Congress plans to pass stimulus bill
By Roscoe Elliott
Jan. 27, 2009 9:14 p.m.
Part of the $825 billion stimulus package being put together in Washington could go to making college more affordable and improving energy-efficiency practices within the University of California system.
The Senate’s proposal has not yet been made public, but similar legislation proposed in the House of Representatives has allocated $39 billion to states for public school systems and public colleges with an additional $25 billion for states to distribute as they choose.
Chris Harrington, a spokesman for the UC Office of the President, said “We are very pleased that Congress realizes that higher education institutions are a critical part of stimulating the economy.”
A major goal of the bill is to increase financial aid for low-income students seeking higher education in the form of Pell Grants, student loans and tax incentives.
Under the plan, the maximum Pell Grant would be increased from $4,731 to $5,350 and the amount students could borrow from Stafford Loans would be raised by $2,000. Similar changes would occur with the Work Study program and tax credits.
Along with individual help for students, provisions of the bill specifically set aside $7 billion to renovate and modernize higher-education institutions.
A large part of the funds would be used toward funding research projects. Because of the UC’s widespread research capacity, schools could benefit from federal aid.
“As the largest public research institution in the world, (the UC) would be looking to compete for those funds,” Harrington said.
The Obama administration and Democrats in Congress have been focused on environmentally-friendly projects and “green-collar” jobs. The bill looks to provide at least $2.5 billion to energy-efficient projects with an additional $500 million designated to creating green jobs.
Under the stimulus package, “the UC has requested $1 billion for infrastructure improvements of which $100 million would be earmarked for energy projects,” Associate Director of Energy and Utilities Dirk van Ulden said in an e-mail.
Nurit Katz, the sustainability coordinator for UCLA, said that UCLA has been working over the past years to improve energy sustainability and educate students for green jobs. However, there is always a need for more funding, Katz added.
“We definitely have a need for funding. … Some of these are young programs,” Katz said.
One of these programs, Leaders in Sustainability, is an interdisciplinary graduate program through the Anderson School of Management. The program, which saw its first graduates last year, was created in part by donations from corporations and could be the kind of field that would benefit from federal funding.
On other fronts, students are taking the lead. The Green Initiative Fund was a student initiative that uses student fees to support energy efficient renovations on campus. Though the program has been slow to get started, it has created a committee and will soon hire a fund administrator.
According to Kasey Topp, a 2008 alumnus who worked on the initiative last year, the amount of money saved by introducing more cost-effective and efficient products will be paid by the school back into the fund.
“If a project saves the campus money, then the university is going to repay the fund,” Topp said. But with the budget constraints facing the UC, UCLA might not be able to pay back the students as quickly.
Though the bill in the House has encountered resistance from Republicans it is expected to be voted on today. Summaries of the bill in the Senate have been made public and appear to allocate less to higher-education.
It is unclear how long it will be before individual universities see funding.
