In 1974, the average cost of tuition, room and board at a public university was $1,563. At a private university, those costs averaged $3,403, according to the National Center for Education Statistics.

That same year, New York state established the Tuition Assistance Program, a need-based grant that was created to help students afford college and pursue higher education.

Now, 40 years after its inception, TAP is still used by students statewide. However, Julia White, a project coordinator for the New York Public Interest Research Group, said it’s time to give TAP a face-lift. She said the program badly needs updates, as it no longer serves its original purpose.

“It was created to help students and it’s no longer doing that,” White said. “Higher education is expensive, and this program was created so any New Yorker could pursue higher education if they wanted to. It’s terribly outdated at this point in time.”

TAP hadn’t been updated since 2001, but that finally changed when the most recent state budget was adopted. Before the budget was adopted on Monday, a student could receive a maximum $5,000 grant through TAP. Under the new budget, the maximum grant has been increased by $165.

A coalition of organizations have been advocating on the local and state level to reform TAP both financially and logistically, said Sue Mead, director of the New York State Financial Aid Administrators Association. She added that the coalition had hoped the state budget would increase the maximum award even more, but said the added money is a step in the right direction.

“The coalition was asking for a maximum award of $6,500, but anything was better than nothing,” Mead said.

Jeniea Howard, a junior policy studies major at SU and member of NYPIRG, said TAP is critical because it makes higher education more accessible and affordable. Howard said she personally receives TAP, and it’s especially useful because students don’t have to pay it back.

“It’s very important for it to be updated, especially with increasing tuition prices,” she said.

On March 21, SU announced that tuition prices for the 2014–15 academic year would increase by 3.6 percent. Tuition across the country has been steadily climbing for the last decade, and Mead said these changes need to be taken into account when assessing TAP reforms.

“Students we have today in colleges are different from students in college 40 years ago,” Mead said.

While TAP had been stagnant for a long time, Mead said much activity has recently pushed for changes in both the program’s funding and logistics. For example, members of NYPIRG attended a rally at New York City Hall March 25 to unveil their platform for TAP reform.

That platform not only called for an increase in funding, but also an expansion of students eligible for TAP. Currently, graduate students, undocumented students and students who have defaulted on student loans are among those who are ineligible to receive assistance through the program.

Farouk Abdallah, a campus program director at NYPIRG, said the group is also focused on getting the program changed so those students can receive aid through TAP. However, Mead said making changes to the TAP policy can be a slow and political process.

“There’s a lot of lobbying and a lot of politics that goes on and no matter how hard you work, it might not change right away,” she said.

Mead and White both expressed interest in creating a system that would periodically review the effectiveness of the program, preventing it from staying the same like it did for the last 13 years. White said TAP has lost usefulness partly because a review system doesn’t currently exist.

“If you create a program that’s supposed to help individuals, there should be a system in place to check on its effectiveness,” she said.

Despite TAP’s current flaws and the limited aid increase in this year’s state budget, most people agree that the program can be beneficial. Abdallah said an efficient TAP program will benefit both New York state and the economy as a whole.

“Someone with a four-year degree makes more than someone without one,” he said. “Just go by the numbers and it’s pretty crystal clear.”

In the long run, Mead said an effective TAP system is vital for students to have the ability to pursue higher education without the fear of going into debt.

Said Mead: “As we progress, this is a nation of students who will be in massive student loan debt. So to minimize the debt they’ll incur and to give money without borrowing is to the benefit of students of New York.”

Published on April 8, 2014 at 3:11 am

Contact Brett: blsamuel@syr.edu | @Brett_Samuels27