Low-income, first-generation students could lose vital college resource under Trump's budget cuts

San Francisco Chronicle​

21 hours ago

Mission High School graduating senior Mariana Aguilar, the daughter of working-class Colombian immigrants, had always wanted to make her parents proud by becoming one of the first in their family to go to college. But she doesn't know whether she'd have been able to earn a spot at San Jose State University — where she'll enroll with a full scholarship this fall –—without the help of her college access counselor, Alexis Lopez.
'Alexis just changed my life,' Aguilar said last week after she celebrated alongside 44 other high school seniors from low-income families who participated in a program that provides intensive coaching for disadvantaged teens to become first-generation college students.
But hers might be the last class to benefit from Upward Bound. The Trump administration's proposed 2026 budget slashes all $1.2 billion for a suite of college access programs for low-income, first-generation college students called TRIO, which includes Upward Bound. Congress is still negotiating the budget, which the Senate has not yet passed.
The budget would also cut from social safety nets like Medicaid and the federal food stamps program while spending on border security, deportations and tax cuts.
The Trump administration's budget document, submitted May 2 by White House budget director, Russell Vought, states college access programs are 'a relic of the past' and that it's 'engaging in woke ideology with federal taxpayer subsidies.'
'Today, the pendulum has swung and access to college is not the obstacle it was for students of limited means,' stated Vought's budget document. It added that colleges and universities 'should be using their own resources' to recruit students.
The TRIO programs were created in the 1960s as part of a federal 'war on poverty.' While inequality in college attainment has slightly decreased since 1970, it persists, according to an analysis of U.S. Census Bureau data by Pell Institute researchers. In 2022, students from families in the lowest-earning quarter were almost four times less likely to earn a bachelor's degree by age 24 than those from the highest-earning quarter, according to the analysis.

A Pew Research Center report on 2019 data also found that children of college-educated parents are far more likely to graduate from college. About 70% of adults aged 22 to 59 with at least one parent who has a bachelor's degree or more have obtained a bachelor's degree as well, compared to only 26% of their peers who do not have a college-educated parent.
In San Francisco, the nonprofit Japanese Community Youth Council receives $2.6 million annually to pay for about 25 staff who help 3,000-odd students at 13 SFUSD schools a year through Upward Bound and another TRIO program, Talent Search, that casts a wider net. Federal rules stipulate that two-thirds of those students must come from families that make less than 150% of the federal poverty level, about $48,000 for a family of four.
'The outcome of the elimination of these programs is the already staggering racial wealth gap in this country is going to continue to widen,' said the nonprofit's executive director, Jon Osaki. 'Those who have less access, less means, to pursue higher education, are going to fall further behind in this country.'
The programs have historically had bipartisan support. Both Republicans and Democrats voiced support at recent congressional hearings, including Sen. Susan Collins, a Maine Republican who chairs the Senate appropriations committee.
'I have seen the lives of countless first-generation and low income students … who often face barriers to accessing a college education changed by the TRIO program,' Collins said, questioning why Trump's budget eliminated it.
Education secretary Linda McMahon said in response that the department had no way to hold the program administrators accountable based on whether they were effective or not. Collins said the government could reform the programs, not abolish them.
Kimberly Jones, president of the Washington-based nonprofit Council for Opportunity in Education that has been active in lobbying Congress to keep funding TRIO, said that the programs are effective.
Upward Bound students are more than twice as likely to earn a bachelor's degree by age 24 than students from the lowest earning quarter of families, according to the council.
'These tools are invaluable as many first-generation college students go on to become the first homeowners in their families, the first to work in 'white-collar' industries, and many other firsts throughout their lifetimes,' Jones said.
Aguilar, the Mission High School graduating senior, said that her family was forced to move to the East Bay in her junior year when her mom, who works as a nanny, could no longer afford to live in San Francisco. Thrust into a new school in a new city where she knew no one, she fell into a severe depression, she said. Her mom transferred her back to Mission High midway through junior year, where Lopez, the adviser, quickly connected with her.
Lopez arranged for Aguilar to go on a field trip to San Jose State University. They decided that the school and its big business program would be perfect for her. Lopez helped her apply for scholarships that would give her a full ride.
'Without her, I don't know what I'd be doing now,' she said.
Balboa High School graduating senior Caryn Dea, the child of blue-collar Chinese immigrants, said that she's always wanted to go to college but didn't know how. Her parents, who didn't attend college, worked long hours.
'Throughout applying for college, I was scared,' Dea said. Her dream school, which she visited through an Upward Bound trip to Southern California colleges, was UCLA. 'But I found myself thinking I wouldn't get in anywhere.' Her Upward Bound adviser, Karen Coreas Diaz, frequently reassured her, saying, 'You got this,' Dea remembered, and helped her with her essays.
'She's been the best support system I've had,' Dea said. She will be attending UCLA, where she hopes to study human biology or a healthcare field.
Coreas Diaz said that mentoring the Upward Bound students felt like healing her own 'inner child.' The child of Salvadoran immigrants who didn't go to college, Coreas Diaz said she struggled in high school as well, eventually enrolling in community college because her grades weren't good enough before ultimately transferring to UC Berkeley. But unlike her students, she didn't have a mentor.
'Supporting you felt like taking care of a younger version of myself,' Coreas Diaz said to her students during a tearful speech at the graduation ceremony.
Unlike students with wealthy parents, her students cannot afford pricey private college counseling. Her work, she said, gives them the same advantages: help with essays, deadlines and college application.
Jackie Lam, associate director of JCYC's Upward Bound program, said students with low-income parents who didn't attend college often lack access to crucial information. They may not be aware, for example, that they can apply to Stanford University and possibly get a full ride if their parents make less than six figures, he said.
More than 80% of the high schoolers in JCYC's program who graduate high school enrolled in college every year, Lam said, with the exception of 2020, when they came close.
'Being a teenager is hard because you feel lost,' said Halima Cherif, a graduating senior from San Francisco International High School who participated in Upward Bound. She credited her adviser, Atokena Abe, with helping her get into her dream college, UC Berkeley, where she hopes to study biology or psychology.
'When students aren't guided, most won't have the ability or courage to go to college, work hard and have their dreams and goals,' she said. 'And more importantly, to get a job to help themselves and contribute to the people of this country.'