While a newly approved bill will stop a federal government shutdown for at least two weeks, the legislation comes at a price – terminating a long-standing $64 million student financial aid program.
The bill terminates Leveraging Educational Assistance Partnerships (LEAP), an incentive fund that encourages states to offer their own need-based student financial assistance. The LEAP initiative “generated about $1 billion in state student aid with that incentive investment,” said Rich Williams, a higher education advocate at US PIRG.
Past and current presidents – including President Obama – have proposed eliminating the program as a budget savings, noting that, after many years, LEAP has institutionalized state aid programs and served its purpose. But Congress always saw fit to continue the program, until now.
In recent days, higher education advocates had urged Congress to continue its long-standing commitment to the program.
“At a time when the federal government is seeking to do more with less, eliminating the LEAP Program is particularly shortsighted,” said a letter signed by Mary Corbett Broad and David Warren, co-presidents of the Student Aid Alliance. Broad is president of the American Council on Education and Warren is president of the National Association of Independent Colleges and Universities.
The $1 billion in state student aid generated through LEAP provides about $1,700 per needy student, or “the difference between earning a degree and dropping out of college for the over 80 percent of LEAP families earning less than $40,000 a year,” they wrote.
“If our economy is to recover and thrive again, we will need precisely the kind of skilled workers the LEAP Program has produced.”
