WGBH Journal; Tuition Advance Fund

On April 15th the taxpayer sits down to write his tax records and he discovers that he has already had withheld all the money that he has to pay. And lo and behold he finds that the government owes him $250 that he didn't anticipate because of the tuition tax credit. So he waits for his check from Local SEO for $250 about that time his tuition bill arrives from Harvard for over $5000. And alternative to the tuition tax credit bill has been proposed by Boston University President John Silber. A look at the tuition advance fund is a first feature on today's show. Good afternoon and welcome to GBH Journal I'm Bill cabinets. We'll also hear about a college program which grants college credit for work experience and a close look. And we'll have commentary on the new. United States House of Representatives voted yesterday to approve of tuition tax credit.

The bill would provide a tax credit to the parents of students in parochial and private schools. President Carter has proposed an alternative which would give increased financial aid to students themselves. Last University President John Solberg and Congressman Michael Harrington of Massachusetts have offered Congress yet another idea. The Jewish and Vance finding others called would overhaul existing federally funded tuition aid programs into a giant long term program for college undergraduates. As more details. Presently the federal government provides aid to low and some middle income students through various programs administered by AGW. There is a basic education opportunity Grant Program which provides outright grants to undergraduates and there are loans and loan guarantees. The National Defense loan program which is the backbone of the college aid program administers loans to students in need with a 10 year 3 percent interest payback scheme. The program has come under fire recently because of a growing default

rate as high as 90 percent at some institutions where the loans are administered. Boston University President John Silber the mentor of the tuition events fund feels it is time to overhaul the loan program. The loans are the worst thing that we could offer to children of the poor and children of the lower middle class. Those youngsters go to college and university in order to break the cycle of poverty. If they end up borrowing a great deal of money they are going to end up stranded on the fringes of poverty and working the first 10 or 15 years of their careers merely to pay off debts instead of advancing the home of their own. Beginning to educate their own children of developing a new standard of living which is one of the objectives they had in mind when they attended college or university in the first place. Now with regard to the loan program it also suffers another defect and that is that many students have through the last decade become increasingly indifferent to the rejection of their legal responsibilities.

Students after having graduated from college simply declare bankruptcy in order to avoid the repayment of their debt and then they may go on to very lucrative positions in government in law in medicine or in a variety of fields. Now this is intolerable because a student who invades his his financial obligations jeopardizes a program on which. The success in the educational opportunity of other people depends for the loan program is under under fire at the present time because the default rate has now reached 13 percent and intolerably high level. D be e o g f c o g. And college work study programs are inadequate because they offer nothing to children from families earning above 15 to 20 thousand a year and those families if they have three or four children in them are desperately poor and in adequately positioned to finance the cost of higher education for their children.

So there needs to be some correction there under Silver's proposal sophomores juniors and seniors and rolled in colleges and universities would be advanced up to $5000 for tuition and $1000 for room and board each year. After graduation that same student would be taxed each year by the Internal Revenue Service at a rate of 2 percent of yearly earnings. That 2 percent tax would end only after one hundred fifty percent of the advances paid off the 50 percent surcharges added to offset death or disability as well as to make up for students who never earn enough to pay back their advance. The program would eliminate national defense loans at a number of other federally funded tuition aid programs start up funds for the program would cost the treasury 4.5 billion dollars annually. But Silver claims within 20 years the program would pay for itself. The program which was introduced by Congressman Michael Harrington will have to compete this year and perhaps next year in Congress with a proposed a wishing tax credit. Silver claims the tax credit may gain support in an election year but will not go very far to relieve the

high cost of higher education. Financial Aid Administrators at the nation's universities will be evaluating Silver's proposal in the next several months. One of those administrators is Charles Devlin of Northeastern University in Boston. Devlin who was skeptical of the tuition advance fund proposal would prefer to see existing grant programs fully funded. I think all of these programs should be looked at very closely actually being brought together under one agreeable program either whether it be a grant type program or a long time program. It's very easy to give out grants. Because you know you have to do is keep track of who you gave them out to. You don't have to go and chase them afterwards. What is the federal position towards higher education I think it all comes down to that. Does. Does the. R is the federal position that. Higher education should be. Treated like the G.I. Bill for

example after World War 2 I think it was worth it. The dollars spent for the G.I. bill as was much of it well worth it in today's society. Is that what the feds want to continue to do. Or do they just want to set and set up as. An and pass along programs because it's always once easy to pass a long program. When you say they whoever the recipient is going to have to pay it back. And I think that it's a popularly more popular to pass a long program and fund a long program than it is to pass a grant program and fully fund then I can I have to get back to the fully fund in the grant program. Because the program I live in basic ground have never been fully funded although introduced this year in Congress the tuition advance fund will probably not see serious debate until next year. Until then be you President sober and Congressman Harrington will be seeking support of the proposal from private and public institutions around the country. One area where the fund is expected

to find the most support is from middle income families with college age children. It is that group which will be affected the most by such a fund or National Public Radio this is Greg Fitzgerald in Boston. This is the season of college graduations time for seniors to leave school and to venture forth into the working world. The time for reflection on one's undergraduate career. Unfortunately many students view their college experience as isolating and insulating from real world experience. When a program does exist which counts work

