Graduate students nationwide are lobbying for a cheaper education.
The National Association of Graduate-Professional Students is leading the campaign to push the Higher Education Affordability and Equity Act through Congress.
The act, originally brought before Congress in October 2003 by Rep. Phil English (R-Pa.), proposes to return graduate scholarships to the tax-exempt status they had before 1986. Other financial improvements for students would include full deductions of student loan interest and increases in the allowable contribution to educational savings accounts.
Northwestern’s Graduate Student Association has not been active with supporting this bill, but does share concerns about graduate students’ cost of living.
“At Northwestern, some of our main concerns have been having our health insurance covered,” said Sarah Dugan, programming chairwoman of NU’s graduate association. “Also having a fair amount of compensation and having a higher standard of living are most important to us right now, not taxes.”
But elsewhere the bill has been a central part of graduate student advocacy.
Alik Widge, the legislative concerns chairman for the national graduate association, helped organize the latest “Day of Action” on Oct. 20 in support of the bill.
“With the Day of Action we urged supporters to send letters to their congressmen to show their support for the bill,” Widge said. “We sent over 10,000 letters, which from what I hear, is unprecedented. It also served to remind Congress of an issue that we care about before the elections.”
Although English plans to reintroduce the bill before Congress at the start of the new session, the national graduate association is not resting.
The group organized new Legislative Action Days on Feb. 17 and Feb. 18, 2005. At the action days, Widge plans to train graduate students to speak to their local representatives in Washington about the bill.
“In the past, the way we have gained co-sponsors is through these action days,” Widge said. “Students have met with representatives and showed how much they care about the issue. This advocacy has been working well in the past so we will continue until we succeed in getting the bill passed.”
Before the recent election, the act had 37 co-sponsors, both from the Democratic and Republican parties. Most of the co-sponsors were re-elected so the progress of the bill should not be delayed significantly.
Jessica Muehlberg, Graduate Student Association president at the University of Nevada, Reno, has been an active lobbyer for the act.
“The Graduate Student Association organized a petition drive in Nevada to our representatives to get active on this issue,” Muehlberg said. “Our senator, Harry Reid, has been so inundated with e-mails regarding this issue that he has developed an automatic response. That shows we have made an impact.”
Reach Whitney L. Becker at [email protected].
