Biden’s Plan for Education: What Does it Mean for Dominican?

By Citlali (Cici) Ruiz

 Dominican students should not get too excited about president-elect Joe Biden’s promises for higher education and debt relief, according to experts.

The “Biden Plan for Education Beyond High School” proposes to increase spending on Minority-Serving Institutions, such as Dominican.

The proposal continues the College for All Act (introduced by Bernie Sanders in 2017) that would give free education to families that make less than $125,000. Other things Biden proposes are

• Make a $50 billion investment in workforce training, including community-college business partnerships and apprenticeships.
• Create seamless pathways between high school, job training, community college, and four-year programs to help students get their degrees and credentials faster.
• Target additional financial support to low-income and middle class individuals by doubling the maximum value of Pell grants, significantly increasing the number of middle-class Americans who can participate in the program.

For Dominican students, a majority who are Hispanic or rely on Pell grants to get an education, this could spell great news.

However, students should not be too quick to be excited.

“It’s hard to say how the plan will work,” said Victoria Spivak, director of financial aid. “The Biden-Harris proposal is not a legislative law, it’s a plan talking about what they think is important. I can’t say for certain how it will affect Dominican since it’s far in the future.”

Political Science Professor David Dolence echoed Spivak’s uncertainty. He explained the ambiguous nature of political campaigns and how they promise a lot of “impossible” things.

“You have to pick out of that platform a couple of items that you think are possible and go after them,” Dolence said. “There are a lot of cases where a politician will take things off their platform and achieve them but they will never achieve all of them. They will pick and choose which ones.”

“This is the problem with being president, you can’t do everything but everybody wants you to do everything,” he said.

Although the Democrats control the House of Representatives, the Republicans control the Senate for now, making it difficult for Biden to achieve his goals.

Should Biden’s proposal go through, students would be more than excited to receive the extra help.

“I believe that reducing the tuition at Dominican is necessary,” Said junior Theresa Cox. “Not only have students and their families been greatly devastated by the effects COVID-19, they are [also] struggling to pay tuition.”

Joshur Mazzone, a junior resident at Dominican, had this to say about the prospect.

“I don’t really know how to feel about this honestly. I would be happy with a reduction in tuition,” he said. “I just need to read more to find out about the situation. I’ve been preoccupied and ignorant lately.”