and life experience toward obtaining a college degree. David teller has more on this university without walls. Yes I went to the free universities and they took them and I applied to them. But they always told me that I needed to go full time or part time at beginning in front of a uni defers here and there. I showed that he had to be a professional no teacher was working as a professional and I have had time to spare to lose repeating or studying again he's at a near ready when graphic artist has a dog got a guitar decided to get a college degree. He entered a program at the University of Massachusetts called the university without whirls the program allowed him to continue his professional life while working towards his degree at the same time. The university without Wells has 250 students at four UMass campuses around the state. It is one of a growing number of what are called external degree programs. Unlike traditional academic institutions such programs stress practical life experience and counted for academic credit.

Mark Levine is director of the Boston center of the university without walls. He points out that although extra degree programs appear innovative their emphasis on experience or learning is a return to an older way of looking at education. For me it's the concept is extremely classic I'm not sure by the way that everybody in the field would put it in these terms but I think certainly some would that very traditional notion of education is very traditional epistemology is that that experience is is a very very essential source of learning and way before the university was invented. Not only was experience seen as a source say by Plato but learning was seen as a prelude to action. So the notion that that one goes off to a separate place and there's something very abstract is really fairly recent and may not be. At the heart of of what learning is about Mark Levine.

According to Levine the university without walls attracts a wide variety of students many of them are older and already established in diverse career fields. They come to the university without walls because it allows them to develop a curriculum tailored to their interests through internships and original majors. They can also get a degree quickly without leaving their jobs or altering their lifestyles to become full time students. When a student enters the program he must develop what is called a prior learning portfolio. On the basis of this evaluation of all kinds of previous learning experience he is granted a certain amount of credits towards the degree. According to Mark Levine the process of defining and justifying what a student has learned often becomes a kind of therapeutic self-examination. But I think there's a very very important kind of. Re-evaluation reassessment or assessment of just who they are and what's next for them they often start thinking about you know various sectors of their life their family life their work life. They become somewhat philosophical or at times really talk about

values that have been present or not present in their life up until this point so I think also maybe the most important thing is that they get a kind of rent because they start really knowing what they do know they see themselves as well as worthy and this allows them to go on to the ventures and you only see things very flat and suddenly you reevaluate your whole life and you kind of see taking theme insurance just like you have control of everything around you it's pretty good because they don't got a guitar graduated through the university without was last year. Although he feels that it helped him to gain perspective on his life and work he stresses that some people might be better off in a more structured academic environment. Some of the people that can hear we've been prepared we have been three. Serve those who bring in their own professional life. They came with the idea that it's a kind of different program but they're expecting what a regular prime gives you so many to tell you what to do what to study how many books to read.

There's no such a thing here you do. You set up your own guidelines and even your own reading on your own learning. So there is one point which some people both who are saying kind of Tracey's because the game here say Well stuffing going down you know nobody's telling me what to do and you get to you know central to the university without was the relationship among the students got a guitar compares the atmosphere to that of a Spanish coffee house. There is he says a real sense of community support a willingness to share ideas and feelings. He explains why this is so. Maybe because of the unique kind of experience many are fashionable We had always had our prayer learning we talked to others I saw how we were being either people you know or by a slice that I would future to finish. Because he's not a man like people kind of a very normal way when you go to school the second of you stop everything and you go to school you know you meet people I say well let Next year I'm quitting my job because I'm going to school. It's like a whole three

here you do your regular life and come to school. I think that makes people more aware of each other. I look to be like in the cloud graphic artist has I dug out a guitar. This is David Tyler. I'll take a look at some of this week's new American inflation quickly supplanted Africa's wars as a leading knows when the big jump in prices was announced. But the price of meat up more than six and a half percent in a month and fresh vegetables up almost 10 percent. The

rate at which inflation climbed was almost an entire percent in a single month. Unless could this would push the annual rate of inflation beyond 10 percent. What the economists calls double digit inflation. The president's monitor of inflation Robert Strauss said there's little I can say to the public except stay away from T-bone steaks for a while. But Strauss is reported seeking to get the president more personally involved than other administration leaders to try to find a handle to some brake on inflation. Chairman Miller of the Federal Reserve pressed the urgency of price restraint on private industry in talking to the steel industry yesterday. The Fed has moved to tighten the money supply but with private industry producing for office the nation's goods and services. Miller said its restraint is essential. The chairman of U.S. Steel resist the job warning as much as George Meany of labor a growing number of businesses are reported offering cooperation the big Aetna insurance company announced yesterday it would hold executive salary

increases to 5 percent for a year as AT&T has similarly pledged. And the big auto companies exhibiting evenhandedness the wage and price stabilization Council has named two unions whose wage increase demands it calls inflationary. The government's Trade Commission turned down an appeal by the zinc industry to have low priced zinc imports curtailed claiming it could not compete with their prices. But the total record on resistance to increasing inflation is far from substantial. The weeks are returned to a Cold War rhetoric at the U.N. which he did up to a confrontation at the NATO's conference that followed President Carter led off the NATO meeting by charging the Soviets with interference in the domestic affairs of African governments. He charged the Cubans with a hand in the invasion of Zaire. This became both an international and domestic issue. The Cuban representative at the U.N. hotly denied it as did the Soviets Mimico the US Senate Foreign Relations

