Category: Covid-19 Justice

By Greg Moses

CounterPunch

In a stormy week of denunciation and discrimination, the Trump administration sent a blaring announcement to America’s college students: you shall not be in this together.

Everything now depends upon college students resolving to believe different.

Wedges of denunciation and discrimination were hammered in this week, beginning Monday morning with a Huffington Post headline that read, “Harvard, America’s Richest University, Grabs Nearly $9 Million In Taxpayer CARES Aid.”

The word “grabs” gave an impression that Harvard made some special effort to secure its share of a $12.5 billion relief package for higher education that was included in the CARES Act, signed into law Mar. 27.

In fact, as Harvard attempted to explain for about a day, the money was allocated by a US Department of Education (ED) formula that proportioned the aid across 5,000 campuses according to a broad estimation of student financial need–-a formula that resulted in 350 campuses assigned more money than Harvard.

While the HuffPo column correctly reported that at least half of the COVID-19 relief money to Harvard “must be reserved for emergency financial grants to students”–-as mandated by the CARES Act for every campus–the column also speculated that “at least some of that money, which could be used to cover tuition payments and course materials, would also end up in Harvard coffers.”

The First Wedge: Resentment

Harvard attempted to push back the tide of resentment, beginning with a Monday evening statement to the Boston Herald that, “Harvard is actually allocating 100 percent of the funds to financial assistance for students to meet their urgent needs in the face of this pandemic.”

But the drumbeat of denunciation was joined by Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin, Education Secretary Betsy DeVos, and President Donald J. Trump (at a pandemic briefing, no less), forcing Harvard, Princeton, Stanford, and Yale to announce that their students would not be taking the money that Congress wanted them to have.

While the resentment of the HuffyPo and the bullies of Article Two might be defended as an attempt to keep the rich from getting richer during the pandemic, they chose a cruel line to draw against emergency aid to students. As if we don’t see what is happening with banks, bond holders, hedge funds, and business owners?

A financial-aid fact sheet at Harvard’s web site states that 55 percent of undergraduates receive needs-based Harvard scholarships. 20 percent of Harvard parents have total incomes less than $65,000, two-thirds of students work during the academic year, and 17 percent of about 6,600 undergraduate students are Pell Grant recipients who undergo rigorous means testing, federally regulated under provisions commonly known as Title IV.

By yanking back federal emergency relief from such students, the White House and its allies spiked an ugly but effective wedge against possibilities of cross-campus student solidarity. The Trump instinct for divide and conquer was achieved, once again, with astonishing speed and finality.

Another Week in Trump’s America

For a week that began with a question that no headline was asking–where the heck is that student relief money already?–the Monday morning spin achieved remarkable suspicion and resentment, practically justifying the administration’s slow rolling of emergency student relief in the first place.

Although ED promised “immediate” release of funds on Apr. 9–-funds that were authorized on Mar. 27–-the fact is that experts knowledgeable in financial aid were unable to verify on Apr. 16 that any of the funds had actually hit any campus.

We have one unconfirmed report from an expert source that money was beginning to hit campuses this week. By Thursday morning, it was estimated by our knowledgeable observer that about $750 million of the first $6.25 billion allotment had been distributed to “a few hundred” of the 51-hundred campuses, which would amount to a 12 percent distribution of emergency funds, four weeks after the CARES Act was passed.

Setting aside pre-emptive Sunday interventions of the Federal Reserve Bank on Mar. 15, compare the speed of distribution of funds for federal student emergency relief to the direct deposit of federal treasury checks or the support of federal small business loans. Treasury checks were hitting bank accounts by Apr. 13. The SBA ran out of $350 billion by Apr. 16, before ED even began to push a paltry $6 billion in “student emergency relief” out its door. And this is not half the scandal.

A Student in Need is a Student Indeed

This week’s voices of resentment have snapped the neck of Congressional intent, which was to meet needs of students, no matter where they go to school, or where they come from. The emergency aid was intended to find any student who was suddenly ejected from a dorm room or who was scrambling to make up wages disappearing from their own jobs or the jobs of families back home.

The timing of the attack was a maneuver of expert warfare, as new rounds of COVID-19 relief funding are being negotiated on Capitol Hill. The attack is a political chiller against relief efforts for American college campuses, exactly when those efforts demand unified pressure to force a paradigm shift in student support.

