January 15, 2005 - The sticker price of a college education just went up 7% in Illinois yesterday. The University Of Illinois Board Of Trustees raised tuition, fees, and room and board in a University dorm to $15, 278.00 per year. That doesn’t include luxuries like clothing, transportation, books, equipment and supplies. Those cost extra. The Board called it the “sticker price” because many students receive financial aid to assist them in meeting the costs of going to school. That increase is made necessary because Illinois is not able to increase its state spending on higher education. The state is still digging itself out of the fiscal hole that the Ryan administration and the Bush economy left it in two years ago.

The President of the United States, exhibiting his compassion for the left behinders in our society, proposed yesterday to increase the maximum Pell grant to needy college student from the present $4,050 to $4,500 per year – gradually, of course, as befits a fiscal conservative reaching the higher figure in 2010. What generosity in the face of new eligibility regulations adopted by the Bush Department of Education that will reduce the number of students receiving Pell grants by 20%. That reduction in the program will produce part of the spending savings that make it possible to let parents whose children don’t need Pell Grants keep more of their money at tax time.

It was not that long ago that the Vice President of the United States, that apostle of Social Darwinism Spiro Agnew, was campaigning against spending federal dollars to assist students meet the costs of education. Students whose parents can’t afford to send them to college simply don’t belong there was his argument. The Party of Greed has matured since then. Today it gives lip service to “helping the poor” while adopting policies that insure that what trickles down is reduced to an occasional drip. It produces the same result but with a more socially acceptable image.

How do a just and moral people justify slamming the college door by reducing support for students? The President tells us that our economy is changing and that we need to change to meet it. We know that in the age of this changing economy the path to participation leads through that college door. The President exhorts us to love our neighbors as he shows love to the widows his wars have made. Cutting student assistance programs is not loving in my book. It is just more of the same “grab the widow’s mite that we can keep more of the gold” fiscal philosophy that characterizes the program of the Party of Greed.