During the first week of February, Sonia Mañjon, Vice President for Diversity and Strategic Partnerships, went to Washington, D.C. to advocate for the University’s inclusion in the federal stimulus package. She joined a group of Presidents and VPs from the Connecticut Conference of Independent Colleges (CCIC) to push for federal support for higher education in the stimulus bill as it was being written. The $787 billion bill, which President Obama is scheduled to sign today, offers significant support to institutions of higher education, but not nearly as much as the original plan that was passed by the House of Representatives allocated.

Mañjon took her three-day trip to participate in the annual meeting of the National Association of Independent Colleges and Universities, the umbrella organization of which CCIC is a part. While in Washington, Mañjon and the other CCIC administrators met with all of Connecticut’s legislators individually, including Senators Christopher Dodd and Joseph Lieberman.

While the Connecticut legislators were all in support of funding for higher education anyway, Mañjon tried to push them to try to convince other members of Congress to allocate more funding to education.

“We did urge [the Connecticut legislators] to take leadership roles among their colleagues who were not as aware of the major impacts of the stimulus plan to higher education projects,” she said.

While earlier incarnations of the bill called for direct federal funding of “shovel-ready” projects—that is, construction projects that can be implemented immediately—the final plan will be implemented through the state. Connecticut is receiving $3 billion from the federal government, a portion of which will be used to fund shovel-ready projects throughout the state. A list of such projects was compiled by each mayor in Connecticut and forwarded on to the Governor’s office. The amount of money that Connecticut ultimately received in the stimulus plan depended partly on how many of those projects the Governor decided required immediate funding.

The main project that Wesleyan hoped to receive funds for was the construction of the new Molecular and Life Sciences facility, a $160 million project that had to be shelved in the fall due to insufficient funds. Mañjon argues that, in addition to helping the University, this project would help the people of Middletown by providing jobs and stimulating the economy.

Although Mayor Sebastian Giuliano of Middletown did not recommend Wesleyan’s projects to the Governor, the CCIC makes their own recommendations for college-centered projects directly, and as such, the University’s projects are up for consideration for state funds. The plan proposed by the House included $6 billion to kick-start building projects on college campuses. Now, that portion of the plan has been cut, and Mañjon suspects that it is unlikely for a project the size of the new science building to receive funding. Much more likely would be funding for renovations to historic buildings on campus, such as Russell House, and renovations to make buildings more handicap accessible and to bring them up to ADA standards.

In practice, most of the bill’s impact on higher education will come in the form of direct aid to students, not to institutions. The economic stimulus plan will increase the maximum amount of a Pell Grant, a need-based federal educational grant, by $500, from $4,850 to $5,350, amounting to a total cost of $15.6 billion. In an effort to attract Republicans to sign the bill, Senate Democrats cut $2 billion in funding for Pell Grants from the bill passed by the House of Representatives. According to Jennifer Lawton, Director of Financial Aid, Wesleyan has approximately 360 Pell Grant recipients.

“The [funding] increase to Pell will benefit low-income students nationwide by improving access and affordability,” she wrote in an email to the Argus.

“Five hundred dollars goes a long way towards offsetting the rising costs of tuition,” added Saul Carlin, Vice President of the WSA.

Tax credits included in the stimulus bill will also help make college more affordable. The stimulus increases the tuition tax credit to $2,500 and makes it 40 percent refundable, so that families who don’t earn enough to pay income tax would still get up to $1,000 in extra tuition help. The bill also allocates an additional $200 million in funding for the Federal Work Study program, but it is unclear at this point whether Wesleyan will benefit from this increase. Here too, the amount of funding that is being supplied to the Work Study program is much smaller than the $490 million in the House bill.

Carlin is pleased that the government is supporting higher education.

“I’m really encouraged to see that Wesleyan students are going to benefit from the stimulus package,” he said. “All too often there is a disconnect between what goes on in Washington and the lives of students. I hope this is a sign of things to come from the Obama administration, in terms of making higher education accessible to more people.”

Mañjon noted that a lot of the debate regarding the stimulus plan deals with how and if it will stimulate the economy in the next three to six months.

“What many people don’t realize is that without the federal aid in the form of Pell Grants and income tax credits, many students won’t be able to afford college next year,” she said.

This would have a negative impact, not only because students would have to forfeit their college educations, but also because it would add more unemployed workers to an already strained market, she said.

Although the final stimulus bill does not contain as much support for higher education as earlier incarnations had allocated, Mañjon is happy with the outcome.

“It’s an overall positive step for the country and the economy,” she said. “Just the fact that Obama is signing a stimulus plan tomorrow is major.”

“Our country is hemorrhaging,” she added. “We need to stop the hemorrhaging.”