“The TANF program was not intended to be a college scholarship program for postsecondary education.” So reads the preamble to the interim final regulations issued by the Department of Health and Human Services on June 29. Under the regulations, baccalaureate education would no longer be considered work under the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families Program (TANF).
The new rules, published on late last month and open to comment through August 28, were issued to implement the Deficit Reduction Act, PL 109-171, the same legislation that cut $11.9 billion from the student loan programs over five years.
Most simply stated, under the new rules, 50 percent of all single-parent welfare families and 90 percent of all two-parent families have to work in the year starting October 1. By no longer permitting baccalaureate or advanced enrollment to count as work under the new rules, most states will face greater difficulty in meeting this standard. Those states that fail to meet the standard are penalized financially—they receive a smaller allocation of funding from the $16.5 billion TANF program.
And with less TANF funds, state support for educational programs for unemployed or severely underemployed people is undermined. Some speculate that the changes could result in thousands of TANF recipients dropping out of college.
Why would Congress and the Administration want to discourage college enrollment among people who arguably would most benefit by it? The answer is not easy to understand. The new rules are intended to reduce the cost of the TANF program by forcing more recipients into “real jobs.” To accomplish this, the rules adopt what Senator Olympia Snowe called a “one-size-fits-all approach that unfairly discriminates against innovative state programs.” Among the state programs that would be undermined are those that are built on the assumption that college education better prepares individuals to succeed in the job market of the 21st century.
Amazingly, the revised rules continue to permit vocational educational training directly related to qualifying an individual for a specific job opportunity, but explicitly exclude baccalaureate and advanced educational programs, which are described as “long term educational activities” that are supported by the Higher Education Act. This viewpoint appears to get two things backwards. First, college education, as compared to vocational education most likely would result in people qualifying for better, more permanent jobs and, it is to be hoped, they would leave the welfare rolls forever. Second, the assumption that the Higher Education Act fully meets the needs of low-income people seeking college education is simply wrong.
