All eyes in the administrative offices of Roxbury Community College are focused on the Potomac River as Congress works out a budget bill at the behest of President Trump. Not so buried in the House version of the mega bill are provisions that would reduce the number of working adults eligible for federal grants to help them acquire higher education and learn new workplace skills. Working students are the prime market for urban community colleges like RCC.
Funding for Pell Grants, named for a former Democratic senator from Rhode Island, was once so generous that low- and moderate-income students received them. As more people sought to expand their horizons and overall spending on the grants grew, eligibility has shrunk to just low-income students. The percentage receiving them has become an often-cited marker of socioeconomic diversity at any college.
To partially offset lost revenue from extending Trump’s tax cuts, which mostly benefit the richest, the House has proposed requiring students to take 15 hours, usually five courses, to be eligible for a Pell Grant.
For full-time students whose only job is going to college, 15 hours per semester is standard for graduating on time. But that courseload is burdensome for a student who works a full-time job and takes community college classes at night. Imposing the heavier burden is a formula for poor academic performance, elevated personal stress or, as House Republicans wish, fewer students receiving Pell Grants.
The budget-cutters behind the anti-education provision argue that the growing expenditure on Pell Grants is unsustainable. They’ve got it exactly backwards. The country’s economy is unsustainable without more workers becoming better educated and skilled. The grants are not an expenditure, but an investment, an investment in the economic future.
When it hit the floor for debate, the Senate version did not include the higher minimum courseload requirement. The Senate’s bill bans receiving a Pell Grant on top of a full scholarship from another source, an uncommon circumstance without much budgetary savings. For parliamentary reasons, dropped was another provision to allow Pell Grants to be used to take short, skills-oriented courses, a change that would have benefitted community colleges but critics feared would be exploited by for-profit career colleges.
RCC President Jonathan Jefferson and his top administrators are aware RCC sits in the crosshairs of this congressional debate. In 2023, 61% of RCC students received Pell Grants, and 77% were Black or Hispanic.
Roxbury Community College is doing what the community leaders who pushed for its creation more than a half century ago envisioned, educating financially struggling residents in the city’s communities of color.
A statement from RCC submitted to the Banner noted the budget bill “is evolving on a minute-by-minute basis, with amendments and revisions forthcoming as the bill moves from the Senate to the House of Representatives. RCC’s leaders are receiving updated information from colleagues, supporters, and associations regularly and will continue advocating for financial support for RCC’s students. Our efforts will continue regardless of the final bill’s content, and we look forward to regular engagement with elected officials to further RCC’s mission.”
The legislation will take final shape when designated members of the House and Senate meet to work out a compromise version, the standard procedure, or the House caves in and passes the Senate version.
If the budget does reach final passage, which Trump is determined to see happen because the mega bill contains his legislative priorities, the Senate version would be better for RCC and the state’s other community colleges. That is not to say there is anything much to recommend this bill which transfers wealth from the less prosperous to the most and crimps opportunity for those seeking to ride up the economic elevator and live a healthy life.
Ronald Mitchell
Editor and Publisher, Bay State Banner
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