Tuesday, May 22, 2018
On the road again, or...
History has just repeated itself, so that must mean it's time for farce.
One year ago I found myself traveling to Corning NY, for the SUNYFAP annual convention with my director, and the post on the trip can be found here. I went this year as well, although the circumstances were a little different: our director retires at the end of May 2018, so I went with my fellow counselor Chris, who will be the acting director until we hire a new one. I had to go, since Excelsior was the main topic, just as it was last year, along with a new wrinkle: Part Time Scholarship (PTS), applicable only to community colleges, and just as contradictory, opaque, and stress-inducing as Excelsior. It's small in size, but so are blue-ringed octopuses, and I prefer to avoid both.
The biggest change from last year to this one was not this new program, though I know I'll hate it and it will give me even more busywork, but that Excelsior is now a year old, so I was looking for direct, clear answers to questions we've been asking since day one. This was my mission, and it's one for which I'm uniquely suited. Talking to people and finding out information they'd rather not reveal is one of my specialties, so if anyone in the office can gain clarity, I would be that person.
In a perfect world, I wouldn't have need to go to the convention with this specific a goal in mind. SUNYFAP used to be a chance to network with your fellow financial professionals, search for new jobs, and have lenders and services take you out to dinner. New ethics rules and the Great Recession took care of all that, though I did get a nice coffee cup:
(For some reason the pic is banned because it's a possible alcoholic beverage. It's a freaking coffee cup! Anyway, on with the show...)
Cute, but I'm not sure it's possible. Couldn't it say that I make financial aid tolerable, or something less than torture? Anyway, you always learned new things at the conference, but they were general in nature and it was never necessary to go to learn about specific programs; we would have had training seminars locally, webinars, etc. Last year was supposed to be the exception; since Excelsior appeared out of nowhere and as the event was only a week later, that would have been the first training available anyway.
So why was it so important that I attend this year? Because the Higher Education Services Corporation (HESC), still hasn't really given schools any real clarity or official, written guidance, and we've been clamoring for both all year. This is not to say we're not getting any information at all; I have the coordinator on speed dial and we're on a first name basis. Still, in the nearly 20 years I've been a financial aid counselor, there has never been a program, on any level, that didn't come with specific, official rules in a guidebook when the aid type was introduced. Excelsior was slapped together over a weekend (seriously), and without any input from people in financial aid (seriously part 2), so HESC not having all it's paperwork together was excusable - a year ago. It's far less understandable today, and that uncertainty caused a sense of existential worry I couldn't quite place, something gnawing in my subconscious. I'd figure it out, but not until end of the trip.
Excelsior and the new scholarship were not the only topics covered, and I had a few presentations to watch before the main events. The first subject was Cross-Registration, an interesting policy that attempts to codify and digitize taking classes between SUNY campuses. Truthfully, cross registration has very little to do with financial aid; it's almost all admissions and academic advising, but there's money involved, so we're usually the first office called. We aren't the first state system to standardize this process; Florida and California have had policies in place for years. Because New York's system is older, and therefore more fragmented in a way FL's and CA's are not, our new system is a little different. Pre-approving classes for transfer between state schools used to be a paper intensive process, but now everything is online. It's not perfect, and there's still some confusion as to who can be charged what and why, but I actually like what SUNY did here. If we are changing our focus from providing opportunity to ensuring completion, this was a needed step. However, there's a loophole the size of the Holland Tunnel: schools can always say no to allowing a class to be taken at a different school. For example, SUNY Buffalo, rightly known for its engineering programs, will not allow a student to take Physics 404 at another college, even another SUNY. This specific example happened to a close friend of mine, and he remarked that the final exam at the other state school was the first chapter at Buffalo, so the exclusion was justified. With this, the schools maintain their academic independence, and for Buffalo, Binghamton, Albany, and Stony Brook, I understand. A community college having a blanket policy denying all applications if it offers the class itself? That's less excusable.
