Diane Chang

MORIA BORYS

wo thousand and six is not looking to be a good year for students depending on federal aid for post-secondary studies. For only a lucky few who happen to (or are planning to) study math, sciences, certain foreign languages or anything else potentially beneficial to national security, the Republicans have got your back. In late February, amendments to the Higher Education Reconciliation Act (HERA) that were approved by Congress and signed off on by President Bush effectively added a Republican-backed program for higher education. The program, which consists of Academic Competitiveness Grants and National Science and Mathematics Access to Retain Talent (SMART) Grants, marks a drastic step toward transforming federal aid into a merit-based system of incentives and awards.

A total of $790 million will be available starting this summer to students who profess an interest in majoring in physical, life or computer science, engineering, mathematics, technology or a critical foreign language. The Academic Competitiveness Grants awards eligible students who graduated high school after Jan. 1, 2006, $750 in their first year, and $1,300 to second-year students that graduated after Jan. 2, 2005; the SMART Grant awards $4,000 to third- or fourth-year students. According to Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-Tenn.), who initiated the SMART Grant, the programs “represent a dramatic step toward promoting math and science education and ensuring America's economic competitiveness in the future.” A worthy enough goal to strive for, what with experts increasingly calling for the need to better prepare young Americans to compete in a globalized world. But the strange stipulations attached to the Academic Competitiveness and SMART Grant programs raise the question of who exactly Senator Frist and his fellow architects have in mind for their grand scheme of maintaining the United States' global edge.

Although almost every point of eligibility for these programs is loaded with controversy, the National Association of Student Financial Aid Administrators (NASFAA) online news page states that “By May 1 the Department will issue final regulations ...There will be no Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (NPRM) to request public comment and the rules will not be subject to the negotiated rulemaking process.”

City College New York Director of Financial Aid Thelma Mason comments, “Usually there's a period of time with a new program when financial aid officers from across the country can suggest changes. I don't know why there's not Notice this time. It seems very quick.” And quick the implementation is, considering that students will be notified of eligibility by July 1, despite the fact that policymakers have yet to announce how exactly they will realize this program's stringent requirements. All that is confirmed for now, and all that financial aid officers know about the program, is that a student must be a U.S. citizen that is eligible for the Federal Pell Grant and enrolled full-time at a four-year degree-granting institution, must maintain a cumulative grade point average of 3.0 in the major, and must have completed “a rigorous secondary school program of study.”

Among the initial concerns when the program was first up for consideration in the House in early February as part of the Deficit Reduction Act was that this high school curriculum approval requirement would allot the Secretary of Education special jurisdiction in determining high school curricula. In defense of the program, Rep. John Boehner (R-Ohio), chairman of the House Education and Workforce Committee and whom Frist credits as the force behind the ACG, along with Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee Chairman Mike Enzi (R-WY), penned a letter to Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings. They asserted that the federal law, under the General Education Provisions Act, prohibits the Secretary of Education from establishing curriculum, and that “the Secretary's role [in the ACG and SMART Grant programs] is merely to recognize that the state educational agency, local educational agency, or school has established what a rigorous secondary school program of study means for that state, district or school.”

In response to further concern that this would render home-schooled and private school students ineligible for federal aid, the Boehner and Enzi letter states that “all students from public, charter, private and home schools are eligible as long as the coursework they study meets the rigorous standards established by the state, local educational agency or school.” When asked how he thinks a standardized level of rigorousness can be measured, Teachers College professor of economics and education Henry Levin says, “I see the Advanced Placement program as the way they're going ...taking specific math and science courses. The problem is, many universities still don't see AP courses as being equivalent to the entry-level courses that they're supposed to replace,” which means that the AP is not an effective way of standardizing competency at the secondary school level. Additionally, says Professor Levin, “Very few Pell-eligible kids take AB calculus, much less BC,” because the need-based Pell Grant reaches out to high school students whose schools may not necessarily offer all the highest level Advanced Placement courses.

Although the final regulations of the new grant programs are “closely modeled on the existing Federal Pell Grant Program regulations,” as stated in the NSFAA news source, the eligibility requirements for AC and SMART Grants seem to cast a much smaller net over the pool of students in need. The Pell Grant is available to anyone who has completed a high school equivalent level of study and demonstrates need in their enrollment to a post-secondary school; in contrast, the AC and SMART Grant requires that applicants be full-time students, which excludes students who can only enroll part-time because they must also work to pay their way through their degrees. To add insult to injury, the 3.0 GPA requirement points to “movement toward merit, away from need-based aid,” says Professor Levin. “That will dilute the original intent of the Pell Grant.”

Senator Edward Kennedy (D-Mass.) views the new programs in the same light. He stated that they “will only help a fraction of those needing assistance and abandons the federal commitment to prioritize the neediest students.” In fact, when Frist and Enzi were drafting plans in September 2005 for AC and SMART Grants to provide $1 billion over the course of five years to third- and fourth-year students in the sciences, Senator Kennedy and others were working to include another temporary program in the same bill, known as the Provisional Grant Assistance Program (ProGAP). By mid-November, the Senate approved the ProGAP amendment in the budget reconciliation bill, which called for $7.25 billion to be provided over five years as supplemental grants to low-income Pell recipients, including up to 25 percent higher awards for those “studying programs key to our national security in math, science, engineering and foreign languages,” in conjunction with the SMART Grants.

Many House Republicans objected to the program because it utilized savings from federal student loan programs that could otherwise be used to reduce the budget deficit. After the House approved legislation that contained neither program, Republican Congressional leaders gathered with White House officials privately to work out a compromise. Without Kennedy and other Democratic advocates for ProGAP involved in the talks, a final version of the budget measure emerged mere hours before the House vote. The approved legislation set aside $3.75 billion for a five-year Academic Competitiveness program that included the SMART Grants, and excluded ProGAP altogether.

One could conceivably argue that a measure like ProGAP is not necessary if the overarching goal of the Academic Competitiveness program is to improve American competency in scientific and technological innovation. However, when dealing with the issues of why Americans are falling increasingly behind international standards in math and science, we cannot ignore the motivating factors. If SMART Grants are being offered as awards to third- and fourth-year students that are already studying the sciences, how does this improve competency? A requirement that recipients maintain a 3.0 GPA surely cannot be sufficient for this purpose. At the same time, if the eligibility requirements for the Academic Competitiveness Grants excludes many of those who are most in need, whether students who wouldn't otherwise study Arabic or engineering will appreciate motivational packages priced at $750 to $1,300 a year is anybody's guess.

And this still leaves a fundamental question unanswered: how exactly will academic competitiveness be achieved? Professor Levin again notes that standardized programs such as the Advance Placement and International Baccalaureate “are prepping people to take an exam, not necessarily fastening early signs of interest.” Doling out awards based on such arbitrary markers of achievement will not ensure that those who do end up studying math or science will remain interested long enough to pursue advanced degrees or lifetime professions in these fields. Regardless, Congress is pressing on with its timeline, and Secretary Spellings will continue to Academic Competitiveness Council meetings with the White House. While they collectively work out the vexing details of how to implement the program and identify exactly who is eligible by July 1, most students' previous academic interests will be tossed by the wayside as they indulge in the languor of summer.