From today’s CHE: “Colleges and Students Cheer Congress’s Economic-Stimulus Deal.” Sure, maybe “cheer” in general terms, but it seems like a good news/bad news to me. The good news:
The compromise, $789-billion economic-stimulus bill that Congress is planning to try to deliver to President Obama by Monday contains large sums of money for student aid and biomedical research, and would give states billions of dollars to ease budget cuts to colleges and schools.
and…
The plan would raise the maximum Pell Grant to $5,550 by 2010, an increase that legislators said would help seven million students. (The current maximum award is $4,731.) The aid program would receive $15.6-billion from the bill, an amount that would also erase a shortfall in the program’s budget.
A tax credit for tuition would be increased to $2,500, from its current level of $1,800, for the next two years and would make textbook costs an education expense that could be counted toward the benefit. People who do not earn enough money to owe taxes also would be eligible to take $1,000 of the credit.
The bill would also bolster the Federal Work-Study program, providing $200-million. And it would allow families to buy computers with money they have saved for college expenses in so-called 529 plans, whose earnings are exempt from taxes.
In other words, a lot of financial aid and credits to students, which is obviously a good thing.
The bad news? Well, given that Granholm announced some pretty significant cuts to higher education in Michigan the same day that this package passed congress, I don’t think it’s clear that money to help states out of debt is going to trickle down to EMU’s budget for 2009/10.
And the compromise bill does not include “the separate pot of money for campus construction that the House had passed.” So no money from the feds for Mark-Jefferson, Pray-Harrold, or any other project on campus.
