James Kvaal, under secretary of the U.S. Department of Education, visited Metropolitan State University of Denver on Wednesday to better understand the institution’s modified-open-access mission and the needs of students.
Kvaal toured the campus and got an in-depth look at the Advanced Manufacturing Sciences Institute. He also met with a diverse group of graduate and undergraduate students, whose variety of majors, resource needs and life experiences reflect the broader student body. The group included first-generation and nontraditional students, veterans, transfer students, parents and caretakers, underemployed and unemployed students, Pell Grant recipients and several who shared their mental-health challenges. Among their many connective threads was a passion for MSU Denver and a desire to use their education to uplift their families and improve their communities.
While MSU Denver remains one of the state’s most affordable institutions, and the most affordable on the Front Range, the students said it was often a struggle to balance child care, housing, health care and other necessary expenses with tuition and fees.
Lou Evon Seal-Williams, a transfer student in the Human Services Department who wants to become a mental-health counselor, spoke about her work to connect students with resources on and off campus. While MSU Denver offers a variety of support services, Seal-Williams noted that these resources often fall short as more students are experiencing hunger, insecure housing and mental-health challenges.
Samantha Salazar, a first-generation student pursuing a master’s degree in Social Work, described her experience in the Earn and Learn program as she completed a necessary component of her degree program.
“For my undergraduate degree, I had to do a 40-hour-per-week unpaid internship … where I was a college advisor at West High School for a year,” she said. “Earn and Learn gave me a stipend since it was unpaid that was a big help in paying bills.”
While Kvaal’s goal was primarily to listen, he spoke frankly about funding inequities, especially with regard to institutions such as MSU Denver. He noted the University’s strong outcomes and its important role as a Hispanic-Serving Institution that primarily serves Coloradans, many of whom remain in the state post-graduation.
Kvaal also acknowledged lingering misperceptions about students among lawmakers and policymakers, who often assume college students have more financial resources to fall back on, while at the same time developing policies that exclude many students from aid programs such as Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program benefits.
“States have a long history of withdrawing funding from higher education, so I’m hopeful that that will change in the medium term,” Kvaal said. “I think there is a lot better understanding … about the problems of student debt and the importance of investment in higher education.”
The under secretary also spoke to the transformative power of institutions such as MSU Denver.
“The (U.S. Department of Education’s) overarching goal is to take advantage of colleges’ potential for upward mobility, for equitable opportunity,” Kvaal said. “At the same time, our system is pretty inequitable.
“We have a handful of institutions that are very richly funded and get a lot of attention, but most students go to (institutions) that do not have enough money to help students succeed at the rate they are capable of. So that is one big priority: investing in HSIs like MSU Denver and in Historically Black Colleges and Universities and in community colleges and pointing out how valuable the work that is happening on these campuses really is and how it deserves respect and support.”
In anticipation of upcoming changes to the Free Application for Federal Student Aid submission process, Kvaal highlighted the new streamlined forms and funding formula and the use of applicants’ existing data within the IRS database. The changes should make the application process faster, easier and more progressive and should result in more Pell Grants for lower-income students. The new form will launch in December, a shift from the traditional October schedule.