EDITORIAL – Working toward college affordability

In the 2006 midterm elections, Democratic candidates for the U.S. House of Representatives and… In the 2006 midterm elections, Democratic candidates for the U.S. House of Representatives and the Senate stumped on a promise of change, offering voters the possibility for legislation that would, among other things, regulate spending in Iraq, increase funding for domestic programs and make the price of college tuition more affordable. More than a year later, Congress was able to make good on one of its promises by passing legislation in both houses that promises to tackle rising tuition costs across the country.

The legislation, called the College Opportunity and Affordability Act, will increase aid to students directly by increasing the maximum federal Pell grant from $5,800 to $9,000 a year and increasing federal student aid by $20 billion. It will also affect student aid indirectly by cutting down on states’ eligibility for new federal grants if the states reduce financing for public universities. The legislation also contains a measure that would put breaks on rising textbook costs.

Additionally, in response to the current rapid pace of tuition increases, which have been coupled with equally rapid college endowment gains, the Senate Finance Committee has requested detailed information on tuitions and endowments from the 136 wealthiest colleges – including Pitt – in order to track how much of their endowments they are spending to keep costs down.

While the breadth of the bill almost makes it seem like Congress was trying to solve our nation’s rising tuition crisis in one fell swoop, piece by piece, this legislation is a promising, albeit modest, attempt at keeping the cost of a college education affordable.

The measure that would punish states that reduce appropriations to public colleges will particularly benefit Pitt, which ranks among the most expensive public schools in the country. Pitt’s high in- and out-of-state tuitions are in part a result of Pennsylvania’s stingy appropriations to state-affiliated universities.

While it remains a priority of the educational institutions themselves to keep tuition rises at a minimum and offer financial aid to their students, without adequate state funding, public universities have no choice but to hike up tuition.

Keeping a Pitt education affordable is going to take more than an increase in federal grants and state aid, however. The burden of making college educations affordable needs to fall on the colleges themselves. The only sum rising faster than college tuitions are those same colleges’ endowments, a fact that seems almost counterintuitive.

Pitt’s endowment has skyrocketed to $2.3 billion in the last year, up 25 percent from the year before, according to the Pittsburgh Business Times. We understand the importance of investing the endowment in state-of-the-art facilities and attracting respected faculty members, but we also believe that it should be equally important in to invest that money back into the students.

While The College Opportunity and Affordability Act doesn’t promise any type of consequences for wealthy colleges that aren’t giving back enough to students, the increase in transparency will at least give our lawmakers a better idea of how colleges spend their money and what types of expenditures they could afford to make in the future.