The New York Times tells it like it is in this editorial on the long-term ramifications of abandoning college aid programs that favor low-income students for politically popular tax credits and other programs that shift public education dollars toward the more affluent.
The problem was laid out yet again last week in two reports, one entitled “Losing Ground,” from the National Center for Public Policy and Higher Education, and a second, from Congress, called “Slamming Shut the Doors to College.” A national policy once based primarily on need-based grants is now dominated by loan programs that often require Americans to assume unmanageable debts. Once seen as a benefit to society as a whole, a college education is now viewed as a boon to an individual, who should be forced to pay for it.
The data in the new reports shows that public colleges, which educate more than three-quarters of America’s students, are becoming unaffordable for many American families, that federal and state financial aid to students has failed to keep pace with tuition increases and that low-income families in particular are borrowing larger amounts than ever to pay for college. Both Republicans and Democrats participated in the destructive process of shifting aid that was once dispensed on the basis of need toward more politically powerful middle- and upper-income families