Republicans are exploiting the certification gap they helped create

Since November, there has been a lot of discussion about the so-called “diploma gap” that showed up in the election results, with a majority of voters without a four-year college degree voting for Donald Trump and a majority of those with a four-year college degree. Degree voted for Kamala Harris.

In response to the division in testimony, some have claimed that Democrats have become the party of elites who have forgotten about working-class Americans. Although the Democratic Party’s failure to fight for the needs of working-class Americans, including supporting disastrous trade policies for American workers, has much to be criticized, the idea of ​​Republicans becoming champions of the working class is laughable.

Republicans have supported the same trade policies, undermined unions, and consistently opposed minimum wage increases at the federal and state levels.

Missing from the education gap analysis is the fact that the widening gap between Americans with and without a college education is a result of the Republican-led attack on the American working class.

It is true that Americans should not go to college in order to have a decent life, but it is also true that millions of poor and working-class Americans have relied on higher education to improve their circumstances and increase their wages. However, over the past four decades, these opportunities have diminished greatly in part due to policies championed by the Republican Party.

At the federal level, the Pell Grant represents the most important form of support for poor and working-class Americans to attend college. Since its inception in 1965, the Pell Grant has provided financial support to more than 80 million Americans.

However, over the past four decades, the purchasing power of the Pell Grant has declined. In the 1970s, the Pell Grant covered approximately 80 percent of tuition, fees, room and board at public colleges and universities. Currently, the Pell Grant covers less than a third of these costs.

The decline in the purchasing power of the Pell Grant began in 1980, when Republican President Ronald Reagan dramatically reduced federal spending on higher education. Between 1980 and 1985, federal spending on higher education fell by 25 percent, including a $338 million reduction in the Pell Grant program.

Since then, Republicans have continued to seek cuts to the Pell Grant program, including efforts by Congress in 2011 and 2015 and during Trump’s first term in office.

In addition to the Pell Grant, Republicans have for decades divested in public colleges and universities. Public institutions of higher education provide a more accessible, affordable, and efficient college opportunity for working-class Americans.

Although Democrats and Republicans have reduced funding for state higher education institutions over the past four decades, research has shown how state disinvestment in higher education is more likely to occur under Republican governors’ mandates. Research has also shown how Democratic-controlled states spend more on higher education per pupil than Republican-controlled states.

Cuts in federal financial aid and divestment in public colleges and universities, policies championed by Republicans, disproportionately affect the poor and working class. As government support for public higher education has declined, public colleges and universities have increasingly relied on tuition and fees as their main source of income.

While children of the wealthy can afford rising tuition fees, children of poor and working-class families are forced to take out loans to pay for college. As of 2020, student loan debt in the United States totaled more than $1.6 trillion, and the average college graduate owed more than $30,000 in school loans.

These factors, the result of political decisions, have contributed to the diplomacy gap that Republican officials are now seeking to exploit for political gain. There is no doubt that the Democratic Party is responsible for America’s failure to meet the needs of the working class, but to suggest that the Republican Party is the champion of the working class is inaccurate at best.

The real agenda for the working class must consist of aggressive reinvestment in Pell Grants and public institutions of higher education. Public institutions such as the City University of New York, Rutgers University-Newark, the University of California and California State Systems, and the University of Texas System, among others, have a long track record of providing students from poor and working-class families with welfare opportunities. Navigation.

At a time of widespread inequality, a commitment to meeting the needs of poor and working-class people requires a collective effort to eliminate the certification gap, not exploit it.

Domingo Morell is Associate Professor of Political Science and Public Service at New York University and a Public Voices Fellow at the OpEd Project. He is the author of Developing Scholars: Race, Politics, and the Pursuit of Higher Education.