Dan Vock

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Category: Higher education

Immigrant students win DREAM Act in Maryland but face opposition elsewhere

Maryland became the 11th state to offer in-state tuition to undocumented students, but Georgia regents barred unauthorized immigrants from attending the state’s top universities. The moves come in the wake of a major defeat for activists supporting unauthorized immigrants. From Stateline:

The DREAM Act failed in the U.S. Senate by a handful of votes last December, and the chances of it coming up again dropped dramatically with the Republican takeover of the U.S. House this January. Some of the energy previously directed toward the federal government has now been channeled to the state level.

The fight over the federal DREAM Act encouraged dozens of undocumented students to reveal their status publicly. Many now are becoming vocal on the state level.

That was one of the biggest changes this year in Maryland, says Helen Melton, who pushed for in-state tuition rights on behalf of the immigrant advocacy group Casa de Maryland. “The students,” she says, “came out to support the bill just about every time something important was happening.” Many of those who spoke up were honor students in high school. When they told elected officials about their struggles to afford a college education, it was “really powerful,” Melton says.

But, of course, the fight over higher education is ancillary to the much larger issue.

Whatever most states do, there is no escaping the fact that without changes in federal law, college degrees will not help unauthorized immigrants find jobs in the United States. They will be unable to obtain legal work permits. Many continue to hold out hope that, despite the current absence of federal momentum, Congress will eventually change that policy.

On campus, a long wait for state checks

The second installment of my three-part Stateline series “Behind on Bills” addresses how students and universities coped with lengthy waits for state money in Illinois and California.

Lately, the biggest obstacle before La Madrid’s education has been the budget standoff in Sacramento. For 100 days this summer and fall, California operated without a budget. The political stalemate over how to close a massive deficit prevented the state from paying $8.3 billion in bills — a backlog that included La Madrid’s state financial aid check. The state’s community colleges estimate that 41,000 students, or 60 percent of Cal Grant recipients at community colleges, have been left hanging in the same situation this fall.

Without a Cal Grant, La Madrid has been stressing about money as much as his studies. He’s been borrowing groceries from his roommate and has contemplated taking a second job. He has several friends facing similar hardships. “We rely on the state for the grants,” La Madrid says. “I just cross my fingers and hope it comes soon. It’s pretty much my life.”

The delays were not the result of a policy choice to cut back on financial aid or to minimize the role of community colleges. Indeed, Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, who attended Santa Monica City College in the 1960s, told a national group of community college administrators last year that the schools are “institutions of hope” and could lead the country out of the recession. But dysfunctional politics around California’s budget are making it difficult for the colleges to fulfill that promise.

Of course, Illinois also put colleges in a tough spot.

Cash flow is so crimped that as of the end of September, the state of Illinois owed its community colleges and universities close to $600 million. That’s more than one-third of the state’s entire budget for higher ed.

On the campus of the University of Illinois at Chicago, it’s easy to see the effects. The university’s flagship building, 28-story University Hall, is literally falling apart. The concrete skin of the building is flaking off, exposing the rusted steel of rebar beneath. Canopies surround the building to keep pieces of falling concrete from hitting students and staffers on their way in. University Hall is one of three buildings on campus surrounded by protective platforms.

UIC officials aren’t planning on fixing up the buildings anytime soon. Checks from Springfield trickle in as many as six months late — the pattern is too unreliable for doing long-term planning. So administrators are trying to keep cash on hand to simply make payroll and keep the university functioning. Other universities have struggled even to do that. This spring, Southern Illinois University, then owed $140 million by the state, started planning for the possibility of shutting down its four campuses in the middle of the school year.

Illinois lawmakers had no money to alleviate the problem, so they gave colleges the authority to borrow on their own to ease the pressure.

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