Samuel Zajde
Dr. Weaver
English Composition 1020
27 April 2022
The Tool of Education
Starting at very young ages, children in America eagerly dream of going to college. Beyond being a dinosaur or a fire-fighter, the thought of going to a top school like MIT or Harvard to be the smartest person in the world is not an unlikely fantasy for first graders, and while its specifics may change, the soul of the dream often lives on until the very end of a student’s career. Universities are seen as places that can mold us into the people that we want to be and a gate way to grasping the things we want most in our careers. Long has this sentiment been at large, but its scope has had far greater limitations in the past. Higher education was not always considered as something for the many, and much effort had to be pressed on for it to be developed beyond its exclusivity. There were immense reasons for the United States government to do this not among them any substantial political mandate pleading for it specifically. It was instead seen as a tool: not particularly to harness ambition, but to combat rampant poverty and enhance racial integration. The Higher Education Act was one of the most consequential pieces of legislation concerning the relationship between universities and the federal government bringing higher-ed into mainstream American society.
The Higher Education Act of 1965 was enacted by President Lyndon B. Johnson in continuance of his policy campaign known as the ‘War on Poverty.’ The founding goals of this legislation was to significantly escalate the federal government’s role in providing higher education to Americans, and the desire to do this in the context of the ‘War on Poverty’ is because of education’s innate ability to increase economic opportunity. As stated according to David Brown from the University of Kentucky in his article “We have opened the road”: A Brief History of the Higher Education Act, “the Higher Education Act was envisioned as a vehicle for increasing opportunities for traditionally underserved groups, such as racial and ethnic minorities and the economically disadvantaged, to gain access to higher education.” This would not be the first time that higher-ed would be used as an instrument to fight poverty in a grand scope: the NYA, or the National Youth Administration, was a New Deal Program that existed from 1935 to 1943 under President Roosevelt with the goal of offering work and education to those between 16 and 25. In the midst of the Great Depression, the goal of the administration was akin to the HEA (Higher Education Act) which was to offer gateway for unemployed youth to not only be given jobs but training and education required to do them.
The reforms brought by the Higher Education Act proved to be of great consequence to American society, with many of its programs continuing to exist and be amended to answer a still-developing political vision of how higher education should be perceived and valued. Before it’s signing, President Johnson said “So to thousands of young people education will be available. And it is a truism that education is no longer a luxury” (Johnson 1965). The intention was to transform universities from being a barriered club of elites into an accessible asset any American from any background could choose to attend. Economic aid in the form of grants was offered to both institutions and individuals who did not have the ability to attend college with their own means, as can be seen from this excerpt of the law:
“It is the purpose of this part to provide, through institutions of higher education, educational opportunity grants to assist in making available the benefits of higher education to qualified high school graduates of exceptional financial need, who for lack of financial means of their own or of their families would be unable to obtain such benefits without such aid.” (P.L. 89-329)
To summarize the operational funding of the HEA, funds were endowed by the federal government to each state, which were delegated to form specific agencies that distributed grants to qualified higher education institutions. The grants were then used to develop or maintain universities, and Title IV of the law established provisions for grants to be awarded to individual high school graduates in need of them.
Fundamentally, the principle of providing economic assistance to students has persevered since the law’s creation, but its implementation has been modified many times often for better or worse. In the late-1970s and 80s, a policy shift had taken place that began to favor loans to provide financial aid instead of grants. As again stated according to David Brown, “starting with the Middle Income Student Assistance Act (MISAA) in 1978, federal policy began to favor loans rather than grants.” (Brown 2016). After the HEA was established, these policy changes pulled higher education away from socialization and towards privatization. Since then, the price of attending college has increased substantially, far outpacing mean household income. The decrease in government subsidies lead to institutions increasing their tuition, and while grant funding also decreased, students began to rely more and more on loans to cover the costs. It has become clear that the original mission outlined by the HEA to use higher education as a weapon against poverty has been drastically altered. Whether or not it is helping people economically, attending college is presently certainly not seen that way, or is at least very rarely spoken about as a serious economic help for the poor and underserved groups.
The United States has come a long way since 1965, and higher education has certainly changed both being improved and impaired into the vast and powerful institutions they have become today. However different times may be, the founding mission that the Higher Education Act set out to accomplish still today has value. It would be costly unfortunate for such a commanding force such as education to be overlooked for its ability to shape macroeconomic and social struggles in our communities.
Works Cited:
Johnson, L.B. (1965): “Remarks at Southwest Texas State College Upon Signing the
Higher Education Act of 1965,” November 8, 1965. Online by Gerhard Peters and John T. Woolley, The American Presidency Project. Retrieved from http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/? pid=27356
Higher Education Act of 1965 Section-by-Section Analysis. Washington,
D.C.:U.S. Department of Health, Education, and Welfare, Office of Education, 1965.
Brown, D. (2016). “We have opened the road”: A Brief History of the Higher Education
Act. Higher Education in Review, 12, 1–7.
Mckee, Guian A. Lyndon B. Johnson and the War on Poverty, https://prde.upress.virginia.edu/content/WarOnPoverty2.