Texas Insider Report: AUSTINÂ Texas While Texas is coming close to Closing the Gaps by 2015 said Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board Chairman Raymund Paredes theres a price to be paid for a gradual influx of lower-income students.
We have clearly a very difficult situation Paredes said. State financial aid has been going up but so has attendance. Weve been spending a lot of money to make relatively modest gains. And that will be the case into the future.
The House Appropriations Education Subcommittee did not take up guaranteed tuition programs (i.e. the steadily depleting Texas Tomorrow Fund) as expected during its meeting Monday. However the committee took testimony regarding the state of higher ed funding where Paredes gave us a look at the price of closing said gaps (meaning offering greater amounts of college education funding to the poor and working class to put it simply).
The goal of the Closing the Gaps program is 630000 new lower-income students enrolled in Texas four-year colleges and universities by 2015. This is contributing to an overall explosion in financial aid participation -- Twice as many students as 10 years ago with about 100000 students a year on financial aid Paredes noted.
Paredes said the downside of attracting students from lower-income families and backgrounds is that they tend to require more financial aid to stay enrolled in college. Much of the new growth attracted by the Closing the Gaps program were first-generation students most of whom were Hispanic and/or whose families are in lower income brackets -- as was projected a decade ago he noted.
Texas Insider Report: AUSTINÂ Texas While Texas is coming close to Closing the Gaps by 2015 said Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board Chairman Raymund Paredes theres a price to be paid for a gradual influx of lower-income students.
We have clearly a very difficult situation Paredes said. State financial aid has been going up but so has attendance. Weve been spending a lot of money to make relatively modest gains. And that will be the case into the future.
The House Appropriations Education Subcommittee did not take up guaranteed tuition programs (i.e. the steadily depleting Texas Tomorrow Fund) as expected during its meeting Monday. However the committee took testimony regarding the state of higher ed funding where Paredes gave us a look at the price of closing said gaps (meaning offering greater amounts of college education funding to the poor and working class to put it simply).
The goal of the Closing the Gaps program is 630000 new lower-income students enrolled in Texas four-year colleges and universities by 2015. This is contributing to an overall explosion in financial aid participation -- Twice as many students as 10 years ago with about 100000 students a year on financial aid Paredes noted.
Paredes said the downside of attracting students from lower-income families and backgrounds is that they tend to require more financial aid to stay enrolled in college. Much of the new growth attracted by the Closing the Gaps program were first-generation students most of whom were Hispanic and/or whose families are in lower income brackets -- as was projected a decade ago he noted.
