to the 2006 election cycle as a crucial time in students’ fight to spur Congress to action.

“There’s an important connection between voter turnout and [the recent legislation on college affordability],” Lindstrom said. “There’s this terrible cycle where young people don’t vote so they are disengaged from the political establishment. Because they are disengaged, they get ignored, and because they get ignored they don’t vote.”

Friedson, the University of Maryland student body president, put it more bluntly. “Students weren’t involved so they were getting screwed.”

Friedson and other student activists, with help from Maryland Votes, Maryland PIRG, and other groups, registered more than 1,000 new voters at the University of Maryland College Park campus. On Election Day, 680 students voted at the campus polling place, compared to 149 in 2004 and just 10 in the previous midterm election in 2002.

At the University of Connecticut in Storrs, the voter mobilization effort was more personal. Rep. Rob Simmons (R-CT), who represented the district which encompasses the university, had voted to cut more than $12 billion from student loan programs in December 2005.

“We lobbied and got Simmons to flip his vote [when the bill was reconsidered in February],” said Van McPherson, a rising senior at UConn and state board chairman of Connecticut PIRG. “But it was too little too late, so we mobilized and turned out the vote.”

Voter turnout increased 700 percent from the previous midterm election at the UConn polling place as 902 students came out to vote in a congressional race that was decided by 83 votes. The victor, Rep. Joe Courtney (D-CT), is not taking the support of the students who helped elect him for granted. As a member of the House Education and Labor Committee he has been a vocal proponent of college affordability, co-sponsoring the January bill cutting interest rates on student loans and returning to the UConn campus last week to speak in favor of the College Cost Reduction Act.

Speaking to a group of high school students in February, Courtney said Congress’ efforts to make college more affordable were a direct response to increased student voter turnout.

“That wasn’t a coincidence,” he said. “It was a reaction to the impact that young people had on Congress in the last election. The more you vote, the more politicians are going to pay attention to your issues.”

The University of Maryland and UConn were two of over 80 college campuses in 25 states targeted by the Student PIRGs’ New Voters Project. According to the project’s website, it was “the nation’s largest nonpartisan youth voter mobilization campaign in a midterm election,” registering over 75,000 students to vote.

Two weeks before the election, Campus Progress launched the Debt Hits Hard campaign, “to raise public awareness of how ineffective federal policies weaken educational opportunity and feed the dramatic growth of student debt.” The campaign featured a series of short videos on college affordability, which were screened at campuses around the country and at film festivals in several cities, and released a guide for students investigating conflicts of interest in their campus financial aid offices. Campus Progress helped keep pressure on Congress after the elections to make college more affordable, organizing drives for students to contact their representatives throughout the year.

The United States Student Association ratcheted up that pressure this summer when it launched the Don’t Get Burned campaign, organizing student governments to lobby Congress and collecting personal stories of unmanageable student debt to deliver to representatives. USSA, PIRG, Campus Progress and other members of the College Affordability Coalition joined together in the recent fight on Capitol Hill over cutting subsidies to student loan providers and using the funds to expand need-based aid for students.

Last Wednesday the Senate began debate on the Higher Education Access Act, its version of the budget reconciliation legislation the House passed the week before. The bill proposed cutting over $18 billion in payments to lenders and pouring the savings into various programs to make college more affordable. When Senators Ben Nelson (D-NE) and Richard Burr (R-NC) announced they would introduce an amendment reducing the cuts in lender subsidies, thereby reducing the money that would go to students, by $4.2 billion, student activists mobilized.

Student advocates compiled a list of senators who had not yet decided how they would vote on the Nelson-Burr Amendment, and students began lobbying them to vote against it.

“We met with [Sen. Bill] Nelson’s (D-FL) office and got the indication he’d vote yes on the amendment,” said Rebecca Thompson, legislative director of the United States Student Association. “We spread the word with student leaders in Florida, and they bombarded his office with calls.”

The students’ calls for college affordability beat out lobbying efforts from the student loan industry and Bill Nelson, along with every Democrat except for Ben Nelson and every Republican targeted as a swing vote except Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-TN), voted to defeat the Nelson-Burr Amendment. Hours later the Higher Education Access Act passed the Senate by a vote of 78-18.

“This vote is something concrete where students can see the impact they’re having,” Thompson said.

Bill Nelson’s office did not respond to repeated calls for comment.

After passing the budget reconciliation bill, the Senate passed its reauthorization of the Higher Education Act by a vote of 95-0, extending the programs which provide financial assistance to students such as the Pell Grant that had been kept afloat through annual appropriations and temporary extensions of the authorization. The House has not yet begun debate on its version of the reauthorization, so Thompson urges students to keep a vigilant eye on their representatives.

“We have Congress’ ear and the work of students is paying off but it’s not done,” she said. “This is a huge opportunity which students need to take advantage of by continuing to put the pressure on and hold Congress accountable during the [Higher Education Act] reauthorization process.”

Student activists seem determined to do just that.

“Students are becoming a force in politics,” said Friedson of the University of Maryland, “and we’re not leaving anytime soon.”

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