Another session worthy of my time was the general HESC update. This was not meant to cover individual programs, so this wasn't why I came, but it would prove interesting nonetheless. When a student applies for financial aid, he or she has to use tax forms from a specific year. Fall 2018 uses 2016's tax returns, as an example. If this is no longer representative of the household income, then there was a mechanism in place to review the circumstances. Give me a letter explaining the situation, and documentation as needed, and I may be able to lower your income. This only worked for federal aid (Pell), and if my calculations didn't get the students any free money, it wasn't worth the paperwork. Private schools do this much more often, since they give away their money as scholarships (really discounts on tuition).
HESC's aid programs had no such mechanism, until now. If the family had a divorce, legal separation, or a death in the family in the up to two years before the application period, then the student can now apply for an income adjustment. When I said the word now, I mean one week prior to my typing this sentence. The process and formula used are needlessly complicated, which is unsurprising considering this is New York State, but the good news is that I have nothing to do with it save awarding aid at HESC's direction. You apply online, send in your proof, and they crunch some numbers. It won't help that many people, but it could increase the number of Excelsior approvals. It could also have some unintended consequences. Legal separations can be done easily and undone just as quickly. Could families catch on and try to get more aid that way? It's possible, and if HESC doesn't ask for too much paperwork, it might work - in theory. It will depend on how much documentation HESC requires: proof of separate domiciles, utility bills, etc.
The other sessions on Wednesday were the standard boilerplate updates, and none had any real surprises or impact, so they aren't worth cataloging here. Once our afternoon sessions ended, we were on our own for dinner, and I was happy to eat some BBQ on Market street with my fellow WCC attendee. We talked mostly about the changes that were taking place at the school, with our director retiring and his taking over until a new boss is hired. If you told me in 2001 that I'd be the most senior counselor and he would be in charge, I'd have laughed out loud. Nevertheless, here we are, and I'm... worried. Oh well, at least I'll get plenty of overtime from now until October.
Thursday started with a breakfast buffet, multiple cups of coffee, and a little hope that the sessions about Excelsior and the PTS would make my job easier. These presentations would also be live-streamed and recorded, so my boss could watch with me. I warned her that my snark would be on full blast, but she didn't seem to mind.
The first presentation was nothing but a repeat of a webinar that my director and I watched a few months ago. It detailed the worst kind of bureaucratic busywork: the colleges receive form X-1234 and the schools send back form 1234-X, both as Excel spreadsheets. First, I already knew all this from the webinar; second, I don't I have any control over the electronic comings and goings of data, so this was irrelevant. Even worse, the person giving the presentation was the same monotone presenter from the webinar, and as she spoke my director and I were sending panicked text messages back and forth. I sat through it anyway, hoping for a kernel or two of new information. We didn't get any, and at this session, we weren't allowed to ask questions either.
The rebuttal to my angst is that not everyone watched the seminar the first time, so they needed this info. That's fair, in that some people may been recently given Excelsior as part of their jobs, but for the rest of us, it was a waste of time. At minimum, the session should have included some new information. Otherwise we could have watched the seminar in the comfort of our offices, and avoided the late snow squalls hitting the Finger Lakes and the Twin Tiers all week. Did I mention the weather was unusually cold and snowy? No? Well, I just did. I certainly wasn't getting 26,000 steps in a day this year.
The second seminar started off with a similar recap: who qualified, how much money the family could make, etc. However, there was some new information, and we would be able to ask questions. I had a series of questions prepared, naturally, courtesy of me and my boss prepping for the trip. Effective administration of a financial aid program is a negotiation between the rules, the regulations springing from those rules, and exceptions. To allow a functioning system to be created, governing principles must be created and explained. These guidelines allow us to decide what takes priority when a contradiction occurs or a situation pops up that isn't covered in the regulations. As Excelsior had no financial aid input in its final form, it is filled with contradictions that a non-profession wouldn't know existed. Absent these written rules, nor any guiding principles, our questions were the first real opportunity to force HESC to give answers on the record. With that I asked my questions. The responses were not only lacking but in one case, outright wrong.