Committee questioned what evidence the president hand and opened an investigation of any action by the Cuban the president and leading NATO allies joined in charging the Soviets with a threatening buildup of weapons in Europe. President Carter promised NATO the United States will use all its forces for the defense of Europe. The most important conference result he said was the decision to spend a hundred billion over the next 10 years to strengthen defenses. The United States would provide half of this. The administration laid off its efforts for an early solid agreement to measure the Soviet moves. It had Secretary Khalaf on I'll give up a planned trip to Moscow for research talks as a protest against Soviet conviction of a critic of the sudden serious charges of the president against the Soviets and Cubans follows vehement expressions by Pres.. That led Britain's prime minister Callaghan to lead a day United States Columbus is discovering

Africa Senate criticism of the Brzezinski views was voiced by Senator McGovern. We cannot conduct foreign policy as though every stirring in Africa Asia or the Indian Ocean was another Cuban missile crisis he said. But President Carter declares his highest priority in foreign policy is appeal to the Congress ban on military aid to Turkey. He supplied 14 congressmen to both parties who attended a White House meeting on this yesterday with arguments for repeal. It's driven a wedge between the United States and Turkey between the United States and Greece and between Turkey and Greece he has said it's taken very seriously the cohesiveness of the NATO's one alliance that is stalemated progress on Cyprus. The president had promised this effort for appeal to Turkey's prime minister at the NATO's conference. The Greek prime minister warned him that repeal would damage Greek-American relations and set back negotiations on Cyprus. Congress banned for military aid to Turkey after the Turks used is received from the United States to invade

and hold much of the land of the Greek Cypriots. The president is also resuming on military aid to Nicaragua which had been cut off some months ago because of repression of human rights by the Somoza government whose critics see no change in its practices. The press spokesmen are expressing consternation at the Supreme Court decision which denies the present unity from search and seizure. The five to three decision follows chief justice Burger's views that the press has no more right to protection under the First Amendment than any other business. But the three dissenters call the ruling a violation of the Constitution. Two lower courts agreed with this but were reversed part of Stewart stated the dissent perhaps as a matter of abstract policy a newspaper office should receive no more protection from unannounced police searches than the office of a doctor or a bank. But our Constitution does not explicitly protect the practice of medicine or the business of banking from all abridgement by government. It does

explicitly protect the freedom of the press. But the majority up held an unannounced police search of the Stanford University student newspaper with a warrant authorizing them to look for photographs they believed the paper might have made that would identify students who had engaged in a campus fight with police. They found nothing but the warrant enabled them to rummage through the files of the paper had a subpoena been issued for the paper to produce the item sought. The police search would have been avoided. The court decision is the ultimate defeat of the press in its long struggle to protect its confidentiality against demands of courts and prosecutors to disclose the suspected evidence. The majority decision by Justice White omits any reference to the First Amendment but cites the fourth that no warrants for search and seizure shall be issued except upon probable cause. WYDEN held there was probable cause and that the newspaper had no claim of exemption. The president

Associated Press said the ruling could open the door to harassment of a newspaper. Ben Bradlee of The Washington Post said on to this story in the Pentagon Papers could have been seized before they could be published. The government can always find a judge to issue a warrant he said. In the face of a threatened veto the House of Representatives voted that tuition credit for parents of students in private colleges and went further to include parochial schools. The attorney general immediately declared parochial school aid unconstitutional. Secretary color final of 80 W. himself a Catholic issued a statement that the parochial schools of this country will never see a dollar of the unconstitutional aid the House voted today because the courts will invalidate it. But a Senate committee has also approved it to Asian credit bill. The Senate has repeatedly voted for such tuition credit. That was debated eight hours to pass a bill that would allow two hundred fifty dollars a year tax credit for a private college student. One hundred dollars for a private school pupil.

The arguments for it. Well the importance of maintaining private education and of ending middle income families. The president as an alternative proposes an expansion of federal aid to colleges to a billion dollars. Senator Brooke has asked the Senate Ethics Committee for a meeting to explain the misstatements he has admitted in handing his complicated family finances. He's assured his office staff he means to continue as a candidate for re-election. But the Democratic nomination which last week same nearly worthless has become a prize attracting self 5 7 Democratic aspirants. The most impressive of these Paul Tsongas congressman of Lowell announced only after Brooke's confession he takes a full page ad in this morning's papers to present his record. The Boston Globe investigation one of the admissions admissions out of the Senate continues to delve further and keeps the record on the front page. The sudden death of Alabama senator James Allen well have its effect in the Senate where he was the master of the filibuster.

For Friday the second day of June 1978 that Street Journal original news magazine heard Monday through Friday at 4:30 or editor for The Journal Marcia Hirtz today's engineer Steve go away and I broke out news. Of a festive but not fractious Friday.