Wayne State University in Detroit announced a tuition hike of nearly 18 percent for the Fall 2007 semester. Central Michigan University’s tuition rose by 21 percent. On average, Michigan’s public universities raised tuition by more than 11 percent for the 2007-08 academic year to make up for cuts in funding from the State of Michigan.

According to Jennifer Pae, President of the United States Student Association, quoted in the Detroit News: “The tuition hikes come at a time when federal financial aid has not kept pace with the rising costs of education. At one time Pell Grants, which are scholarships to the neediest students, covered two-thirds of the cost of unmet need for students, but now that’s just one-third.”

When tuition rises by 18 percent from semester to semester, Senator Kennedy’s Federal financial aid increases simply don’t cover increases like that. This is especially true at Wayne State University, which serves many of Michigan’s poorest students.

To make matters worse, the Kennedy plan keeps the annual and lifetime caps on subsidized Federal loan lending. The “set-and-forget” loan caps are a scandal by themselves. Congress imposed caps on Stafford Loans and then forgot about them. This year marks the first time since 1992 that Congress has adjusted the limits on Stafford Loan borrowing. Rip Van Congress slept for 15 years while the cost of tuition soared.

The Federal government is insensitive to the rising costs of higher education. To allow borrowing caps to go unadjusted for 15 years, while tuition spirals out of control is unconscionable, yet that’s exactly what’s happened.

Caps on aid and lending, and a refusal to allow private lenders to participate in the financial aid process will guarantee that the neediest students don’t have enough money to finish their educations. Unmet financial need will prevent hundreds of thousands of our poorest students from completing a college degree, and Senator Kennedy’s plan doesn’t do anything about that.

The phenomenal growth in private lending for college testifies to the fact that students turn to private lenders when they can’t get financial aid from other sources. The nearly 1,000-percent increase in private lending while Congress slept proves that financial aid from other sources simply hasn’t kept pace with the demand. What will the Federal government do when the number of students who enroll in college increases over the next 10 years? When students can no longer get loans from private lenders, and the Federal government can’t supply enough aid to students, enrollments at our nation’s colleges and universities will drop. We’ll return to the early-60’s, when only children of the wealthy could afford higher education.

Tell your Senators that token increases in Stafford Loan caps are too little, too late. Tell them to wake up and address the real problem: the soaring cost of tuition.

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