Democratic candidates urge more student aid

With college tuition rising rapidly nationwide, several Democratic presidential candidates are turning it into a campaign issue, decrying President Bush for allowing federal financial aid to stagnate as they propose massive increases in grants and tax credits to help pay for college.

Much of this new student assistance would be provided regardless of a family's income, as Democrats continue a trend begun a decade ago of moving away from the party's traditional preference for basing federal college aid on financial need. Several of the proposals are already coming under fire from leading analysts of student financial aid, who argue that the ideas, while well intentioned, are either too expensive or slanted against working-class families who need tuition assistance the most.

Senator John Edwards of North Carolina has offered the most creative approach, which would have the government pay for the first year at a public college for any student who works or volunteers part time. His proposal is in sharp contrast to a trend, among fellow Southern Democrats in particular, of aiding students who have a B average or better, but he hopes to inspire a new "work ethic" while also providing financial aid.

Senator John F. Kerry of Massachusetts, meanwhile, would nearly triple the current tuition tax credit, raising it to $4,000. Representative Richard A. Gephardt of Missouri would create a huge tax deduction of up to $10,000 in tuition and fees. Senator Joseph I. Lieberman of Connecticut has pushed a more traditional course of nearly doubling the average Pell Grant, a need-based program.

"Paying for college is rising as a concern on Americans' priority list at the same time that federal financial aid programs are crying out for more attention from the government," said Patrick Callan, president of the National Center for Public Policy and Higher Education. "Most of the Democratic candidates are competing hard to figure out a solution."

Congressional Republicans have also identified rising tuition -- up 14 percent last year at four-year public colleges -- as a hot political issue. Taking a more market-oriented view, one Republican lawmaker has proposed legislation that would penalize colleges and states that increase tuition much faster than inflation, and others have argued that providing more federal aid has the effect of pushing up college costs. Despite promises President Bush made during the 2000 campaign, federal student aid has not increased markedly during his administration.

Most of the nine Democratic candidates favor funding increases for federal grants and loans. Among the major proposals, Edwards's sizable tuition entitlement is, on the surface, the most straightforward and innovative of the new ideas, analysts say, while Lieberman's Pell Grant plan -- to raise it from about $4,000 to $7,600 -- would do the most to help close the gap in college attendance between poor and wealthy students.

Howard Dean, the former Vermont governor, is expected to announce a set of higher education proposals soon, a spokeswoman said. Dean was seen as a supporter of Vermont public colleges and financial aid while governor, but not as a champion, proposing funding increases that were not as sizable as some legislators or campus trustees sought, higher education observers say.

For Edwards, in particular, making the issue political is also personal: He has told countless Iowans and New Hampshirites, who vote first in the nominating process in January, about how he unloaded UPS trucks on hot nights in Raleigh to pay for his North Carolina State University tuition -- and began seeing the virtue in heavy lifting.

"There's nothing like hard work to focus your mind on studying the next morning," Edwards regularly tells audiences on the campaign trail. "And you know what? The hard work, it won't hurt 'em a bit."

During stops at two New Hampshire high schools Friday, Kerry heard several students describe their anxieties about paying for college, especially at private campuses that cost close to $40,000 a year. While his plans would make a small dent in those kind of tuition bills, he said a Kerry administration would also pay for four years of in-state, public college tuition and fees for students who spent two years after high school "serving your communities as a teacher's aide, a mentor to a kid, working with seniors."

"That's how we'll inspire public service again," Kerry told about 75 students at Londonderry High School.

Several financial aid analysts praise the Edwards plan for benefiting all students, but criticize it for ending after the freshman year. Studies have long shown that while freshmen are a high-risk group for dropping out, many of them also drop out as they face their sophomore year and worry about the next round of tuition bills.

"We lose so many students between the first and second year that I'd be worried they'd go free as freshmen and then -- boom! -- they're hit with this big tuition bill as sophomores," said Don Heller, a financial aid analyst and an associate professor of education at Pennsylvania State University.

Callan said he would like to see more money go to need-based aid like Pell Grants. In the 1990s, he said, at least a dozen states -- many of them in the South and led by Democrats -- funded new "merit scholarships" that tended to cover tuition for students with a B average or better; in turn, states spent less money on need-based programs.

"We're moving toward the biggest high school class ever in 2009 or so, and a lot of those kids will be poor and will want to go to college," Callan said. "Things like tax credits help the middle class, and one year of free college tuition won't get them a degree."

Lieberman's push for a larger Pell Grant is well liked by many in academia but it is difficult to envision a Republican-controlled Congress embracing the idea, since the Pell has not grown substantially in recent years despite Bush's call for a larger Pell in the last election cycle.

Kerry and Gephardt's plans to use the federal tax code to help students pay for higher education also have flaws, analysts say -- chiefly, the tax refund wouldn't reach people until at least one or two semesters after the tuition was due.

Kerry, when asked about recent national tuition increases, quickly interjected to tout his plan and show a little sensitivity to those Democratic voters in the first caucus state. "Tuition's up 18 percent in Iowa, 20 percent the year before, and now they're asking for another 8 percent next year," Kerry said.

"Tuition hikes are extraordinary," he added. "Colleges need to be looking at their own overhead, but we should be thinking about a smart way we can help."

Patrick Healy can be reached at phealy@globe.com.