“Not Substantial” or “Breaking the Cycle”? Two Acts Passed By Senate HELP Committee to Support College Students Ignite Controversy

In session yesterday at the Senate HELP Committee, four different bills were proposed in support of promoting diversity and equal opportunity in college admissions and on campus, though ultimately only two were passed: the CAFE Act (Counseling Access for Everyone) and the ACT Act.

The CAFE Act aims to provide all American students with resources to prepare them for the college experience through website format; from college counseling services, advice and tips for personal essays, composition for applications, financial support information, to different college or post-high school options, this website could prove a valuable resource for students that “don’t understand that they are academically qualified or that they have access to affordable education,” according to author and New Hampshire senator Maggie Hassan.

She continued: “The CAFE Act aims to provide students with guidance on making a college list, conducting your college search, how to write essays, how to understand their extracurricular commitments, and how to really make sure that they are presenting themselves holistically in a way that the colleges will be able to understand.”

This website will be run by a sub committee within HELP that will regulate and manage the information posted online, as well as create a publicized campaign that is mandated to be shown by school counselors and teachers alike in order to make sure that all students are eligible to understand what potential they show for college. This means that college assistance and advice could be more accessible to everyone because it doesn’t rely on college counselors or parents to pay for or help support students because they will have an additional free resource available to them.

This act was accompanied by the ACT Act, which mandates that by automatic admission all college applicants must, by default, be admitted to one public state school. This act also provides for financial aid through pell grants for any student with an annual income of $80,000 or less.

This act creates a private committee whose members are in charge of publicizing and enforcing this admission, with states complying with this receiving a 3% increase in funding, and should they publicize the websites, receive a 2% increase in highway funding.

The overall goal? Senator Susan Collins of Maine stated that it would allow for all students to explore “the beauties that college has to offer- so they can repay all of that love we are doing them”. As a whole, both acts will provide the opportunity for more funding and increased awareness for college options for both low-income and underprivileged students, as well as those who live in underdeveloped or vulnerable areas.

However, not everyone in the committee was so supportive of these acts. Senator Roger Marshall of Kansas stated, in reference to the ACT Act, that it was “socialist… downright communist” and warned heavily that the CAFE Act alone would not provide enough support for students and that the website proposal was “not substantial.”

It is “a shame that this is the most comprehensive solution,” Marshall said.

In comparison, his proposal for the Using Legacy Admission Funds Bill ultimately failed, and had proposed merit based scholarships with 1.5% of school funding allocated to financial aid with the goal of lowering legacy admissions in favor of balancing out the socioeconomic diversity within schools.

It was promised in this failed bill that should schools refuse to comply, they would lose all federal funding from nonessential programs. While this initially gained some support from fellow senators, with some even saying that it had the potential to “become a catalyst for breaking the cycle of poverty”, the failure of this bill was a large step away from addressing specifically the admission inequality of legacy students.

Later, Marshall seemed to relent on his harsh criticism of the ACT act, saying “it was an exaggeration to call it communist. I mean, I certainly believe it was socialist- it was giving initially in its original wording, funding to all public schools and providing specifically for financial aid…I think it’s positive, I mean I voted for it… Certainly not a bad bill by any means but I just think the reason I called it a shame is that is one website, or one hotline, or all the things that the bill prescribed really going to be enough to cause anything to really significantly change and reform our system for the better? I argue no, but the argument that I did make and mentioned is that it is progress at the very least.”

Marshall’s proposed bill wasn’t the only failed one. The Equitable Higher Education For All Act also failed, and proposed a box on college applications so that colleges would be forced to at least take into account the socioeconomic and disparities students have had to face based on racial or economic inequality. Universities would be legally required to report their stats on who was admitted based on the checking or (lack thereof) of this box and give “context and nuance” to admissions profiles.

Overall, both passed acts (once potentially approved to become law) could ultimately prove worthy of changing the trajectory of many upcoming university students’ lives by allowing them the right to equal education, encouraging diversity in colleges, and new means of acquiring the resources they need to be successful in their education.

This article was written by Mackenzie Temple.