While the 2012 elections were generally favorable to higher education, significant work remains to make college more affordable, particularly for students of lesser economic means.
That is one of several insights gleaned from a new policy paper that seeks to assess what impact the re-election of President Barack Obama — and the election of other candidates nationwide — will have on higher education from a fiscal and policy standpoint at both the state and federal level.
“In some instances, the ramifications will be overt, such as ballot measures that will earmark state revenues for higher education, grant more affordable tuition rates for undocumented students and provide state funding for campus facility construction,” states the paper, titled Higher Education and the 2012 Elections and issued by the American Association of State Colleges and Universities, or AASCU.
“In other cases,” the brief states, “the election’s consequences on public colleges and universities will be less clear at the outset, with new and returning officeholders in federal and state government espousing policy and spending priorities that will shape the American higher education landscape over the next several years.”
The brief includes a chart that shows both the pre- and post-election “balance of power” by the numbers along partisan lines.
It also tackles a variety of issues that emanate from the 2012 elections and the current political climate, from the historically high legislature turnover that takes “institutional memory” to a new low, to a projected $5 billion funding shortfall for the Pell Grant program in fiscal 2014 that is only expected to worsen in the years that follow.
“Given the atmosphere of fiscal constraint that currently prevails in Washington, it will be difficult to secure funds to overcome the shortfall,” the brief states. “Discussions of program reform have begun, and calls for implementing cost-reducing policy reforms in the program will grow louder in the months ahead.”
