Why Some Politicians Hate Education

The two houses of Congress have come up with different versions of bills involving Pell grants. The Democratic-controlled Senate version does not change the eligibility requirements for the grant. The Republican-controlled House would reduce the Auto-Zero-EFC threshold from $31,000 to $15,000. Students who have a zero EFC, get the full amount of the grant. Students whose income brings their EFC above the threshold receive a lower amount. The House’s version will significantly reduce the number of low-income students who will be eligible for a full grant. In fact, low-income students could see a reduction of as much as $2,700 in their Pell grant funding. In order to allow students from low-income families to work and still be eligible for aid, Congress included the income-protection allowance. What this does is exclude a certain amount of student income from the computation of how much aid is available to that student. The House’s proposed bill significantly reduces this allowance for the 2012 - 2013 school year and subsequent years as well. It reduces the protected income level the the 2008 - 2009 levels. As the law currently stands, dependent undergraduate students can protect up to $6000.00 of income. The proposed House bill will lower this to $3,200.00. Similar reductions are proposed for single and married students who are not dependent students. The Senate version does not change the need analysis formula.
The House legislation will restore all of the untaxed income and benefit categories that were removed by the College Cost Reduction and Access Act of 2007. This means that currently excluded forms of income, such as the additional child tax credit, untaxed social security benefits,  and welfare benefits will now be considered as applicable income. (Any guess on how many upper-income families will be affected by this?) This version also wants to exclude foreign income from the formula. (I wonder how many low-income families will be affected by this exclusion.)
The Senate bill will make no changes to the current federal need analysis formula.
Other notable differences between the House and Senate versions of the bills include:
The House version eliminates funding for minority-serving institutions, cuts funding for Hispanic-Serving Institutions (HSI) by 83% and cuts funding for Historically-Black Colleges and Universities (HBCU) by 36%. The Senate legislation does not cut funding for these programs.
Are you starting to see a pattern here? It seems to me as if the House version of the bill is intentionally cutting down the possibility of low-income students being able to afford a college education. Why would they do this?
I can think of a couple of possible reasons. It appears to be an intentional attempt to keep poor people educated just enough to be able to do low-level work while keeping the higher level jobs (and, presumably, higher paying jobs) available only to those students who come from more affluent families thus maintaining an artificial social class structure.
Another possibility is less educated people are less likely to question the decisions of people they consider to be smarter. It’s easier to tell someone who can function on the literate level of sixth- or seventh-grade, “You can’t possibly understand this so just trust me” than to debate with someone who is better educated who has done some research on the pros and cons of a position or decision.
A third possibility (I know, three is more than a couple) is better educated people tend to develop the nasty habit of thinking for themselves. Many politicians do not want a populace that thinks for itself. Who knows what crazy ideas thinking might lead to. Just look at what independent thinking led to in 1775. People who think for themselves are less likely to be persuaded by catch phrases and clever meaningless expressions. They are less likely to be caught up in mob mentality. They might even be tempted to ask, “How do you know that?”


I learn more from those who disagree with me than from those who don’t but only if they are willing to explain why they disagree.