Presidents' open immigration letter. On Tuesday, university presidents from Arizona State University, Cornell University and Miami Dade College sent a letter to the leadership of more than 1,200 institutions of higher education, calling on them to encourage immigration reform. The letter asked schools to hold events highlighting immigration reform as essential to innovation. The letter says highly skilled graduates are being forced to leave America and undocumented potential students are kept out of higher education. The universities reported that they hope to have a coordinated voice that will reach lawmakers.

2012 higher education report. On Wednesday, the State Higher Education Executive Officers released the results of the 2012 State Higher Education Finance study. The study showed that college enrollment leveled off between 2011 and 2012, after an extended period of growth. It also showed that colleges and universities saw a 9% decline in per-student state appropriations between 2011 and 2012. Colleges and universities are attempting to make up the difference through tuition increase, according to the report, with tuition revenue as a share of general operating revenues increasing.

As a member of New England Council, we publish the DC Shuttle each week featuring higher ed news from Washington. This edition is drawn from the Council's Weekly Washington Report Higher Education Update, of March 11, 2013.

Founded in 1925, the New England Council is a nonpartisan alliance of businesses, academic and health institutions, and public and private organizations throughout New England formed to promote economic growth and a high quality of life in the New England region. The Council's mission is to identify and support federal public policies and articulate the voice of its membership regionally and nationally on important issues facing New England. For more information, please visit: www.newenglandcouncil.com.

Rwanda President Paul Kagame will speak at the University of Hartford's Lincoln Theater on Tuesday, March 12, at 11 a.m., to mark the launch of the university's Genocide and Holocaust Education Initiative.

Immigration reform is gathering steam. In late January, a bipartisan group of U.S. senators announced an agreement on principles for immigration reform, that may include paths for undocumented immigrants to earn citizenship. Based on earlier immigration reform proposals, these pathways to “earning” citizenship will likely include earning a postsecondary degree after a high school diploma or equivalent credential. Enrolling in postsecondary education programs is already one way individuals can fulfill qualification requirements for the Obama administration’s Deferred Action Program.

Unfortunately, affordable postsecondary education is increasingly hard to come by. Between 2007-08 and 2012-13, tuition and mandatory fees for state residents in New England rose by more than $2,600 at public four-year institutions and more than $900 at public two-year institutions. For out-of-state students, tuition and mandatory fees rose even more steeply—by an average of more than $4,400 at public four-year institutions and $1,600 at public two-year institutions.

These trends in the list price of public postsecondary education are especially hard-hitting for students who are not eligible for financial aid nor in-state rates. With poverty rates among children of undocumented immigrants (who themselves may or may not be undocumented) estimated at twice the rate for children of U.S.-born residents, any proposed pathway to citizenship (and even deferred action) may still be difficult to navigate.

Now that federal legislation is in the works, more states must examine their postsecondary educational policies, particularly tuition policies and their potential impact on undocumented students. Many states have begun by addressing the issue of financial affordability and extending in-state tuition eligibility to undocumented students. Currently, only 14 states offer in-state tuition to these students (with others limiting in-state tuition only to U.S. citizens), although discussion in additional states are currently underway.

Last fall, three New England states (Connecticut, Massachusetts and Rhode Island) extended in-state resident tuition rates to undocumented resident students. Vermont and Maine have not yet weighed in on whether undocumented students should receive in-state tuition. And, at the other end of the spectrum, students attending public institutions in New Hampshire must now submit an affidavit confirming their citizenship status in order to receive in-state tuition rates (Figure 1).

Figure 1: In-State Tuition Policies for Undocumented Students by New England State, 2012

State	In-State Tuition for Undocumented Students	State Policy/Action
Connecticut	Yes	Public Act 11-43
Maine	NA	NA
Massachusetts	Deferred Action Beneficiaries Only	Governor's determination based on board policy
New Hampshire	No	HB1383
Rhode Island	Yes	Board of Governor's Amended Residency Policy
Vermont	NA	NA

Additional steps states might consider include:

• Passing legislation that would extend in-state tuition benefits to children born to undocumented immigrants
• Expanding state financial aid programs to undocumented students, as in California, Texas and New Mexico
• Weighing the impact on regional tuition agreements, such as NEBHE’s Regional Student Program Tuition Break.

