The Sec. of Ed. proposes a $2b (two billion) budget. Although the secretary's proposed budget suggest that "...[t]he higher education portion of the 2012 request includes a $67 million increase for TRIO programs for a total of $920 million; $323 million for GEAR UP; $651 million in combined discretionary and mandatory funding for Aid for Institutional Development programs at institutions that enroll large numbers of minority and disadvantaged students and $249 million in aid for Hispanic-Serving Institutions programs", questions remain salient regarding the MSI (Minority Serving Institutions) that will receive this funding. Will institutions receive an equal share? What will the time-line be regarding the disbursement of funding? Again, this rhetoric of the proposal sounds great, however(if passed) how will the government follow-up on such an initiative? Please see link for article below:
http://diverseeducation.com/article/14841/ed-secretary-duncan-defends-2b-increase-in-2012-education-budget.html
My first reaction to this was that $920 million was an incredibly large amount of money to be spending on TRIO programs so I decided to do a little bit of investigating into TRIO. I found the below on their website.
ReplyDeleteThe total funding allocation for the TRIO Programs in FY 2010 was $904,285,427. The total number of projects was 2,962, and the total number of participants served was 840,863 (does not include TRIO Training participants).
I did the calculation and it works out to be around $1,075 per person served, which isn’t bad considering especially considering that a program like upward bound funds a number of student employees over the summer.
While I strongly worry about the rising U.S. debt, I think that perhaps these investments in TRIO are a good investment from a purely economic perspective (besides other larger issues of equity) in that they should hopefully reduce future expenditures in more expensive line items such as welfare and health care, or at least according to research on the benefits of higher education. (See one of my favorite reports Investing in America’s Future: Why Student Aid Pays Off for Society and Individuals- http://www.ihep.org/assets/files/publications/g-l/InvestingAmerica.pdf)