One of those bedrock principles of financial aid is that you have to attend class for a certain period of time, and if you don't, your aid is either deleted or reduced. You aren't considered full time, because you didn't legitimately attempt full time studies. The worst (best?) part is that the student is still charged full time tuition. Since the professors don't report attendance until three or four weeks into the semester, registration would be closed at that point. As I tell students, you broke it; you bought it.
Both state and federal aid followed this line of thinking for as long as I've known, at least until Excelsior. Technically, it isn't financial aid anyway - it's a scholarship, but I feel we're splitting hairs. When the law was written, lawmakers used the term liability, so when a student incurs the full charge for full time classes, he or she receives Excelsior, regardless of attendance. However, if the student drops the class during the first few weeks of the term, the tuition charge wouldn't be fully charged, so the student would lose Excelsior. Does this mean they wanted students to blow off class but still remain registered? Probably not, but that's what happened. On the other hand, the law also states that the student must attempt full time study, which should mean you need to actually go to class. As per HESC, they didn't realize this was a problem until I pointed it out to HESC some 4 months ago by comparing the rules for Excelsior to TAP and how the aid programs have the similar language but aren't in sync. They said they would look into the contradiction, but for now, pay the student and they would get back to us.
We didn't hear back, so there I sat with the above scenario as one of my questions. I could have peppered her all day, given the opportunity. Mostly I'd have screamed why between inconsolable wails, but such Gestalt would have to wait. I asked my question, again pointing out the contradiction between TAP and Excelsior, and she told us that was had to pay students for both programs regardless of attendance. Our silence was deafening, then all the air was sucked out of the room.
After the initial shock, I and every other counselor in the room gasped at what she said. Either she was incorrect, or we have all been processing state aid incorrectly for at least 20 years. My boss sent me a text, asking if she heard correctly. I confirmed that she did, including the cries of disbelief. It's certainly possible that she could have made a mistake, but why were we so shocked? Because the presenter was the person in charge of all New York State aid. Whatever questions I had after that became irrelevant. I couldn't trust her answers, or I couldn't trust my own knowledge. On a certain level, I felt bad for her. I'm sure she's excellent at what her job demanded 18 months ago. The first Excelsior presentation detailing various spreadsheet types was much better. Then again, it was also a repeat.
While I was shocked to the point of defeat, others still had some fight. The questions came fast, and she did her best to keep up. I cannot say she actually tried to answer them. I could go back and listen to the recordings, but I'm not a masochist to the degree needed. One of the more pointed queries was when were getting the mythical regulations on paper with real guidance. She didn't know, and at that point I gave up.
The PTS session was next, and although I didn't want to attend, I sat through it. As expected, it was another publicity stunt with no real impact. Thankfully, the application is processed entirely by HESC, and the award is small: $1500 for the year. However, this ward can be back-dated to Fall 2017, which could pose problems with over-awards. At worst, it might be 1 or 2 students, but it was the principle We have yet to get a roster, so I'm not sure anyone even applied for it. The scholarship has no specific income criterion and only a small pool of money from which to draw, so not everyone would be approved. We were told that awards would go to the most needy based on income, but anyone can apply. I'm sure I'll have some explaining to do in the future and I'm not happy at the arbitrary method of handing out the money, but of all the ways this program could have gone, this was fairly benign.
There was another session between PTS and dinner, but I had no desire to attend it. It wasn't that important anyway, so went to my room, thought about what had transpired, and moped. I eventually mustered enough ambition to walk to a Van Heusen store very close to the hotel, when I bough 2 nice shirts on sale for $10 each. This definitely boosted my mood, but I don't want to say it was the highlight of the trip, if only because that would be really sad. I also went to Wegmans for some organic produce for my fiance, texting her a picture of a nice watermelon. Again, I was feeling better. It's the simple things, right? Right? Please say yes so I can maintain my dignity.
