Making College Affordable for All
Monday, August 25, 2008
Making College Affordable for All
The benefits of a post-secondary degree are plentiful. For example, an employee with a four year college degree earns 60 percent more than a worker with only a high school diploma. Paying for college, however, has become increasingly difficult for most American students and families. The cost of higher education across the country is rapidly increasing, at almost double the rate of inflation, outstripping increases in financial aid and outpacing many families’ ability to pay. The combination of these factors result in too many students being unable to earn or complete their degrees due to financial constraints. This Dispatch will discuss the newly enacted College Opportunity and Affordability Act, along with independent actions states are taking to promote affordability and what policies they can implement to make these programs stronger. Particular focus is given to state financial aid appropriations and policy suggestions that help structure innovative programs, like dual enrollment, in the best way possible to ease the costs of post-secondary education and ensure that all demographics have equal opportunities.
State Efforts on Textbooks Set Precedent for New National Textbook Affordability Measures
Soaring costs of textbooks put further financial strain on college students who already struggling with increasing tuition bills and escalating expenses. A June 2007 Advisory Committee on Student Financial Assistance (ACSFA) report, “Turn the Page,” stated that the average U.S. student spends $700-$1000 per year on textbooks — approximately 20 percent of tuition at an average university and half of tuition at a community college. Textbook prices have increased at four times the rate of inflation since 1994 and continue to rise, often due to specific ploys by publishers to protect profits. Research demonstrates that the rising costs of textbooks is not inevitable and that policy solutions exist to make textbooks part of an affordable college education.
Seeing the benefit of state initiatives to curb textbook costs, Congress under the College Opportunity and Affordability now:
Federal Lender Reforms Targeting Conflicts of Interests Followed State Investigations
Taking a page from New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo, lender reform provisions in the College Opportunity and Affordability Act create protections for students from the college loan industry. Cuomo's investigation in New York state focused on alleged inappropriate relationships between lenders and schools. He alleged that certain lenders were put on schools' "preferred lender" lists because they offered institutions a cut of their profits.
After the passage of the COAA, Cuomo stated "[t]his historic legislation allows the rest of the nation to follow New York State's lead in cracking down on the deceptive student loan industry." According to Cuomo, the COAA addresses widespread conflicts of interest in the student loan industry by requiring colleges and universities to develop a code of conduct with respect to federally guaranteed loans that:
The Act also includes requirements related to private loans, such as:
Other Key Provisions in College Opportunity and Affordability Act
Building on New Federal Student Aid and Tuition Transparency Provisions: The new federal legislation includes improvements in financial aid and tuition transparency. States should consider how their programs can build on and reinforce these new provisions, including:
College Affordability and Financial Aid: What States are Already DoingProviding Financial Aid Regardless of the current economic slump, many policymakers believe it is essential to maintain (or even improve) access to higher education – a belief crouched largely in their understanding of the social and economic benefits of an educated citizenry. South Carolina, Washington DC, Indiana, Georgia, and New York provided the greatest amount of grant aid on a per capita basis. Dual Enrollment Programs
Financial aid although necessary in order to ensure college is affordable for all, is only one of an array of policies that states can adopt to ensure that earning a post-secondary degree is affordable. As seen with textbook reform legislation, states can provide students with more than just direct aid by implementing policies which reduce the amount of money students must spend to earn a post-secondary degree. One such policy, which has gained momentum in the states over the last few years, is the implementation of comprehensive and well-funded dual enrollment programs.
Dual enrollment programs allow high school students to simultaneously earn credit towards a high school diploma and a post-secondary degree or certificate. Depending on state policies, these programs are also called "dual credit" or "concurrent enrollment." According to the U.S. Department of Education, college credits earned prior to high school graduation reduce the average time-to-degree and increase the likelihood of graduation for the students who participate in these programs.
Some states have recently expanded their dual enrollment programs.
