Everyone’s talking about sequestration — some claim the policy will result in furloughs and job losses, longer waits and compromised security for air travel, holes in the social safety net, and weakening of national defense.
But what is sequestration, and how will it affect students’ access to financial aid?
The Budget Control Act of 2011, commonly called sequestration, requires $1.2 trillion in across-the-board cuts in the federal budget over the next ten years. The across-the-board cuts are due to Congress’ failure to agree on how to reduce the annual federal deficit by the January 1, 2013 deadline. The cuts amount to approximately 5-8% of both defense and nondefense discretionary program spending.
Sequestration is anticipated to impact career-technical education, including reductions to the State Grants for Career and Technical Education program and other workforce development programs that community colleges in particular provide. The Obama administration also anticipates cuts to Supplemental Educational Opportunity Grants and Federal Work-Study funds. (Luckily, Pell Grants are exempt from sequester this year.) These cuts will reduce the availability of financial aid and work-study programs for college students, making higher education less affordable and accessible, and forcing students to rely more on loans. Institutions that rely on federal research funds will also experience the cuts, resulting in the loss of grant-supported research jobs, a reduction in knowledge creation and scholarly output, and even long-term ‘brain drain.’
Want to learn more? All of the links above are search results from the library’s EBSCO databases. I recommend selecting Education Full Text and Newspaper Source Plus to search both databases simultaneously for more information about sequestration and it’s impact on higher education. Try the search string:
“Budget Control Act” OR sequestration AND higher education NOT carbon.
For the most up-to-date results, change the default sort from Relevance to Date Descending. Happy searching!