Bennett's Fallacy

LAST WEEK. President Reagan's new Secretary of Education, William J. Bennett, held his first news conference. It came at a crucial point, one week after the Administration announced its new budget proposal, which included serious cutbacks in financial aid. Reagan had called for a cap of $4000 per student on all federal grant and loan aid, the establishment of an income ceiling of $32,500 for guaranteed student loan eligibility, and other extreme fiscal measures. The plan would mean cutting an estimated I million students currently on some form of assistance from the rolls altogether.

Enter Mr. Bennett. Unfortunately for anyone expecting even a few good words about financial aid and its role in the future of higher education, the former philosophy professor outdid the President himself in zealousness for a new era of austerity and education for the rich only.

Bennett suggested that in order to make up the loss in federal and, students should give up stereos, cars, and three-week vacations at the beach. It should hardly be necessary to point out that those who would be hit the hardest by the proposed cuts would have little luck selling the above-mentioned objects for some ten or twelve thousand dollars, even if they had them.

The secretary also commented, somewhat less than astutely that the aim of the new and system was to help those most in need Apparently, it did not occur to him that a $4000 cap might hurt those poor enough to need more than $10,000 in aid--not those in the upper-middle class who require only a few thousand dollars.

IN SHORT, the plan which Bennett so vigorously defended as nothing but a bit of belt-tightening would be an unmitigated disaster, effectively barring the poor and large sections of the middle class from attending private colleges, but providing no help to the already-overburdened public systems. In the words of John N. Brademas '49, the president of New York University. Bennett has declared himself in favor of a "war on middle income America." This is one war we must seek to win before it escalates any further.