Wedge Number Two: Discrimination

Are we all in this together? As ED was beginning to trickle out the funds this week, the financial aid community was stunned by the release of a 13-question FAQ which, in effect, said to foreign students and undocumented Americans: no we are not with you, either.

Before Tuesday’s FAQ, financial aid experts believed that Congress intended to cast a wide net, at least with the “student” half of COVID-19 emergency relief. They were hoping to disburse the funds with short-form requests that would not be closely tied to more detailed Title IV federal financial aid requirements, although the law allows institutions to use their Title IV systems to disperse the funds.

In a FAQ that caught many by surprise, ED said that students eligible for this round of emergency relief must be eligible for Title IV–or “could be” eligible. What this means to scrupulous financial aid professionals is that if a student is not already on federal Title IV rolls, they will need to submit a time-consuming FAFSA application.

This is a more interesting twist of fate considering that a FAQ on the ED web site made it really difficult for Harvard money to go anywhere else except to Title IV students, even as the Secretary of Education—that same day!–was calling on Harvard to not take the money. Talk about your political squeeze play.

The surprise Title IV “clarification” has the effect of excluding foreign students and undocumented Americans. In fact, financial aid professionals were quick to allege that the Title IV clarification was aimed precisely at foreign students and undocumented students, especially the undocumented students who have achieved tentative legal status under the federal DACA program initiated the summer before the 2012 election.

Daggers for DACA

“I find this merciless and repugnant war on DACA students by this administration to be repulsive and over the top,” is how one financial aid expert put it, who went on to say:

“I just find that the lengths that the administration goes through to prevent any benefit from going to DACA students–who for all intents and purposes consider this their home, grew up here, stayed out of legal trouble, and are contributing members of society by serving in the military or going to college and paying taxes–just unfathomable. And when you add in the fact that other students, potentially eligible students, will also be harmed by this policy, it’s hard to wrap your mind around.”

Financial aid experts, like the one quoted above, worry that the FAQ-mandated Title IV restriction—in its effort to exclude foreign students and DACA students–will result in the emergency aid also being more difficult to get for student citizens. Here is a good, clear example of how whiteness, implemented by white elites, is waged at the cost of marginal white folks who not only support the regime at a cost to their livelihoods, but who then believe they were robbed of those same livelihoods by foreigners and undocumented peers.

More Tricky Details

In other news, experts were also surprised that the 13 FAQs excluded any students from COVID-19 relief funding if they were taking courses solely online at an institution where they could have been taking courses off-line. The money was intended by Congress to address disruptions caused by moving online from campus, says the FAQ, never mind if the online student is challenged by expenses resulting from COVID-19 job loss.

While financial aid experts knew that half of the $12 billion in COVID-19 funds for higher ed were earmarked for direct student relief, there was widespread perception that the other half of the funds might be applied to other expenses that supported students, such as unpaid campus bills.

For instance, some campuses quickly refunded dorm fees or other costs, partly under the impression that a federal relief package would help make up the loss to Spring semester budgets.

The assumption that the second half of funding would be available for campus relief, not direct student payment, is what in fact fueled resentment against those ill-fated Harvard funds.

In a promise typical of ED over the past weeks, FAQ number one, about the first half of the money, promises another set of FAQs that will cover the second half of the money, “shortly after making those funds available to institutions.” The promise ensures that campuses will have to hold the second round of money–at least until the new FAQs are released.

Perhaps the release of FAQs on Apr. 21 pertaining to the first half of funding therefore means that indeed some of the first-half funds were being released?

But Some Good Stuff, Too

It should be noted that some of the FAQs were inclusive. One provision, for example, makes clear that certain prisoners, released because of pandemic precautions, would be able to stay in the relief loop, even though their funding was tied to a prison program.

And if an institution would be interested in getting the second round of “institutional” relief, ED does require that they first participate in getting the first round of “student” relief out the door. It’s good to know, therefore, that about 12 percent of that student relief money has likely—this week of weeks–made it to some campuses somewhere.

Greg Moses is editor of the Texas Civil Rights Review and a member of the Texas Civil Rights Collaborative.

By Greg Moses

Op-Ed News

As we invest in V-shaped recoveries for businesses and their employees, we assume there is some hilltop of prosperity to get back to. For this year’s college students and graduates, we forget, there is still the first hill to climb.