Each year, an estimated 65,000 undocumented students, who have lived in the U.S. for five or more years, graduate from high school. Yet, estimates suggest that only 7,000 to 13,000 undocumented students are enrolled in college throughout the U.S—a figure often attributed to the high cost of college and lack of clearly defined pathways to citizenship. Unless more state policies complement federal programs for deferred action or possible future pathways to citizenship, any hope to support unauthorized young people toward citizenship will remain a dream.

Who are undocumented students?

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security defines unauthorized residents as foreign-born non-citizens who entered the country either without inspection or were admitted temporarily, but stayed past their date of legal residence. Children of such immigrants who are born outside the U.S. and lack legal documents are characterized as undocumented students.

According to the Pew Research Hispanic Center :

• There are approximately 11 million unauthorized immigrants residing within the U.S., comprising 3.7% of the population.
• Unauthorized immigrants’ share of nation’s workforce stands at 5.2%, or nearly 8 million.
• Mexico is the country of origin for more than half (58%) the population of the unauthorized immigrants.
• Nearly one in ten unauthorized immigrants is under age 18.
• It is estimated that approximately 334,500 undocumented immigrants reside in New England states, the majority in Connecticut and Massachusetts.

Note: Research assistance provided by former NEBHE policy and research intern Megha Tanwar.

Related Posts:

New Kind of Ellis Island as Second-Generation Immigrants Land on College Campuses

Study Finds In-State Tuition for Undocumented Students Boosts College Enrollment, Lowers High School Dropout Rates

Mass. Gov. Patrick Vows In-State Tuition for Illegal Immigrants

Immigrants as “Jet Fuel” for Jobs in Mass.

Papers? Fairfield Gets Grant to Study Undocumented Students

Bipartisan Support for DREAM Act

Immigrant Education by Marcia Drew Hohn

In a bid to break the stalemate over offsets for student loan interest rate legislation, Republican leadership in the House and Senate proposed two alternative proposals on Thursday. While general agreement exists on the desire to extend the current 3.4%  interest rate on federal student loans for one year, delaying an increase to 6.8% scheduled for July 1, lawmakers have been unable to come to consensus on how to pay for the estimated $5.9 billion cost. On April 27, the House passed a bill (H.R. 4628) eliminating funding for the Prevention and Public Health Fund to pay for the interest rate extension, while Senate Democrats are pushing a bill (S. 2343) which would end a tax benefit for S corporations. House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH), House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-VA), Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY), and Senate Minority Whip Jon Kyl (R-AZ) sent a letter to President Obama, asking that he work with them to pass bipartisan student loan interest rate legislation. The first option would offset the interest rate extension's cost by increasing retirement contributions from federal employees by 0.4% each year for 2013-2015. The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) has estimated that the increase, which was also included in the administration's FY2013 budget request, would raise $8 billion in revenue through 2017, and $18 billion through 2022. The Republicans' second offset proposal is a combination of three smaller measures. First, the duration of the in-school interest subsidy for subsidized federal loans would be limited to 150% of the usual time required to complete the degree program being pursued, for an estimated $1.1 billion in federal savings over 10 years. Second, the Medicaid healthcare provider tax threshold would be gradually scaled down to 5.5% beginning in 2013 for $11.3 in savings over 10 years. Lastly, state and local government pension payers would be required to determine whether a worker's pension is derived from government employment in order to prevent Social Security overpayments, for $2 billion in savings over 10 years. All three proposals are similar to those put forth in recent administration budget requests.

