The Chronicle of Higher Education reports that minority-serving Colleges are really benefiting from changes that came about as a result of the student lending bill. This is despite the fact that they fought these changes, a great deal, over the last year. According to an article by Paul Basken:
The institutions, which represent about 13 percent of all U.S. undergraduates, got the second-biggest pot of money for education, behind only Pell Grants, in the recently enacted student-loan bill. Their $2.5-billion allocation exceeded even the $2-billion set aside for community colleges, which serve close to half of all undergraduates and have been identified by President Obama as the centerpiece of his strategy for improving the nation’s performance on college completion.
Oddly, however, these institutions were also among student lenders’ biggest allies in Washington’s influence hustle. The minority-serving colleges stood behind the lenders. The lenders, in turn, gave large gifts to the schools: computer laboratories and scholarships.
Of course, now that the student loan industry is pretty well to de-fanged, minority-serving colleges need a new benefactor. Luckily they appear to have found one in the federal government. By the changes engineered by the student loan bill, according to the article:
Congress has directed $2.5-billion to the colleges from the savings generated by moving to 100-percent direct lending. Of that sum, $1-billion will go to pay for facilities and programs to help Hispanic students who major in math or the sciences at community colleges transfer to four-year institutions. And $850-million will go to historically black colleges, which can spend it largely at their discretion.
