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March 02, 2006- Norton and Davis move to reauthorize D.C.'s college tuition program

March 3, 2006


NORTON AND DAVIS MOVE TO REAUTHORIZE D.C.’s COLLEGE TUITION PROGRAM WITH CONFIDENCE IN ITS APPROVAL

March 2, 2006

Washington, DC—Congresswoman Eleanor Holmes Norton (D-DC) and Government Reform Committee Chairman Tom Davis (R-VA) today introduced a bill to reauthorize the popular District of Columbia College Access Act of 1999 for another five years to assure the continued existence of the D.C. Tuition Assistance Grant Program (DCTAG), that Norton said, has “far exceeded all expectations.”

**(Reach DCTAG at 727-2824 or click here)

DCTAG acts as a substitute for an expanded university system for the District, which unlike every state, has no unified system of several colleges and universities, but only one state university. The program allows D.C. students to attend public colleges or universities in the United States at low in-state tuition rates or to receive $2,500 annually to attend certain private colleges and universities in the region or private Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCU) throughout the country.

The program won praise for its unqualified success at a Senate D.C. Subcommittee oversight hearing on Tuesday. Mayor Anthony Williams testified that TAG is credited with a 35 percent increase in D.C. students attending college while the rate of growth elsewhere in the country has seriously lagged. For the most recent school year, almost 5,000 students received funding from TAG to enroll in universities and colleges in 45 states, the District of Columbia and the U.S. Virgin Islands. More than half of these students are the first in their families to attend college.

Norton said that she was grateful that the President has shown his confidence in the program by including $35 million in his FY 07 budget for DCTAG, an increase of almost $2 million over last year’s funding. However, she said, “We are working to make sure that issues raised in the Senate about the cost of providing equal higher education opportunities for District residents do not undercut the record breaking pace at which our young people are going to college and coming back home to help expand our economy.” Norton said she especially appreciated the strong support that TAG continues to have from the Republicans leaders who were instrumental in helping to get TAG enacted, particularly Rep. Tom Davis and Sen. George Voinovich, among others. “It would be tragic to allow this immensely successful and popular higher education program to become a victim of its own success,” Norton said. “The rising cost of the program is due entirely to increasing numbers of students choosing to attend college, not to the cost of the grant, which has always been capped at $10,000 annually for public colleges and $2,500 for private colleges. Yet, D.C. residents and families have been willing to make the necessary sacrifices to meet the cost of large annual increases in state tuition nationwide, despite the modest family incomes of most of our students.” The Congresswoman is working with D.C. State Education Office officials to find acceptable ways to harness costs. She believes that the huge increase in college attendance will level off soon because those increases have come largely from increased interest in college because of the financial access TAG affords, not from overall population expansion.

Norton’s work to expand higher education opportunities for college bound D.C. students also includes the District’s only state university, the University of the District of Columbia (UDC). In 1999, with interest increasing in the original College Access Act that produced TAG, Norton insisted that Congress also grant UDC the long-sought HBCU federal funding status for undergraduate programs that had always been denied. Last month the Congresswoman introduced a bill to extend HBCU funding to graduate programs at the University of the District of Columbia. Norton and her Congressional Black Caucus colleagues are seeking an increase in HBCU funding this year.

(Reach DCTAG at 727-2824 or click here.)