Expanding Access to Education The GOAL 30 Initiative
The Vision
Each year, Welfare Rights Initiative (WRI) assists hundreds of welfare-eligible and low-income undergraduate students who are working toward a better future. They have big dreams and yearn for a life of value and contribution that is free from shame and far from poverty. Over the next 10 years, WRI will organize and advocate for full implementation of existing federal and NYS laws and policies that allow up to 30% of the state’s work-eligible people receiving public assistance (PA) to fulfill their work requirement by enrolling in college or an approved post-secondary training program.
WRI’s policy agenda has always focused on improving access to education for people who struggle the most during major economic downturns. Most recently, the COVID-19 pandemic revealed and exacerbated long-standing income and educational inequities. Through the GOAL 30 Initiative, WRI will support broader efforts to restart and reshape a more equitable local economy.
Ongoing, WRI provides Hunter (CUNY-City University of NY) students, faculty, staff, and diverse communities with information about current welfare policy and its impact on access to education and training. We honor positive role models, especially women raising families in poverty. Our students and staff are dedicated to Hunter’s mission and expanding access to education for all. WRI serves as a beacon of Hunter’s original vision—a college that honors and respects diversity and educates women. WRI staff’s ongoing work includes evaluating, planning and retooling the systems we have for outreach, administration, legal advocacy, campus organizing and high school organizing so that our next twelve months will incorporate what we have learned can work better.
CUNY has excelled at bringing top tier students into college through ASAP and other programs. However, we are not investing in the majority of students who would benefit from the types of incentives that ASAP offers. An important WRI policy goal is to bring the opportunity of accessing college for students receiving PA.
Through commitment to the Goal 30% initiative, CUNY can take bold steps to support expansion of the post-secondary education pipeline. Currently, we barely have 3K students receiving public benefits at CUNY when even 10% of the eligible base of 232,353 individuals receiving welfare would mean thousands more students in CUNY and over 66,000 more statewide.
The Need
Too often, families receiving public assistance are stuck in no-win situations that compromise honest attempts to improve their life chances. Many are women and immigrants who are striving to recover from job loss, illness, domestic violence, and other adverse circumstances that block their ability to emerge from poverty and realize their full potential.
Boosting Post-Secondary Enrollment to Address Poverty
WRI began in 1995 after the Giuliani administration enacted new welfare-to-work policies in New York City that would significantly restrict access to education for the estimated 28,000 CUNY students receiving public assistance (representing 11% of CUNY’s total student population that year). Since that time, enrollment of poor and low-income students at CUNY schools has plummeted year after year. Even more troubling, when these students drop out, they are more likely to become homeless or go hungry.
People experiencing severe financial crisis are eligible to receive food, housing, healthcare, and supplemental income benefits if they meet certain requirements. Although higher education opens significant professional and personal development opportunities, for people struggling with economic instability, it often feels like an unreachable goal. In fact, many eligible NYC high school students are unaware of their rights to attend college or post-secondary vocational programs while their families receive public assistance. Other students enroll in school but later drop out when they are unable to focus on their studies and balance mandatory work requirements and attendance at legal hearings that often conflict with class schedules.
WRI works to eliminate educational barriers for marginalized people. Our integrated program model features leadership skills training, self-advocacy workshops, and a deep commitment to participatory policymaking. For example, WRI’s students, alumni, and partners were instrumental in the passage of a NYS law that allows work-study, internships, externships, 4-year college classes, and homework to count toward the mandatory work hours for those receiving public benefits.
Despite this groundbreaking policy victory in 2000, the number of CUNY-enrolled students receiving welfare has not returned to previous levels. This persistent decline in welfare-eligible and low-income student enrollment and retention at CUNY demonstrates a clear need to focus more attention and resources on supporting higher education access and attainment as a pathway out of poverty for more New Yorkers. This is an especially troubling trend as research consistently shows that nearly 90% of students receiving public assistance who graduate with a college degree move permanently off welfare.
Intersectional Gaps in Education and Economic Mobility
Even before the pandemic, structural deficits across the education system made it more difficult for disadvantaged people to attain a quality education that supports future financial stability. For example, welfare-eligible and low-income students often lose traction as curricula shifts to a test-based, didactic learning model during the late elementary and middle school years.
