WASHINGTON – As Congress looks to cut up to $50 billion in spending, education and student groups are complaining that college financial aid will take the biggest hit.
House Republican leaders have ordered the committee that oversees federal student aid to find more cuts than any other committee – about $18 billion. On Wednesday, the House Education and Workforce Committee approved a Republican proposal designed to cut spending on student aid by $14.5 billion over the next five years.
Those cuts may eventually be watered down, but the proposals have alarmed education groups, who call them the biggest in the history of federal student aid and are lobbying fiercely to stave them off. Advocacy groups have been encouraging students to pressure lawmakers by calling an 800 number, trying to replicate a successful 1995 lobbying effort.
Their message has been somewhat undermined, however, because most of the proposed savings would come from cuts in government subsidies to private institutions that loan students money. That’s something some education groups have wanted for years – although they called for the savings to be plowed back into education. Now they’re worried the money will go to deficit reduction.
Students also could pay an indirect price for the subsidy cuts if they cause private lenders to get out of the student loan business. That could mean less choice and available funding for students.
In a news conference Tuesday, five college presidents said federal aid programs are urgently short of funds. The maximum Pell Grant – the government’s chief aid program for low-income students – has been frozen at $4,050 for the last four years, covering less and less of the rapidly rising price of college each year, they noted.
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