Educators Target High Cost of College

Citing skyrocketing college costs and the staggering debt incurred by hundreds of thousands of students, several of the state’s top educators told a congressional subcommittee Thursday that the single most pressing issue in higher education is making it more affordable.

For many students in California, the problem isn’t getting into a college, California State University Chancellor Barry Munitz said. The problem is finding the money to pay for it.

A dozen speakers made similar comments on the campus of Cal State Northridge during the first hearing of the House Subcommittee on Post-secondary Education, Training and Life-long Learning as the group works to reauthorize the sweeping Higher Education Act of 1965. The measure, which expires in two years, provides 70% of the nation’s student grants and loans.

Chaired by U.S. Rep. Howard P. “Buck” McKeon (R-Santa Clarita), the subcommittee will hold several such hearings around the country before recommending changes to the law this summer.

First signed by President Lyndon B. Johnson, the Higher Education Act was intended to ensure access to college for low-income Americans and includes 760 financial and academic programs. But speaker after speaker Thursday called for increasing the $35 billion in annual aid, especially grants, and on streamlining the bureaucratic process that eventually puts those dollars into the hands of 7 million students.

CSUN President Blenda J. Wilson, for instance, noted that the federal regulations governing financial aid contain more than 7,000 separate sections. And those regulations “include 38 different definitions of ‘students.’ ”

But money was the chief topic of the day. Although fees at Cal State schools are still relatively low contrasted with other states, speakers said, they have wildly outpaced inflation.

Fees at both the Cal State and University of California systems have more than doubled in the past six years, speakers said, to nearly $1,600 a year at the 22 Cal State schools and to more than $4,000 at the nine UC campuses.

The maximum Pell Grant--the federal government’s most common educational grant--provides eligible students with just $2,700 a year, though earlier this week President Clinton recommended raising that figure to $3,000 and providing the grants to an additional 130,000 students nationwide.

Thursday’s speakers, which included University of California Provost C. Judson King and California Community College Chancellor Thomas Nussbaum, all applauded the Clinton plan.

But still more money is needed, they said--and soon--as about 450,000 additional students are expected to flood California colleges and universities over the next decade in a rush dubbed “Tidal Wave II.”

The aid, they said, should come in the form of grants, not loans.

Californians are incurring student loan debt at the rate of $8 million a day, said Jon D. Shaver of the California Student Aid Commission. And students are becoming so burdened with debt, several speakers said, that they are dropping out, defaulting on the loans and seeking jobs based almost entirely on salary--becoming plastic surgeons in Beverly Hills, as Munitz put it, instead of general practice physicians in the inner city.

In addition to urging an increase in the number and amount of grants, other speakers implored McKeon to simplify the process of applying for financial aid.

UCLA student Alicia Sherman told the panel that the current financial aid forms are so complicated she could not fill them out herself. And her mother, “who has a master’s degree,” had to take a half day off work to help her through them. “You should not have to have a master’s degree to complete the forms,” Sherman said.

Although McKeon will not make any formal recommendations for several months, he appears to share many of the same concerns expressed Thursday. Even before the public testimony began, he listed the “three compelling principles that will guide us: making college affordable, simplifying the student aid system, and stressing academic quality for students.”