Congressman David Rivera (R-FL) introduced the Studying Towards Residency Status Act (H.R. 5869) on Wednesday as an alternative to DREAM Act legislation championed by Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin (D-IL), which has been offered and rejected in various forms over the past several years. Sen. Durbin's latest bill (S. 952) would provide a path to citizenship for certain children of undocumented immigrants who attend college or serve in the military. Under Congressman Rivera's bill, undocumented immigrants who entered the U.S. before they turned 16 and have lived here for five consecutive years would be eligible for conditional non-immigrant status for five years if they have graduated from higher school and been accepted to a four-year institution of higher education. Fellow Republican from Florida, Sen. Marco Rubio has said that he plans to introduce an additional DREAM Act alternative by the end of the summer which would provide visas—although not a path to citizenship—to the children of undocumented immigrants who attend college or serve in the military.

On Thursday, the Education Department announced the College Savings Account Research Demonstration Project, which will provide about 10,000 high school students participating in the GEAR UP program for low-income students with college savings accounts and financial counseling. The impact of the savings accounts and counseling on college access and success will contribute to policy recommendations at the local, state, and federal levels.

As a member of New England Council, we publish the DC Shuttle each week featuring higher ed news from Washington. This edition is drawn from the Council's Weekly Washington Report Higher Education Update, of June 4, 2012.

Founded in 1925, the New England Council is a nonpartisan alliance of businesses, academic and health institutions, and public and private organizations throughout New England formed to promote economic growth and a high quality of life in the New England region. The Council's mission is to identify and support federal public policies and articulate the voice of its membership regionally and nationally on important issues facing New England. For more information, please visit: www.newenglandcouncil.com.

Senators Chris Coons (D-DE) and Lamar Alexander (R-TN) introduced legislation Wednesday to create a new category of student visas for those studying in the science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) fields. The bill would create a new category of non-immigrant visa for foreign students pursuing a master's degree or doctorate in the STEM fields in the U.S. Those students would have one year after graduation in which to find a job and apply for permanent resident status, and would not be subject to per-country green card limits and certain other restrictions. Currently, all foreign students must secure a work permit before applying for a green card if they wish to remain and work in the U.S. after graduation. Then, in order to keep that visa, they must remain with their original employer and at the same job title. The number of green cards available under the Coons-Alexander proposal is not capped, leaving open the possibility that it could create thousands of new green cards. In contrast, a bill (S. 3185) introduced Tuesday by Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX) would eliminate 55,000 green cards given by lottery every year and award them to STEM graduates instead.

An expert panel convened by the U.S. National Research Council (NRC) released a report Thursday on the difficulties presented in trying to develop a standardized productivity measurement for colleges. The 15-member panel—composed of university administrators, economists and higher education experts—was convened by the NRC and funded by the Lumina Foundation. The report summary cited "accounting for input differences, wide quality variation of outputs, and opaque or regulated pricing" among the difficulties particular to the effort to measure and compare productivity among colleges. The panel did propose a way forward, but with the caveat that anything based on existing data would be a rough estimate at best. Instead, it suggested that colleges improve data collection in such areas as instruction hours, fields of study and job placement rates. By including instruction hours alongside graduation rates, the NRC panel hopes to offset concerns from institutions with large number of part-time students, as well as an incentive to lower graduation standards simply to increase graduation rate statistics. Even this model, however, is intended to be used to look at the higher education sector as a whole or at very large groups of colleges, rather than to compare individual institutions against each other.

On May 11, the U.S. Education Department announced $254 million in funding for 780 Upward Bound awards to help nearly 62,000 underserved students across the country to be successful in high school and college. The grants fund programs to provide tutoring, counseling, mentoring, work-study opportunities and other activities to help students prepare for and succeed in postsecondary education. The New England states received over $9.6 million from the program:

State                          Award Amount

Connecticut                $1,126,550

Massachusetts           $4,015,166

Maine                          $1,953,560

New Hampshire          $899,640

Rhode Island                $622,001

Vermont                     $1,043,766

As a member of New England Council, we publish the DC Shuttle each week featuring higher ed news from Washington. This edition is drawn from the Council's Weekly Washington Report Higher Education Update, of May 21, 2012.