The mental break afforded by my excursion allowed some thoughts to bubble up from my subconscious. The Excelsior presentations were difficult to process, due to near-complete lack of new information or clarity, but there was more I didn't notice. Our presenter was lauded as an expert at her job, and I'm sure she was, but not anymore. Then I realized that she didn't have more guidance because she had none to give. She was only a little better informed than we were. How was such a thing possible? Because she was shut-out of the process in the beginning, and remained excluded to this day. There was no attempt to fix this unwieldy mess, because the legislators didn't care. They got positive press in the beginning, and that was it. The Part-Time Scholarship, though less ambitious, was riddled with the same structural problems as Excelsior. The $1500 wouldn't pay for very much, and Excelsior was essentially a mirage. So what was the end game? I finally understood as I loaded my cart with organic spinach and a box of pumpkin pie K-cups left over from Thanksgiving: there is no end game. Last year it was Excelsior; this year gave us PTS, and next year it will be something else. Until Albany finds the sweet spot of sustained accolades from progressives and the media without spending any real money, financial aid will continue to deal with these half-baked plans. Eventually, politicians will find some other aspect of the economy with which to establish their progressive bonafides, and I can go back to actually helping people.
In the weeks between the conference and today, someone at work asked me for an update on Excelsior. I, fully tenured and having no filter between my brain and my mouth, said it was a disaster from top to bottom. This response was not popular with those in charge, but I did get a fully chuckle from at least one person. Whether he was laughing at the line or my delivery, I can't say.
At its heart, Excelsior represents government at it worst. Politicians, hungry for sound bites and looking at higher office, take what is ostensibly a good idea: free college, free healthcare, easy mortgages so people with bad credit can buy houses, etc., and a slap together laws without any thought as to the process involved or potential consequences, all without spending any real money. This mindset is not limited to New York; the Federal government bequeathed financial aid the Academic Competitiveness Grant (ACG), which gave us hours of work for an extra $375 a semester, and a program for vets, which I can only call unemployment for vets, forcing them to take a full time course load in a two year program they'd never earn. Not a single recipient actually finished his degree, but he did get $800 a month for 18 months. This was at the height of the Great Recession. As bad as these programs were, they were at least temporary, as both were limited under the statues that created them and not renewed. Excelsior will limp along until it is politically safe to end it, which may be never. Until then, I will sit at my desk, reviewing students, giving money, taking money back, and wondering how I got into this mess in the first place.
One year ago I found myself traveling to Corning NY, for the SUNYFAP annual convention with my director, and the post on the trip can be found here. I went this year as well, although the circumstances were a little different: our director retires at the end of May 2018, so I went with my fellow counselor Chris, who will be the acting director until we hire a new one. I had to go, since Excelsior was the main topic, just as it was last year, along with a new wrinkle: Part Time Scholarship (PTS), applicable only to community colleges, and just as contradictory, opaque, and stress-inducing as Excelsior. It's small in size, but so are blue-ringed octopuses, and I prefer to avoid both.
The biggest change from last year to this one was not this new program, though I know I'll hate it and it will give me even more busywork, but that Excelsior is now a year old, so I was looking for direct, clear answers to questions we've been asking since day one. This was my mission, and it's one for which I'm uniquely suited. Talking to people and finding out information they'd rather not reveal is one of my specialties, so if anyone in the office can gain clarity, I would be that person.
In a perfect world, I wouldn't have need to go to the convention with this specific a goal in mind. SUNYFAP used to be a chance to network with your fellow financial professionals, search for new jobs, and have lenders and services take you out to dinner. New ethics rules and the Great Recession took care of all that, though I did get a nice coffee cup:
(For some reason the pic is banned because it's a possible alcoholic beverage. It's a freaking coffee cup! Anyway, on with the show...)
Cute, but I'm not sure it's possible. Couldn't it say that I make financial aid tolerable, or something less than torture? Anyway, you always learned new things at the conference, but they were general in nature and it was never necessary to go to learn about specific programs; we would have had training seminars locally, webinars, etc. Last year was supposed to be the exception; since Excelsior appeared out of nowhere and as the event was only a week later, that would have been the first training available anyway.