I’m not blaming the tenured classes who have long forgotten their eleventh thesis. Nor am I blaming college presidents in their mirror stage of consciousness, gazing into that looking glass where everyone appears as a CEO.

I won’t even blame students themselves, who have no time to think about what just hit them as they are ordered off campus and told to log in for further instructions.

But somehow, America these days has fallen into a numb assumption that, even in the middle of this pandemic crisis, it can just keep its economy riding upon backpacks filled with student debt.

We instinctively rush to backstop other credit markets. We talk loud and fast about loan forgiveness to several other classes of worthy economic actors. Yet somehow we don’t give a second thought to young American scholars who carry heavy loads of debt for higher education.

Read between the lines of national policy discourse, and the thesis that prevails is preservation of the student-loan credit complex. When it comes to addressing the needs of this year’s college students and grads, debt forgiveness is too costly to imagine.

Readers removed from the policy kitchens of Washington, D.C., can get a whiff of what’s cooking for college students by inhaling a couple of articles archived Tuesday morning at the COVID-19 web center of the National Association of Student Financial Aid Administrators (NASFAA).

The first article is all about debt postponement. The second article begins with debt postponement sure enough. But the second article goes on to stir another pot where seasoned cooks are prepping debt cancellation and grants.

This is where you are invited to skip to the end and taste the finished dish, if you already agree that debt cancellation and grants are what we need to provide our most vulnerable 2020 college students and grads.

However, to begin our taste test of today’s polite policy palate, we begin with report number one that says NASFAA on Monday joined a coalition of higher education groups asking the US House of Representatives to extend and expand student-loan deferrals.

Student loan deferrals, authorized for six months under the recent CARES Act, should be extended to nine months, and instead of just deferring government-held loans, the pause in payments and interest accrual should be extended “to all federal loans, including commercially-held Federal Family Education Loans (FEEL) and Perkins Loans.”

Student loans should also be relieved of immunity from bankruptcy proceedings. And debt loads that are lifted by lawfully adjusting student loans should not be counted as taxable income.

As for any “large-scale debt relief initiative,” says the higher ed coalition, Congress can control that cost–if forgiveness is “targeted to borrowers who are financially distressed and face the greatest difficulty repaying their loans.”

The second Tuesday morning report from NASFAA begins with Congressional proposals by Sen. Mitt Romney (R-Utah) and Rep. Josh Harder (D-Calif.) to allow 2020 graduates to defer their student loans for three years.

Rep. Harder admits that the whole student loan system is “horribly broken.” But this is old news, and if there is a groundswell of outrage about it, nobody seems to know where. Romney and Harder kick the can of postponement. And who knows, maybe in three years we can revisit the issue under more favorable political realities.

With loan postponement strategies duly noted, the second NASFAA news report then turns to three think tanks, where the policy world seems to be setting a wake-up alarm.

The Economic Policy Institute’s (EPI) senior economist Elise Gould reminds us that our ability to expect debt liberation fell victim to the crisis of ’08, but did not recover. She warns that we should think twice before declaring any deadline for when the 2020 graduating class will be prepared to assume the classic position of loan re-payer.

Plus, federal response today needs to anticipate state budget cuts tomorrow, warns Gould. When pandemic austerity hits state legislatures, forcing reductions in college funding, the heaviest burdens will fall on low-income students.

Pell Institute for the Study of Opportunity in Higher Education director Margaret Cahalan spices our discourse with the G-word, grants. If we are thinking about first generation, low-income students, then we have to consider what has suddenly happened to their family support networks as a result of COVID-19. For these students, especially, loans will be long-term running weights that they can’t take off.

Finally, Council for Opportunity in Education (COE) president Maureen Hoyler says our economic attitude toward today’s students will have impacts on their ability to become tomorrow’s home buyers.

“The recent college graduates, who graduated in 2020 and 2019, certainly need to be looked at separately,” Hoyler said. “And everybody who was a Pell [Grant] recipient who was in loan repayment–that’s a group that needs to be looked at.”

Hoyler’s recipe helps policy makers identify students who have already qualified for federal grants as a good group to start with when it comes to spending frugally on outright debt relief.

Still, it may seem to the earnest reader that higher education policy is stuck with COVID-19 problems but constrained by pre-COVID fiscal thinking. Trillions of dollars have been speedily applied to other areas of the economy these recent weeks. When it comes to student loan debt forgiveness, or a truly supportive college grant program, why is everybody suddenly reaching for the frozen dessert of frugality?

