By Gabriel Pendas
November 14, 2007

My friends and I growing up in Miami faced three options: the streets, prison or an early grave. After some time in an alternative school, I eventually dropped out and worked retail and construction jobs. If not for the federally-funded TRIO program, I doubt that doors would open to a GED and preparation for the SAT.

If not for Pell grants and other sorely under-funded programs, I would never have been able to attend and graduate from Florida State University with a degree in physics.

Students today are trapped between skyrocketing tuition costs and dwindling federal grant aid. As tuition costs continue to soar, the cost of a college education is higher in the United States than any nation in the industrialized world.

A recent College Board report that confirms college costs now outpace inflation is backed by the reality facing million of students who are being priced out of the possibility of a bright future.

A college education, a route out of generational poverty, is accompanied by the trap laid by private lenders that locks recent graduates in an inescapable cycle of debt. Many colleges are guilty of sealing agreements that steer students to these rapacious lenders. Some students are saddled with interest rates of 19 percent or higher.

I know countless recent graduates who are unable to buy homes, start families or pursue their passions in jobs that pay less but give back more to their communities. They are forced into paycheck positions and a pact to payback seemingly unending debt.

The debt we owe as a nation is to remove the barriers that make college unaffordable.

Access to higher education is crucial to maintaining the United States as a leader in the knowledge-based global economy. Federal grant aid has steadily dwindled, leaving families at the mercy of private lenders.

Twenty years ago, federal aid covered over 30 percent of college costs. Today, despite a significant increase in tuition, federal financial aid covers less than 20 percent.

Congress and presidential candidates must implement solutions that will make college more accessible.

A solution rests in Congressional reauthorization of the Higher Education Act. Congress can make college more affordable by reauthorizing this guiding light legislation that provides federal mandates to colleges and universities.

HEA provides resources to students who have the grades but lack the resources to attend college. Because the act has not been updated in almost a decade, lawmakers have an opportunity to reinvests in students and guarantee dividends in productivity and a highly trained workforce of the 21st century.

Rising education costs will be the least of our worries if thousands of qualified students are denied access to higher education.

Students deserve to have the best options for financial aid clearly articulated. HEA can protect programs, increase grant aid and simplify the Free Application for Federal Student Aid forms.

Congressional action will reverse a trend that is moving colleges further out of our reach as a nation.