So why was it so important that I attend this year? Because the Higher Education Services Corporation (HESC), still hasn't really given schools any real clarity or official, written guidance, and we've been clamoring for both all year. This is not to say we're not getting any information at all; I have the coordinator on speed dial and we're on a first name basis. Still, in the nearly 20 years I've been a financial aid counselor, there has never been a program, on any level, that didn't come with specific, official rules in a guidebook when the aid type was introduced. Excelsior was slapped together over a weekend (seriously), and without any input from people in financial aid (seriously part 2), so HESC not having all it's paperwork together was excusable - a year ago. It's far less understandable today, and that uncertainty caused a sense of existential worry I couldn't quite place, something gnawing in my subconscious. I'd figure it out, but not until end of the trip.
Excelsior and the new scholarship were not the only topics covered, and I had a few presentations to watch before the main events. The first subject was Cross-Registration, an interesting policy that attempts to codify and digitize taking classes between SUNY campuses. Truthfully, cross registration has very little to do with financial aid; it's almost all admissions and academic advising, but there's money involved, so we're usually the first office called. We aren't the first state system to standardize this process; Florida and California have had policies in place for years. Because New York's system is older, and therefore more fragmented in a way FL's and CA's are not, our new system is a little different. Pre-approving classes for transfer between state schools used to be a paper intensive process, but now everything is online. It's not perfect, and there's still some confusion as to who can be charged what and why, but I actually like what SUNY did here. If we are changing our focus from providing opportunity to ensuring completion, this was a needed step. However, there's a loophole the size of the Holland Tunnel: schools can always say no to allowing a class to be taken at a different school. For example, SUNY Buffalo, rightly known for its engineering programs, will not allow a student to take Physics 404 at another college, even another SUNY. This specific example happened to a close friend of mine, and he remarked that the final exam at the other state school was the first chapter at Buffalo, so the exclusion was justified. With this, the schools maintain their academic independence, and for Buffalo, Binghamton, Albany, and Stony Brook, I understand. A community college having a blanket policy denying all applications if it offers the class itself? That's less excusable.
Another session worthy of my time was the general HESC update. This was not meant to cover individual programs, so this wasn't why I came, but it would prove interesting nonetheless. When a student applies for financial aid, he or she has to use tax forms from a specific year. Fall 2018 uses 2016's tax returns, as an example. If this is no longer representative of the household income, then there was a mechanism in place to review the circumstances. Give me a letter explaining the situation, and documentation as needed, and I may be able to lower your income. This only worked for federal aid (Pell), and if my calculations didn't get the students any free money, it wasn't worth the paperwork. Private schools do this much more often, since they give away their money as scholarships (really discounts on tuition).
HESC's aid programs had no such mechanism, until now. If the family had a divorce, legal separation, or a death in the family in the up to two years before the application period, then the student can now apply for an income adjustment. When I said the word now, I mean one week prior to my typing this sentence. The process and formula used are needlessly complicated, which is unsurprising considering this is New York State, but the good news is that I have nothing to do with it save awarding aid at HESC's direction. You apply online, send in your proof, and they crunch some numbers. It won't help that many people, but it could increase the number of Excelsior approvals. It could also have some unintended consequences. Legal separations can be done easily and undone just as quickly. Could families catch on and try to get more aid that way? It's possible, and if HESC doesn't ask for too much paperwork, it might work - in theory. It will depend on how much documentation HESC requires: proof of separate domiciles, utility bills, etc.
The other sessions on Wednesday were the standard boilerplate updates, and none had any real surprises or impact, so they aren't worth cataloging here. Once our afternoon sessions ended, we were on our own for dinner, and I was happy to eat some BBQ on Market street with my fellow WCC attendee. We talked mostly about the changes that were taking place at the school, with our director retiring and his taking over until a new boss is hired. If you told me in 2001 that I'd be the most senior counselor and he would be in charge, I'd have laughed out loud. Nevertheless, here we are, and I'm... worried. Oh well, at least I'll get plenty of overtime from now until October.
Thursday started with a breakfast buffet, multiple cups of coffee, and a little hope that the sessions about Excelsior and the PTS would make my job easier. These presentations would also be live-streamed and recorded, so my boss could watch with me. I warned her that my snark would be on full blast, but she didn't seem to mind.
