Dartmouth administrators sharply criticized a decision by the Bush administration's Office of Management and Budget to eliminate the Upward Bound and Talent Search education programs from its 2006 spending plan.
The OMB, the President's office in charge of overseeing the federal budget, decided to halt funding for the two programs in favor of funneling the money to other educational programs.
"The proposed cuts in these programs seem to be a really bad idea to us," Dean of Admissions Karl Furstenberg said. "Most people agree that investing in education is a smart thing to do. For low-income students, this is unfortunate."
Upward Bound and Talent Search are two of seven TRIO programs, a series of educational outreach programs designed to motivate and aid low-income, first-generation college students. The two programs collectively provide services such as one-on-one tutoring and ACT preparations classes to underprivileged middle- and high-school students.
Dartmouth uses programs such as Upward Bound and Talent Search as ways of identifying promising underprivileged students, and Upward Bound counselors in the past helped bring talented students to the attention of the College's admissions office.
Some Dartmouth students and other administrators are also angered by the recent education budget cuts. Dean of the Tucker Foundation and Associate Provost Stuart Lord sent out a BlitzMail message on April 5 asking students to write their congressmen to reinstate the programs. In the message, Lord extolled the strengths of the programs in helping underprivileged children.
"Statistically, these youth do attend and graduate from college at a significantly higher rate than youth from the same background who do not have the services," wrote Lord.
Republican congressmen and the Bush administration, however, view the cuts as a way of trimming the budget of a failing program.
"It's a redirection of funds," Chairman of New Hampshire College Republicans Torivio Fodder said. "[Upward Bound] is a program that looks good on camera. But, when you evaluate it in an aggregate sense it doesn't look as good on paper."
According to the OMB's website, its Program Assessment Rating Tool found that "Upward Bound was not serving the high-risk students who were most likely to benefit from the program." Instead, the OMB is directing those funds toward a new initiative called the High School Intervention Initiative, which puts Upward Bound's money into individual states' hands. Under the new HISS, states will have the opportunity to continue funding Upward Bound's programs.
"The rationale is that you give the money back to states and let them deal with it in a systematic way," Fodder said of HISS. "This is a program that fails to meet its objective."
While some of the money will be redistributed, the education percentage of the 2006 fiscal year's budget will decrease by one percent overall.
Furstenberg acknowledged that the overall effects of the cuts on Dartmouth would be minimal, but said that the administration was moving in the wrong direction on education.
"I'd be hard-pressed to say it'll have a major effect." Furstenberg said. "It's the American way to give people a hand if they don't have the resources or opportunities."
At least some of the money from the cuts has been allocated to No Child Left Behind, the President's education initiative. The move could help quell critics of Bush's nearly three-year-old plan, who claim that NCLB has been under-funded.
