For the working poor, college is a catch-22

Economic projections for the future show that the fastest job growth will occur in professions that require some higher education. Yet, for the working poor, such jobs may seem forever out of reach. Even if they could find the money to attend college, poor workers' life situations are too fluid to make attending college anything less than a major challenge. But the reality is that these taxpayers can't get enough support to pay, and they are discouraged by media hype over the cost of college.

Recently, the Institute for Higher Education Policy (IHEP) studied the needs of this portion of the population and the financially daunting task of trying to attend college. Its report notes the "catch-22" in which working-poor adults find themselves: "Despite working long hours to provide for their families, their incomes teeter on the brink of poverty. They understand that enrolling in college and earning a degree will help them improve their skills and increase their earnings potential. However, given their work and other responsibilities, it is difficult for them to enroll full time, thus making it harder for them to receive financial aid and complete the classes necessary for a degree."

This inequity has come to the attention of the AFL-CIO, which last summer passed a resolution lamenting that higher education is not serving as the engine for upward mobility because the cost is icing out students from working families. "Today in the United States," says the resolution, "a low-achieving, high-income student is just as likely to go to college as the highest-achieving, low-income student, and only 36 percent of college-qualified, low-income students complete bachelor's degrees within eight and a half years, compared with 81 percent of high-income students."

The AFL-CIO is calling on its members to throw their weight behind lobbying their state legislatures to increase their dwindling support for higher education.

IHEP recommends that the working poor should have tax relief, campus services offered in the evenings and weekends, qualification for Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) funds, qualification for more support for parents, and mentoring programs for low-income and first-generation college students.

To read the report, "College Access for the Working Poor: Overcoming Burdens to Succeed in Higher Education," go to www.ihep.org.