ConclusionA college education provides individuals with the ability to earn a higher income, have more job flexibility and to broaden their skill sets. Yet, as the cost of higher education across the country is rapidly increasing, too many students are unable to attend institutions of higher education due to financial constraints. Increasingly, even students who do attend and graduate from a higher education institution are affected by soaring tuition and related fees, leaving school with increasing amounts of debt, which impacts career, family and lifestyle choices for years to come. The newly enacted College Opportunity and Affordability Act, along with state policies to ease the costs of post-secondary education and to promote affordability are important to ensure that higher education is a possibility for all.
ResourcesState Efforts on Textbooks Set Precedent for New National Textbook Affordability Measures
US PIRG -- Affordable Textbooks Federal Lender Reforms Targeting Conflicts of Interests Followed State Investigations
Cuomo looking into student loan marketing Other Key Provisions in College Opportunity and Affordability Act
College Opportunity and Affordability Act College Affordability and Financial Aid: What States are Already Doing
Prospective students who searched for Public College Costs Up 6.6 Percent 3 Steps Forward1. MA - New law aids children with mental illness 2 Steps Back1. New Bush Admin regulations block women's access to health care services, including abortion, family planning and end-of-life care MastheadThe Stateside Dispatch is written and edited by: Nathan Newman, Policy Director Please shoot us an email at dispatch@progressivestates.org if you have feedback, tips, suggestions, criticisms, or nominations for any of our sidebar features.
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Inside PSN: Interview with Thomas Frank on Conservativism and the Wrecking of Government as We Know It
Monday, September 21, 2008
Conservativism and the Wrecking of Government as We Know It
This Wednesday, PSN Executive Director Joel Barkin sat down for a phone interview with Thomas Frank, author of the new best selling book, The Wrecking Crew: How Conservatives Rule. Their conversation touched on a number of issues surrounding how conservatives have worked over the last decade to dismantle government as we know it in Washington D.C. and throughout the country. After a lengthy research and writing process, Frank was able to provide probing insights into the strategies through which the Right has proved able to effectively outsource the responsibilities of governance to corporate interests. From "de-funding the left," to laying siege to public employees and privatizing every government service within sight, Frank painted an ominous picture of a strategy that has trickled down from D.C. to the states, a strategy that progressive leaders at every level would do well to study. We've provided an excerpted transcript of the interview below. You can also listen to and download a full recording of the interview in mp3 format here. Excerpted Transcript
Joel Barkin: We're very lucky to have with us today author of the best-selling Wrecking Crew: How Conservatives Rule, also the author of What's the Matter with Kansas, Thomas Frank, in a new program we're instituting at Progressive States Network to bring leading national voices and authors to discuss some of the core issues that many legislators and state based groups are working on across the country. Tom's new book looks at what happened in Washington over the last decade and then sort of the history behind that and ways in which the conservative movement has really dominated Washington D.C. and how that has impacted states all across the country. So I guess the first thing I'd want to ask you Tom is just to discuss a little bit what The Wrecking Crew is about and how it might be—some of the lessons that in your research you learned and that progressives across the country should know. 
