STUDENT AID IN OBAMALOT

from Inside Higher Education
Manna From Heaven (er, Washington)

WASHINGTON — As colleges and students around the country struggle with the effects of the worldwide economic downturn, help appears to be on the way from the nation’s capital. And plenty of it, to judge from a draft of a massive, $825 billion stimulus package released by Democratic leaders in the House of Representatives Thursday.

Calculating exactly how much of the proposed money — $550 billion in new spending and $275 billion in tax breaks over two years — could (if enacted) flow to postsecondary institutions, and to students and potential students, is difficult because many of the proposals in the package lack detail. It would also be premature for anyone in higher education (or any other potential recipients of stimulus funds) to start spending it, since (1) budget hawks in Congress and elsewhere blanched at the size and scope of the package, (2) this is just the House’s version, with the Senate reportedly drafting its own, and (3) multiple steps remain in the process.

Still, none of those factors are likely to dampen interest in what’s in the legislation, and a rough estimate by Inside Higher Ed suggests that tens of billions of dollars could flow to colleges and their students, in the following broad categories:

• Nearly $30 billion in financial support for students, including $15.6 billion to increase the maximum Pell Grant by $500, to $5,350, in 2009-10; $490 million in additional federal work study funds; $12.5 billion to replace the Hope tax credit created in the Clinton administration with a tax credit worth up to $2,500 a year and structured in a way that is more helpful to students from low-income families; and a $2,000 increase in federal limits on unsubsidized loans.
• Some share of the $39 billion that would flow to state governments to “help restore cuts to critical education programs” in both elementary/secondary education and higher education. While it is impossible to know exactly how much of this pool of money would go to two-year and four-year public colleges and universities, as opposed to public elementary and secondary schools, language in the legislation says that governors are supposed to “provide the amount of funds to public institutions in the state that is needed to restore state support for postsecondary education to the fiscal year 2008 level.”
• At least $8 billion in increased funding of research and researchers, including $2 billion for the National Science Foundation, $2 billion in research on energy efficiency and renewable energy, $1.9 billion in basic energy studies, $1.5 billion for biomedical research through the National Institutes of Health, and $400 million for climate change research through the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. That number could grow if other R&D funds — $11 billion for research and development and other advances related to the electricity grid, $900 million for cyber security and pandemic R&D — flow in some form to university researchers.
• About $8.7 billion in infrastructure support at public and private colleges and universities, including $6 billion to help modernize their facilities and make them environmentally friendly, $1.5 billion through the National Institutes of Health to help renovate biomedical research facilities, as much as $900 million through the National Science Foundation to build or renovate facilities or upgrade equipment, and $300 million for college science facilities through the National Institute of Standards and Technology.
• A portion of $4 billion in grants for adult education and job training, a significant amount of which could flow to community colleges and for-profit institutions that provide career-related training. (Two-year colleges typically receive about a third of all funds under the Workforce Investment Act, though it is distributed through one-stop job centers and state boards.) It’s also possible that some money for job training and education could emerge from the bonds the stimulus package would provide to states or municipalities to create “recovery zones” in areas with significant unemployment, home and business foreclosures, or poverty.
• An array of other monies that could flow to postsecondary institutions and would-be students, including $600 million to train primary health care workers and $200 million in funds for additional AmeriCorps national service grants.

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