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“One thing that strikes you when you look at the summary the Biden folks put out is just the number of ways higher education serves in the recovery,” said Jon Fansmith, director of government relations at the American Council on Education. “It’s a pretty impressive commitment to higher education but I think it also demonstrates how inextricably linked colleges and universities are to the health of our economy.”
Fansmith said that he would have liked to see doubling of the value of federal Pell Grants in the proposal, as well as a bit more investment in four-year colleges and universities.
Congress s coronavirus package gives less aid to wealthy universities.
After President Trump and Education Secretary Betsy DeVos criticized giving private colleges and universities with large endowments help in the CARES Act, wealthier institutions like Harvard, Yale and Stanford Universities had their share of the money in the latest coronavirus relief package cut in half.
Under a little-noticed provision in the bill passed two weeks ago, private higher education institutions that were required by a 2017 law to pay a 1.4 percent excise tax on net investment income not only had their aid slashed, they were barred from using the money they will get to defray their financial losses from the pandemic. The relief bill allows them only to use the aid on emergency grants to students or to pay for personal protective equipment and other health and safety costs associated with the coronavirus. Higher education received about $23 billion in the legislation.