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PS: Front-line COVID doctor: We want student loan forgiveness, not hazard pay ABC News

A Texas Civil Rights Review Interim Report
[With some inserts added in brackets, Apr. 23]

Financial aid experts thought they knew what they would do with federal money that Congress allocated under the CARES Act for emergency aid to college students. Like everyone else, they have been reading that COVID-19 relief funding from the Department of Education (ED) is only a day away.

Two weeks after the CARES Act passed, the emergency funds were going to be “immediately” released, a promise that reporters mistakenly treated as accomplished fact on Apr. 9. Then, the funds were going to be released “as early as” Apr. 15. And lately, on Apr. 21, ED posted 13 FAQs telling how–and how not–to use those funds, that is, when they are made available, which, seriously–and we mean it this time–could be soon.

If you’re not confused by any of the above, it’s because you haven’t been trying to figure it out.

Meanwhile, headlines have been stuffed with announcements about $1,200 CARES Act checks hitting taxpayer accounts as early as Apr. 13. And we are amply informed that $350 billion in CARES Act small business relief was spent by Apr. 16, prompting the Senate to vote on Apr. 21 for another $310 billion.

Now, approaching the one-month anniversary of the Mar. 27 CARES Act, we are still looking for a single headline that says, “College Student Receives Federal Emergency Relief for COVID-19 Hardship.”

In the 13 FAQs released Tuesday, ED holds the line on some of its earlier guidance, already widely anticipated, that the first half of the $12 billion relief fund must go to students, not to student accounts, even if students need money to pay accounts.

However, in a slight twist that caught experts by surprise, if the campus has already given money to students for COVID-19 relief in the form of cash payments [and if the money was given after passage of the CARES Act on Mar. 27], the campus may use the federal money to replenish that account, instead of giving the federal money to students.

Many campuses have already raised local emergency funds and paid them out for COVID-19 emergency relief. Often, these campus funds have run out before all requests were filled.

Experts were also hoping that Congress intended to cast a wider net with the student half of COVID-19 emergency relief so that it would not require cumbersome analysis of overall financial need or citizenship status. They were hoping to disburse the funds with short-form requests that would not be closely tied to Title IV federal financial aid, which is regulated under the cumbersome FAFSA system.

But in a catch that caught many by surprise, the recent FAQs say that students eligible for this round of emergency relief must be eligible for Title IV, or “could be” eligible. What this means to financial aid professionals is that if a student is not already on the Title IV rolls, a time-consuming FAFSA analysis will have to be applied.

In a closely related surprise, the Title IV “clarification” has the effect of excluding foreign students.

Likewise, on the question of undocumented students, most will be unable to access the funds because of Title IV resstrictions. The answer to FAQ 9 states that, “Students who have not filed a FAFSA but who are eligible to file a FAFSA also may receive emergency financial aid grants.” A fact sheet at studentaid.gov state in turn that, “Most undocumented students aren’t eligible for an SSN; thus, they cannot complete the FAFSA form. However, DACA students with SSNs can complete the FAFSA form” (even though they are not eligible for federal financial aid.)

Experts were also surprised that the 13 FAQs excluded any students from COVID-19 relief funding if they were taking courses solely online at an institution where they could have been taking courses off line. The money was intended by Congress to address disruptions caused by moving online from campus, says the FAQ.

While financial aid experts knew that half of the $12 billion in COVID-19 funds for higher ed were earmarked for direct student relief, there was widespread perception that the other half of the funds might be applied to other expenses that supported students, such as unpaid bills.

Some campuses quickly refunded dorm fees or other costs, partly under the impression that a federal relief package would help make up the loss to Spring semester budgets.

The assumption that the second half of funding would be available for campus relief, not direct student payment, is what fueled harsh criticism of funds that would be directed through some of the well-endowed campuses, such as Harvard, Texas A&M, or the University of Texas. Harvard promised that it would apply all of the relief money to students.

Public criticism of emergency funds going to students at well-endowed universities were joined vith vigor by President Donald Trump, Treasury Secretary Mcnuchin, and Education Secretary Betsy DeVos, promting both Harvard and Stanford Universities to opt out of the program on behalf of their COVID-19 affected students.