Thomas Frank: Well, the basic idea of The Wrecking Crew—I mean it came to me while I was watching this wave of scandals unfold. Basically starting in 2005 and continuing up to now. I mean there's a new one coming out of Washington every couple of weeks it seems. Watching that happening and then at the same time the sort of epic misgovernment and incompetence of the Bush Administration, in particular the sort of disastrous reconstruction of Iraq which has been just a catastrophic failure, the amazing failure of FEMA after Hurricane Katrina, and then at the same time as that, all the stories about the growing power of lobbyists. And it occurred to me that these things were not just, you know, random misfortunes; that there was a connection between them and that connection is, well, the long explanation is that the connection is conservative attitudes toward government. The short answer is it's what happens when you try to import the free market, when you try to import business into government; when you try to make government into a business, which is what they've done. JB: One of the interesting things I think your book points out is the conservative rhetoric around states' rights and just how that's exactly what it is, rhetoric, and the fact that the conservative movement has actually done more in the last decade to consolidate power in D.C. than possibly any time in our history. When exactly did this happen and how exactly did this happen? TF: Well, one of the things you notice when you start researching the conservative movement is that on many many of the subjects for which it claims to profess such great concern, it's strictly opportunism. For example the culture wars. They forget about this stuff as soon as they get into office, or they do little things here and there to keep up appearances. States rights would be another. And another would be the idea of a balanced budget. There are other things though that they will stand their ground on until they are soundly defeated. You know, there are other things that are very very close to their heart. Now, when you say that they've consolidated power in D.C., it's a very interesting thing because they've done it in a peculiar way. You know, government spending has grown dramatically since President Bush took office, but the government payroll, the number of people employed by the federal government has not increased. In fact I think it's actually gone down. So where is all the extra money going? Well, It's going to private contractors. That's the fascinating story, and that's really the sort of unknown story in Washington D.C. That's what's really changed there. That's who's consolidated their power in that city. It's not so much government; it's government by contractor. It's the big companies that now run the state. JB: That's right. And along those lines, one of the things you focus on is the conservative attack on public employees and government run programs and this desire to sort of privatize everything in sight. And states are facing this issue all across the country. Despite the high profile failures of big privatization projects by state governments, few of them have established effective accountability standards and almost none effectively measure what percentage of their budgets are going to these private contracts. Now a lot of that's because of the opposition of conservatives, both Democrats and Republicans in some cases, to actually measure the success of some of these privatization (inaudible). It's as if the results don't matter and it's privatizing for the good of privatizing. TF: Yeah. It's the same in Washington. That's the thing that boggles the mind is that privatization really got it's start with something called the Grace Commission back in about 1983, or maybe it was 1984, President Reagan appointed, after having driven the government into crisis with his massive deficits, he appointed this commission to figure out how to solve the deficit problem by privatizing and outsourcing government. And so the idea of doing this was that you would save money and it would be more efficient and government would run better and cost less. And this has, you know, we really don't know whether this has been the case or not because no one has ever done a follow-up study to see if it's true, but as far as all the anecdotal evidence—it's more than anecdotal—every report that you get, this whole thing has been just a gold-plated botch. Contractors with their friends the lobbyists and consultants get these contracts that are designed just to make them rich, not necessarily to make sure they deliver what they're supposed to deliver. I mean, look, every newspaper story coming out of Iraq tells you about some new project that they've managed to bungle. And you see this at the state level too, or even at the local level. JB: Along those lines, too, there's the evolution of this lobbyist class. Today in states, I think there are five lobbyists for every state legislator TF: Is that right? That's amazing. JB: And that number grows every year. It's a billion dollar—a many many billion dollar—industry at the state level. What can states learn do you think from the experience in D.C. in terms of this lobbyist culture? TF: Well, you know there's some good lobbyists and there's some bad lobbyists so when I say what I'm about to say, I don't mean to be going after them all. But the kind of super-lobbyists like Jack Abramoff, what they were doing was, it was more like they were field marshals of the conservative movement, you know, sending the money this way and that; getting newspaper articles written and, you know, flying legislators out to the Marianas Islands, going to Scottland to play golf. By the way, you mention the problem at the state level, and I don't know that much about it, but I would suspect that it's much worse, simply because there the disparity, you know in Washington the disparity is pretty bad, but what I'm talking about is the disparity between what the lobbyist has and what the lobbyist can offer and what the state legislator or the Congressman or the US Senator is, the kind of life that they lead. And what this leads to is a problem