Late last week, the University of Pennsylvania (UPenn) joined its rich, elite peers, Harvard, Princeton, Stanford and Yale universities, in refusing its share of funds from the coronavirus stimulus package.
It was a laudable move on the part of these universities, many observers said, but one advocacy group, Young Invincibles (YI), which advocates for youth issues, said on Monday the universities shouldn’t refuse the funds.
No, YI didn’t say these big-endowment universities should just take and use the money for themselves. It said these elite universities should make sure they are fully serving the needs of their own low-income students. And if they determine they can and are, these colleges, with endowments in the billions of dollars, should apply for the money and get it — and then give it away to colleges more in need.
“Harvard could have sent their money to Bunker Hill Community College. Stanford could have sent theirs to Bay Area community colleges,” wrote Dr. Kyle Southern, YI’s policy and advocacy director, Higher Education and Workforce, in a letter on the organization’s blog on Monday. “How could anyone who has followed education for the last three years entrust dollars Congress explicitly directed be put in the hands of students as fast as possible instead back in the hands of this Department of Education?”
Southern told Diverse on Monday that he’s most concerned about higher education institutions like community colleges, historically Black colleges and universities (HBCUs), minority-serving institutions (MSIs) and all the institutions that serve disproportionately high numbers of low-income students, students of color and first-generation students.
“Of those institutions that I mentioned particularly [in my letter] … Harvard has 11% Pell Grant recipient students and Bunker Hill has 48%,” he said about the Boston-based multi-campus community college.
For YI and for Southern, who was an undergraduate beneficiary of the Pell Grant himself, this pandemic is a time in which all leaders of higher education should work together for the benefit of marginalized students. Rich universities, he said, shouldn’t be cowed into refusing their share of the coronavirus stimulus money. They should take it and use it for students in need across higher education institutions. He was referring to President Donald Trump’s and Secretary of Education Betsy Devos’ criticism of rich institutions like Harvard accepting stimulus funds.