The first presentation was nothing but a repeat of a webinar that my director and I watched a few months ago. It detailed the worst kind of bureaucratic busywork: the colleges receive form X-1234 and the schools send back form 1234-X, both as Excel spreadsheets. First, I already knew all this from the webinar; second, I don't I have any control over the electronic comings and goings of data, so this was irrelevant. Even worse, the person giving the presentation was the same monotone presenter from the webinar, and as she spoke my director and I were sending panicked text messages back and forth. I sat through it anyway, hoping for a kernel or two of new information. We didn't get any, and at this session, we weren't allowed to ask questions either.
The rebuttal to my angst is that not everyone watched the seminar the first time, so they needed this info. That's fair, in that some people may been recently given Excelsior as part of their jobs, but for the rest of us, it was a waste of time. At minimum, the session should have included some new information. Otherwise we could have watched the seminar in the comfort of our offices, and avoided the late snow squalls hitting the Finger Lakes and the Twin Tiers all week. Did I mention the weather was unusually cold and snowy? No? Well, I just did. I certainly wasn't getting 26,000 steps in a day this year.
The second seminar started off with a similar recap: who qualified, how much money the family could make, etc. However, there was some new information, and we would be able to ask questions. I had a series of questions prepared, naturally, courtesy of me and my boss prepping for the trip. Effective administration of a financial aid program is a negotiation between the rules, the regulations springing from those rules, and exceptions. To allow a functioning system to be created, governing principles must be created and explained. These guidelines allow us to decide what takes priority when a contradiction occurs or a situation pops up that isn't covered in the regulations. As Excelsior had no financial aid input in its final form, it is filled with contradictions that a non-profession wouldn't know existed. Absent these written rules, nor any guiding principles, our questions were the first real opportunity to force HESC to give answers on the record. With that I asked my questions. The responses were not only lacking but in one case, outright wrong.
One of those bedrock principles of financial aid is that you have to attend class for a certain period of time, and if you don't, your aid is either deleted or reduced. You aren't considered full time, because you didn't legitimately attempt full time studies. The worst (best?) part is that the student is still charged full time tuition. Since the professors don't report attendance until three or four weeks into the semester, registration would be closed at that point. As I tell students, you broke it; you bought it.
Both state and federal aid followed this line of thinking for as long as I've known, at least until Excelsior. Technically, it isn't financial aid anyway - it's a scholarship, but I feel we're splitting hairs. When the law was written, lawmakers used the term liability, so when a student incurs the full charge for full time classes, he or she receives Excelsior, regardless of attendance. However, if the student drops the class during the first few weeks of the term, the tuition charge wouldn't be fully charged, so the student would lose Excelsior. Does this mean they wanted students to blow off class but still remain registered? Probably not, but that's what happened. On the other hand, the law also states that the student must attempt full time study, which should mean you need to actually go to class. As per HESC, they didn't realize this was a problem until I pointed it out to HESC some 4 months ago by comparing the rules for Excelsior to TAP and how the aid programs have the similar language but aren't in sync. They said they would look into the contradiction, but for now, pay the student and they would get back to us.
We didn't hear back, so there I sat with the above scenario as one of my questions. I could have peppered her all day, given the opportunity. Mostly I'd have screamed why between inconsolable wails, but such Gestalt would have to wait. I asked my question, again pointing out the contradiction between TAP and Excelsior, and she told us that was had to pay students for both programs regardless of attendance. Our silence was deafening, then all the air was sucked out of the room.
After the initial shock, I and every other counselor in the room gasped at what she said. Either she was incorrect, or we have all been processing state aid incorrectly for at least 20 years. My boss sent me a text, asking if she heard correctly. I confirmed that she did, including the cries of disbelief. It's certainly possible that she could have made a mistake, but why were we so shocked? Because the presenter was the person in charge of all New York State aid. Whatever questions I had after that became irrelevant. I couldn't trust her answers, or I couldn't trust my own knowledge. On a certain level, I felt bad for her. I'm sure she's excellent at what her job demanded 18 months ago. The first Excelsior presentation detailing various spreadsheet types was much better. Then again, it was also a repeat.
