Is College Only For The Rich?

We take a deeper look at the battle to pass the Student Aid and Fiscal Responsibility Act (SAFRA).

The Student Aid and Fiscal Responsibility Act (SAFRA), which passed in the House in September and has the support of the White House, has been getting a lot of attention for addressing the cost of college, primarily because it aims to both increase the Pell grant and switch to more cost-effective direct lending. And it couldn't come at a better time.

Tuition has been increasing at twice the rate of inflation since the 1990s, while the Pell grant doesn't buy nearly what it used to—it covered half the total cost of a public university in the mid-1980s but today it covers less than a third. By 2007, the College Board estimated that nearly a quarter of students were paying $21,000 a year or more in tuition, and costs clearly have continued rising since then.

Banks and loan corporations have quietly declared war on students this year, using an arsenal of more than two dozen lobbyists, an ambitious public relations campaign, and millions of dollars to kill legislation that would make college more affordable.

Lenders seem to be terrified of the Student Aid and Fiscal Responsibility Act (SAFRA), a bill in Congress that seeks to reform federal student loan policies by putting lending power and oversight into the hands of the government through the exising Direct Lending Program and ending the tax-subsidized Federal Family Education Loan (FFEL) program.

Amid the battle to ensure marriage equality, it seems as though public policy affecting the LGBT community has left behind a large and important swath of the gay community: LGBT college students.

And yet these same young people, who are frequently so ambitious when tackling fights concerning their sexuality, often hardly consider their very basic needs as everyday university students. Unfortunately, federal higher education legislation ignores LGBT struggles with affording higher education.

Jill Mazzetta followed a dream to Emerson College. Despite scoring in the top quartile on Massachusetts’ Comprehensive Assessment System exam, thereby earning herself free tuition to any Massachusetts state university, Mazzetta instead decided to matriculate at Emerson, the prestigious communications college she’d wanted to go to since she was a kid.

"When I applied, I knew the tuition would be pretty high," Mazzetta, now a senior majoring in book publishing, says. "But I was so impressed with Emerson’s programs that I decided I’d be willing to put up with the cost for a great experience." At about $38,000 per year for tuition and fees, Emerson is a particularly expensive private college—especially for Mazzetta, whose parents couldn’t afford to help pay for her education.

In February, President Obama’s budget proposal for 2010 contained a plan that would help hundreds of thousands of students pay for college, stop wasting billions on corporate welfare to student loan companies, and create programs to increase college access and completion rates. This plan was taken up by the House of Representatives, which passed a bill—the Student Aid and Fiscal Responsibility Act (SAFRA)—based on the president’s initial proposal. Within the coming weeks, the Senate is expected to introduce its own version of the bill.

Things are indeed moving forward, but not without some significant, two-pronged opposition: As student loan companies are busy spending millions on a lobbying and public relations campaign to stop real reform, simultaneously, conservatives are opposed the bill on the grounds it’s a “government takeover” of the student loan industry. Through advertisements, emails to their borrowers, articles, speeches in Congress, and even rallies at their regional call centers, these well-financed opponents have done their best to spread misinformation about what the bill would do, and they’ve had some success in shaping the terms of debate.