called, well, it not only leads to people being more vulnerable to the temptations that lobbyists dangle in front of them, but also the revolving door, where you do favors, where someone in D.C. does favors, for a particular industry and then low and behold goes of and works for that industry for some extravagant salary. And I'm also reminded of, you know we think we live in pretty ugly political times, and I guess we do. In the 19th Century though, there's—the greatest lobbyist stories of them all are from state legislatures in the 19th Century where lobbyists basically controlled them. Like the New York State legislature. I have a story in The Wrecking Crew about how the insurance industry in New York basically set up an office in Albany to control the state legislature. And this all came out in an investigation, and it was the first time that a lobbying story really shocked the country. I think it was in 1910 or something like that—that these people had basically been calling the shots in Albany for a long time. JB: Now let's focus in on a couple of these lobbyists because, as you may or may not know, some of these big name D.C. power broker conservatives are actually very familiar faces is state capitols across the country. I think that Grover Norquist probably visits half of the state capitols, if not more, throughout the year giving lectures to state legislators, and— TF: He's an amazing man. I don't know how he has the energy. JB: Right. Now there's probably no person you focus on in your book more than Grover Norquist. What should people know about this person when he comes to town? TF: Oh, well first of all, Grover is—he's a very intelligent man. Second of all, he is the master strategist of the conservative movement. There is no left or liberal equivalent to Grover Norquist. There is just nobody on my team who has got the game figured out as well as he has. He thinks very strategically. He—there's a slogan they have on the right, and the slogan is this: de-fund the left. De-fund the left. And what that means is find out how liberal organizations are funded and cut it off. Kill the organization. They understand that politics is not just a matter of people getting together and saying, oh yes, we all agree on something, lets' vote on it. It's a matter of movements, of social movements and organizations, and if you kill those organizations, you've won the game. Public opinion is secondary. It's about the movements and the organizations. And so, that's what they set out to do on the right a long time ago: de-fund the left. I mean they put it on bumper stickers and stuff. I've got a little button, a lapel pin that you could wear that says "De-fund the left" on it. And Norquist is sort of the great genius of figuring out how to do this. He's cooked up schemes for—well, I'm trying to remember—one of his battles is against—this one took me by surprise when I found out about it—against defined benefit pension plans. Now, why is that? I didn't understand that, and I started reading about it, and he actually talks about it all the time. It's because he thinks people should have their money in the stock market rather than in you know government bonds or something like that. JB: So I guess the final question I would ask on the book is where do you think any common cause can be made between honest conservatives and progressives? TF: Well, I think on the grounds of good government, you know? And it sounds like such a cliché and such a boring subject, but at the end of the day, people's stomachs are turned by this, you know, by this tidal wave of scandal and misgovernment and it turns out that it makes a really big difference to have people running government who believe in the mission, who believe that it's a legitimate institution and it has a role to play—an important role to play. And that's—I think there are conservatives out there who would agree with that. JB: I do too. Well, I want to thank you Tom for your time. Again, this is Thomas Frank, author of The Wrecking Crew: How Conservatives Rule, which we strongly encourage our legislative network to pick up as many copies as you can, and we look forward to talking to you again Tom. TF: Sure thing. Thanks a lot for having me. JB: Thank you.
MastheadThe Stateside Dispatch is written and edited by: Nathan Newman, Policy Director Please shoot us an email at dispatch@progressivestates.org if you have feedback, tips, suggestions, criticisms, or nominations for any of our sidebar features.
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Election Integrity – How We Lost It and How States are Getting It Back
Monday, August 18, 2008
Election Integrity – How We Lost It and How States are Getting It Back
The 2000 presidential election propelled America's problems with our elections into the national spotlight in an unprecedented way. Americans, night after night, watched news stories exposing the many problems that are routine in elections but that receive little attention: confusing ballots that lead people to mark their vote for the wrong candidate, voter suppression aimed at minorities through voter registration purges, and weary election officials trying to discern voters’ intent on ambiguously marked punch card ballots. In response the federal government passed the Help America Vote Act which funded wholesale changes in how Americans cast their ballots, most visibly by increasing the use of electronic voting machines. Reacting to the problems caused by electronic or so-called “black box” voting, a grassroots movement of citizens and legislative leaders across the country have been steadfast in their pursuit of secure and transparent voting systems. In cooperation with election reform organizations and prominent computer scientists, they have mounted a series of local and national campaigns that are steadily changing the debate on election integrity and changing the way people vote. This Stateside Dispatch will highlight how state leaders have sought to protect ballot integrity, create post-election audits that work to protect voters rights, and have fought the privatization of elections into the hands of potentially partisan and often incompetent corporations.