While I was shocked to the point of defeat, others still had some fight. The questions came fast, and she did her best to keep up. I cannot say she actually tried to answer them. I could go back and listen to the recordings, but I'm not a masochist to the degree needed. One of the more pointed queries was when were getting the mythical regulations on paper with real guidance. She didn't know, and at that point I gave up.
The PTS session was next, and although I didn't want to attend, I sat through it. As expected, it was another publicity stunt with no real impact. Thankfully, the application is processed entirely by HESC, and the award is small: $1500 for the year. However, this ward can be back-dated to Fall 2017, which could pose problems with over-awards. At worst, it might be 1 or 2 students, but it was the principle We have yet to get a roster, so I'm not sure anyone even applied for it. The scholarship has no specific income criterion and only a small pool of money from which to draw, so not everyone would be approved. We were told that awards would go to the most needy based on income, but anyone can apply. I'm sure I'll have some explaining to do in the future and I'm not happy at the arbitrary method of handing out the money, but of all the ways this program could have gone, this was fairly benign.
There was another session between PTS and dinner, but I had no desire to attend it. It wasn't that important anyway, so went to my room, thought about what had transpired, and moped. I eventually mustered enough ambition to walk to a Van Heusen store very close to the hotel, when I bough 2 nice shirts on sale for $10 each. This definitely boosted my mood, but I don't want to say it was the highlight of the trip, if only because that would be really sad. I also went to Wegmans for some organic produce for my fiance, texting her a picture of a nice watermelon. Again, I was feeling better. It's the simple things, right? Right? Please say yes so I can maintain my dignity.
The mental break afforded by my excursion allowed some thoughts to bubble up from my subconscious. The Excelsior presentations were difficult to process, due to near-complete lack of new information or clarity, but there was more I didn't notice. Our presenter was lauded as an expert at her job, and I'm sure she was, but not anymore. Then I realized that she didn't have more guidance because she had none to give. She was only a little better informed than we were. How was such a thing possible? Because she was shut-out of the process in the beginning, and remained excluded to this day. There was no attempt to fix this unwieldy mess, because the legislators didn't care. They got positive press in the beginning, and that was it. The Part-Time Scholarship, though less ambitious, was riddled with the same structural problems as Excelsior. The $1500 wouldn't pay for very much, and Excelsior was essentially a mirage. So what was the end game? I finally understood as I loaded my cart with organic spinach and a box of pumpkin pie K-cups left over from Thanksgiving: there is no end game. Last year it was Excelsior; this year gave us PTS, and next year it will be something else. Until Albany finds the sweet spot of sustained accolades from progressives and the media without spending any real money, financial aid will continue to deal with these half-baked plans. Eventually, politicians will find some other aspect of the economy with which to establish their progressive bonafides, and I can go back to actually helping people.
In the weeks between the conference and today, someone at work asked me for an update on Excelsior. I, fully tenured and having no filter between my brain and my mouth, said it was a disaster from top to bottom. This response was not popular with those in charge, but I did get a fully chuckle from at least one person. Whether he was laughing at the line or my delivery, I can't say.
At its heart, Excelsior represents government at it worst. Politicians, hungry for sound bites and looking at higher office, take what is ostensibly a good idea: free college, free healthcare, easy mortgages so people with bad credit can buy houses, etc., and a slap together laws without any thought as to the process involved or potential consequences, all without spending any real money. This mindset is not limited to New York; the Federal government bequeathed financial aid the Academic Competitiveness Grant (ACG), which gave us hours of work for an extra $375 a semester, and a program for vets, which I can only call unemployment for vets, forcing them to take a full time course load in a two year program they'd never earn. Not a single recipient actually finished his degree, but he did get $800 a month for 18 months. This was at the height of the Great Recession. As bad as these programs were, they were at least temporary, as both were limited under the statues that created them and not renewed. Excelsior will limp along until it is politically safe to end it, which may be never. Until then, I will sit at my desk, reviewing students, giving money, taking money back, and wondering how I got into this mess in the first place.