Founded in 1925, the New England Council is a nonpartisan alliance of businesses, academic and health institutions, and public and private organizations throughout New England formed to promote economic growth and a high quality of life in the New England region. The Council's mission is to identify and support federal public policies and articulate the voice of its membership regionally and nationally on important issues facing New England. For more information, please visit: www.newenglandcouncil.com.

The Education Department released College Affordability and Transparency Lists on Thursday. The 2008 Higher Education Opportunity Act requires the Education Department to produce six lists, with three examining tuition and fees and three examining each institution's average price of attendance minus grants and scholarships. The lists are also divided by type of institution (public/private, two-year/four-year, etc.). The top 5% of colleges and universities whose tuition increased by the highest percentage will be required to justify the increase to the Education Department. Even as the lists were being released, many institutions were pointing to robust student financial aid programs and the volatility of state education budgets to explain their tuition increases. Education Secretary Arne Duncan said of the lists, "We hope this information will encourage schools to continue their efforts to make the costs of college more transparent so students make informed decisions and aren't saddled with unmanageable debt." Skeptics have pointed out that because the net-price measurement only looks at first-time freshman students enrolled full time and many four-year schools give out significantly more aid during the first year, the measure may not accurately reflect the costs of attending a school for all four years.

Friday, July 1, marked the deadline by which career and for-profit colleges must comply with new Education Department "gainful employment" regulations. Schools offering programs subject to the gainful employment rules published in October 2010 must now report the following information to prospective students:

• average loan debt incurred by program graduates;
• job placement rate for program graduates;
• on-time graduation rate; and
• total tuition and fees, including book costs and room and board, where applicable.

Read the Program Integrity Rule.

On Thursday, the Labor Department announced $17 million in grants for two programs to provide job training to at-risk young adults ages 18 to 24. The grants will focus on juvenile offenders and high school dropouts in high-poverty and high-crime communities. YouthBuild USA based in Somerville, Mass., and the Mid-Atlantic Network of Youth and Family based in Pittsburgh, were awarded the grants through a competitive process. Each program will receive $8.5 million to help the at-risk individuals obtain industry-recognized credentials and prepare them for employment.

Senate Democrats renewed a push to pass the DREAM Act, legislation (S. 952) to grant a path to citizenship to those undocumented immigrants who were brought to the U.S. as children and who attend college or serve in the U.S. military. At a Tuesday hearing of the Senate Judiciary Committee's Subcommittee on Immigration, Refugees and Border Security, Secretary Duncan urged lawmakers to support the bill in the interests of debt-reduction and job creation. He said that by 2018, the U.S. will have 2.6 million science and math jobs open which DREAM Act students could help fill. Secretary Duncan also cited a Congressional Budget Office report which found that if passed, the legislation would provide a net revenue gain of $1.4 billion over ten years. "Educating the individuals who would be eligible under the DREAM Act would benefit our country," he said. Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano added that law enforcement pursuit of the undocumented young people affected by the bill was "siphoning resources from other, more pressing needs." Subcommittee Chair and Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin (D-IL) re-introduced DREAM Act legislation in May with 34 cosponsors after it failed to overcome a Senate filibuster during the 111th Congress. Similar legislation passed the House last year, but this year's House companion bill (H.R. 2164) is likely to be blocked by House Judiciary Chair Lamar Smith (R-TX). He is strongly opposed to the measure, which he said would "prevent Americans from getting jobs since millions of illegal immigrants will become eligible to work legally in the United States."

From the New England Council's Weekly Washington Report Higher Education Update, July 5, 2011. NEBHE is a member of the Council and will publish this column each week.

Founded in 1925, the New England Council is a nonpartisan alliance of businesses, academic and health institutions, and public and private organizations throughout New England formed to promote economic growth and a high quality of life in the New England region. The Council's mission is to identify and support federal public policies and articulate the voice of its membership regionally and nationally on important issues facing New England. For more information, please visit www.newenglandcouncil.com.