Protecting Ballot Integrity
The Move Toward Electronic Voting: Watching the difficulties Florida election workers encountered when attempting to tally ballots by hand after the 2000 election, many came to the conclusion that electronic voting machines would establish unambiguous voting records, preventing such problems in the future. The federal government provided billions of dollars to make the switch resulting in a large scale shift in the voting systems that states use. In 2000, only 13% of voters were in precincts that used electronic voting machines. By 2006 that number had risen to 44%. However, even before the first machines were bought, advocates for election integrity and computer scientists were ringing the alarm that these machines were unreliable and unverifiable. Adopting such machines would open up our elections to possible manipulation. At the time their warnings were widely dismissed by election officials and were violently attacked by voting machine vendors who were in a mad scramble to sell as many machines as possible before federal money dried up. States such as Florida moved quickly to replace their voting systems with electronic machines. Yet advocates and experts were undeterred and began a long and ongoing campaign to track the problems that the machines have presented, from lost and switched votes, to outright breakdowns. They also began to do their own technical assessments of machines and their software that uncovered critical flaws in the security of many electronic voting systems. Additionally, these advocates and experts continued to press their case with legislators, demanding that these problems be addressed. Critics Proven Right as Voting Problems Accumulate: The problems encountered and uncovered regarding electronic voting are legion, the following are just a few recent examples:
However, once again it was Florida that in 2006 experienced a complete crisis during a hotly contested election when 18,000 votes went missing in a congressional race that ended up being decided by less than 400 votes. Such a huge loss of votes in a close race for a congressional seat was a wake-up call to those who had been denying that electronic voting posed any significant risks. The incident was also a turning point in the election integrity debate and forced Florida to abandon its newly purchased voting system. The Pendulum Begins to Swing the Other Way as Voters Demand Paper Trail: Due to the many documented problems with electronic voting machines and the organizing work of local advocates, many states began to reconsider the headlong rush to electronic voting. The first step came with the introduction of “voter verified paper audit trails” (VVPATs). VVPATs use a printer attached to an electronic machine to print a physical record of the voter's ballot and allows the voter to accept or reject this record. These paper audit trails would then be the official record of the vote should any disputes arise. Unfortunately, VVPATs fail on at least two levels. First and foremost, research indicates that in practice few people review the paper ballot, which is often small and hard to read. Unless people are actually verifying their votes, the audit trail serves no purpose. Additionally, any malicious attempt to alter the vote totals on a machine could be arranged to also print the votes the voter intended on the paper trail ballot. It is also the case that without a procedure for auditing the results, there is no way to reconcile the vote total recorded by the machine with those reflected in the paper audit trail. Yet, most states with VVPATs do not have adequate audit procedures likely to detect manipulation. States Move to Paper Ballots, the Only Truly Secure Option: The shortcomings of the VVPATs have left lawmakers and election officials with one secure option: paper ballots. There is no way to guarantee security and transparency when votes are stored electronically -- a physical record of each vote is required. Also, since that record must be the same one that the voter used to cast their ballot, audit trails are not an adequate substitute. Fortunately the efforts of the election integrity movement are beginning to bear significant fruit, seen in one instance by the adoption of paper ballots by some states. States that took longer to replace their voting systems after 2000, such as New York, had the benefit of seeing the problems that electronic voting machines cause and switched directly to paper ballots. Several other states such as Florida, Iowa, and Tennessee have decided that their initial investments in electronic machines was a mistake and have switched to paper ballots. Such a move has recently been made easier as the federal government has cleared the way for states to apply unused Help America Vote Act funds to replace machines previously purchased with those funds. This November, fo |