Stone, the first in her family to graduate from college, qualified for the maximum award in Pell Grants, the federal program that provides money for the country’s poorest students to attend college. The free aid was enough to cover all her costs at Atlantic Cape Community College in southern New Jersey, but it barely paid for a quarter of the more than $20,000 in-state tuition, room and board at Montclair. The school offered Stone no scholarships or grants, but she received several thousand dollars from the New Jersey Commission for the Blind and Visual Impaired. It wasn’t enough.
“Nobody should have to spend this much money, period. But in-state students going to public universities…the fact that I’m leaving with this much debt is absurd,” said Stone, 25, who plans to pursue a master’s degree in social work at Rutgers University this fall. “Higher education is supposed to be a public good, not just a private purchase that wealthy students get to enjoy.”
Amid state cuts in higher education funding and modest increases in federal grant aid eclipsed by rising tuition, African American, Latino and low-income students like Stone must borrow to get a degree, according to a new report from liberal think tank Demos.