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Department education loan | More education cuts in sight
December 2, 2010 | 3 Comments
PERKINS LOANS
As the state faces a budget crunch, universities are having to make tough decisions on department cuts.
Next year, the College of Arts and Sciences will have its budget cut by 5 percent. Understandable given the situation, right?
It may sound reasonable until you realize that 5 percent means $1.7 million, and that since 2009, the college has already experienced a budget cut of 7 percent. Next year, the college will have lost $4.2 million since the 2008-09 fiscal year.
Discussions about how to make up for the losses are daunting as well. There will be fewer adjunct faculty, temporary faculty and graduate teaching assistants, and permanent faculty members will need to teach a full load. And $1.7 million pays for 350 course sections a year.
Part of the plan is to eliminate courses that have low student demand. This is understandable, but caution should be exercised in this area. Just because a course has low enrollment doesn’t mean it’s worth cutting. Sometimes it means the course is exceptionally hard and there are only a few students up to the task of taking it.
These are all short-term goals, but the long-term goals need scrutiny as well.
Plans in the long term include shifting part of class instruction to technology. Paul Bell, dean of the college, has said this will allow instructors to teach a large number of students “without sacrificing educational quality.”
There is good reason to believe this may be the case. In August 2009, a U.S. Department of Education study concluded that students who took classes in which some or all of the course was conducted online scored better in tested performance. This is because online education is easier to tailor to specific students than classrooms, and students learn by actually having to engage in the lessons rather than sit and listen.
However, quality will suffer if state funds continue shrinking and don’t meet department budgets. Simply put, it can’t continue as it has for almost the last three years.
Some of the cuts and changes may need to be made, but overall, the shrinking can’t continue. At what point will the burden be shifted completely on students in the form of further increased tuition and fees?
This combined with President Barack Obama’s deficit-reduction commission’s final report, released Wednesday, to eliminate the in-school interest subsidy on student loans suggests a growing trend of our nation’s economic troubles slowly being shifted onto the most vulnerable people.
While taxpayers would save $43 billion over the next decade if this policy is enacted, students could face post-graduation debts already more crushing than they already do.
Currently, the federal government pays the accrued interest that on Perkins Loans for needy students and subsidized Stafford loans during college and for six months after graduation, as well as during times of economic hardship.
The Chronicle details how a student borrowing $5,000 in loans annually for four years at the current 3.4 percent interest rate owes $20,000 and pays $197 a month. Take away the subsidies and they owe $21,800 and monthly payments of $214. The financial burden could grow even more, as interest rates are scheduled to double in 2012, meaning the student would owe $23,600.
Right now, students in the U.K. are rioting in the streets because their government is planning to triple the cost of higher education.
They are understandably angry, as the Liberal Democrats — who promised during the election season not to raise tuition and fees in the face of tough fiscal decisions plaguing Britain — are now known to have been scheming for the tuition increase all along.
Obama’s deficit commission seems to be creating a similar situation. Obama was elected on the promise of getting our economy back in shape without shifting the burden onto those who didn’t deserve it. However, the deficit-reduction commission has proposed a plan to do just that.
Source: oudaily.com
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