In a promise typical of ED over the past weeks, FAQ number one promises another release of FAQs that will cover the second half of the money, “shortly after making those funds available to institutions.” The promise ensures that campuses will have to hold the second round of money at lest until the new FAQs are released.

Perhaps the release of FAQs on Apr. 21 pertaining to the first half of funding therefore means that indeed the funds have been released?

A Texas Civil Rights Review Update

Despite a Monday afternoon pledge by Harvard University to apply 100 percent of federal COVID-19 relief to emergency payments to students, US President Donald Trump, Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin, and Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos kept up a drumbeat of publc criticism against federal relief to students who attend well-endowed universities.

As a result of the pressure, both Harvard and Stanford have announced that their students will not be beneficiaries of the CARES Act emergency relief.

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See this report by Yahoo Finance writer Aarthi Swaminathan

Also, please see our Texas Civil Rights Review Editorial about the funding criticm, written a day earlier.

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Yale joins campuses declining federal student emergency relief funding: “We wish to reassure Yale students that this decision will in no way diminish our financial support for them at this critical time.” (Apr. 22, 2020)

A Texas Civil Rights Review Editorial

Please see our update on how, despite what this editorial argues, Harvard and Stanford students were hounded out of the COVID-19 emergency relief program.

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Harvard University has addressed critics who think the university should not be getting money for COVID-19 relief. In a statement quoted Monday evening by the Boston Herald, Harvard makes it clear that the money will be disbursed entirely for student aid.

The attack on the Harvard funding was poorly informed in the first place, and it was poorly timed.

The controversy over the funding was fueled earlier Monday by a Huffington Post headline that read: “Harvard, America’s Richest University, Grabs Nearly $9 Million In Taxpayer CARES Aid.”

The word “grabs” gives an impression that Harvard made some special effort to secure its share of a $12.5 billion relief package for higher education that was included in the CARES Act, signed into law Mar. 27. The money was allocated by a US Department of Education formula that proportioned the aid across 5,000 campuses according to a broad calculation of student financial need–a formula that resulted in 350 campuses assigned more money than Harvard.

The HuffPo column correctly reports that at least half of the grant to Harvard “must be reserved for emergency financial grants to students”–a requirement mandated by the CARES Act for every campus. Then the column speculates that “at least some of that money — which could be used to cover tuition payments and course materials — would also end up in Harvard coffers.”

Harvard is refuting speculation that it will place any of the CARES Act relief funds into its well-endowed coffers.

“Harvard is actually allocating 100% of the funds to financial assistance for students to meet their urgent needs in the face of this pandemic,” said a Harvard spokesman in a statement quoted Monday evening in the Boston Herald.

“Harvard will allocate the funds based on student financial need,” said the statement. “This financial assistance will be on top of the significant support the University has already provided to students — including assistance with travel, providing direct aid for living expenses to those with need, and supporting students’ transition to online education.”

The huffy HuffPo hit piece may be defended as an attempt to push Harvard toward that 100 percent commitment, but the timing and target of the attack are tone deaf to the more urgent need of the week.

Rather than cast suspicion on emergency student relief that was included in the CARES Act, and rather than hand a talking point to voices who would disparage Congressional relief to higher ed, a more healthy use of HuffPo space would point out that the half of the money which is by law required to help students directly is taking too much time to make its way to Harvard in the first place.

Although the US Department of Education promised “immediate” release of funds on Apr. 9–that is, “immediate” release of funds that were authorized Mar. 27–the fact is that experts knowledgeable in financial aid were unable to verify on Apr. 16 that any of the funds had actually hit any campus.

Compare the speed of this funding to the direct deposit of treasury checks or the funding of small business loans. The SBA ran out of $350 billion at least a week before the Education Department pushed $6 billion in “student emergency relife” out its door. And this is half the scandal of the day.

The mistake of the HuffPo column was to misunderstand the Congressional intent of the funds and to conflate the riches of the Harvard endowment with the real needs of Harvard students, who find themselves suddenly ejected from their dorm rooms or may come home to families where wage earners are laid off.

The timing of the attack was also poorly targeted, as the next round of COVID-19 relief funding is being finalized in Congressional negotiations. The attack is a political chiller that can only hurt relief efforts for American college campuses, exactly when those efforts deserve pressure to increase funding for COVID-19 relief.

Are we all in this together? It’s time to make sure that college students get the attention and suppor they need, whether they go to a rich university like Harvard or not.