“The pandemic has exacerbated well-documented opportunity gaps that put low-income students at a disadvantage relative to their better-off peers. Opportunity gaps are gaps in access to the conditions and resources that enhance learning and development, and include access to food and nutrition, housing, health insurance and care, and financial relief measures.”
Recent economic indicators demonstrate the significant impact of education on job retention.
The unemployment rate for workers without a high school degree was 13% higher in April 2020 than for workers with at least a bachelor's degree.
Unemployment during the current recession is concentrated among workers who were last employed in industries that provide in-person services and among young workers, women, workers with low educational attainment, part-time workers, and racial and ethnic minorities.
Workers without a college degree experienced worse unemployment rate in April (e.g., 21.2% for workers with no high school degree) than workers with a bachelor's degree or higher (8.4%). The gap between educated and less-educated workers remained in December.
Brief Program Description
Under federal law, 30% of New York’s work-eligible welfare recipients can enroll in educational activities to fulfill the welfare work requirement. Unfortunately, less than 2% of this population (4,819 NYS PA recipients – according to 2019 data) are currently enrolled in college, or other permitted education/vocational training programs. Welfare policy still criminalizes poverty in this country. The income distribution gap today is the highest in history. NYC and NYS need to be proactive in promoting these opportunities. We are not going back to the pre-1995 levels at CUNY. Political shifts to the right since then make this unrealistic. The gap between 30% and 2% is meaningful. As current economic reports show 21% of workers without a college degree lost work and when you add to it over 35% of teenaged women without high school and or training, we are looking at a steep climb to economic recovery for NYC/S.
As part of WRI’s Policy Education program, the GOAL 30 Initiative seeks to make postsecondary education a viable option for 30% of families over the next decade. We will focus on enrollment and student retention efforts using the following strategies:
Making sure families receiving public assistance know where to get information about existing NYS laws and policies that support participation in allowable educational activities that count toward work requirements. The plan will include marketing and communication strategies to more effectively raise awareness about available opportunities among priority target audience segments including girls and young women of color, immigrants, returning adult learners and other non-traditional students.
WRI also seeks to collaborate more closely with the NYC Department of Education (DOE) to ensure more low-income K-12 students, and their parents know about their rights and postsecondary educational options.
Expand WRI’s policy recommendations memo in collaboration with the NYC Human Resources Administration (HRA) and WRI’s Policy Work Group to share with Governor Hochul and representatives from the NYS Office of Temporary and Disability Assistance (OTDA). The memo will detail recommendations, proposed outcomes, and key action steps that will maximize expansion of educational access to 30% of NYS work-eligible population receiving public assistance, as allowed by law.
Connect students and other PA clients with firsthand experiences to policy decision makers and implementing agency leaders to share real-life needs and challenges, as part of a collaborative problem-solving process designed to remove policy and implementation barriers.
Through WRI students and staff convening Policy Work Group (PWG) over the past decade, we have seen changes in implementation and agencies broadening perspectives. PWG promotes access to education through a more human-centric, civically engaged focus on education, and we have seen changes in policymakers’ perspectives as the fundamentals of WRI’s values are incorporated into all policy discussions.
The Approach
WRI is committed to making GOAL 30 the centerpiece of its policy education program for the next 10 years. We will continue to convene monthly PWG planning meetings to identify key issues, develop and refine strategies, pool expertise and resources, assign tasks, and monitor progress. PWG members include WRI staff, students, and alumni, as well as representatives from Hunter College, NYC HRA, Legal Aid Services, CUNY School of Law, New York Women’s Foundation, NYC Gender Equity Commission, Urban Justice Center, John Jay College Prison to College Pipeline Project, and other advocates.
WRI also will host forums and “brown bag” lunch chats to engage students and decision makers at NYC and NYS agencies in facilitated policy discussions. We believe a participatory civic process is the precursor to fully implementing existing policies and laws that will open access to postsecondary education for all. WRI’s overarching goal is to maximize implementation of what is allowed under federal welfare law by raising awareness and shifting from a “policing” style of compliance to one that puts greater emphasis on educational attainment as a poverty-reducing strategy.