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Anxious parents, students are educators were assured by President Obama that government financial support will continue for higher education. This announcement was made at the special town hall meeting in Washington.

The meeting was held on 28th March at the high school with a predominantly Hispanic population. According to a junior linguistics major Christian Guerra, all students, especially higher secondary students will greatly benefit from the efforts of our President to protect higher education budget.

President Obama’s efforts towards spending on higher education stands on his firm view that the future of our country rests on education and education alone. Stressing on the fact that there is a steep fall in minority student numbers, he said that by the year 2020, Hispanic students will receive at least 150,000 additional Pell Grants.

According to an associate professor of education, Reynaldo Reyes, most of the target areas identified and mentioned by President Obama reflects needs of especially the Hispanic communities in significant portions of Texas. It will be of great help, he said, to provide additional funding to these areas.

Obama’s budget proposes to allocate more funds towards grants and investments in education and also proposes to enhance help to communities that are underprivileged. This effort in increasing budget for education amidst stiff efforts by Republicans to reduce spending by $61 billion for this fiscal year is significant.

According to the Chicago Studies Program director, Dennis Bixler, considering the number of students who qualify for grants, UTEP students will be affected by this grant increase awarded by the President to university students.

He said that UTEP students also suffer greatly from inadequate finances that greatly hinder their efforts in completing higher education. It is possible to promote quicker rates of graduation among UTEP students if there is a substantial infusion of grant.

In Texas, $830 million has been allocated by the Obama initiative towards public education. Education spending by the state could be greatly impacted by this. As we know, Texas has been struggling to set a budget for higher education as well as public education for the next two years.

There is a large student population in Texas under poverty line. There will be a great impact on them by President Obama’s proposal of investment if the funding is not used by the state as an excuse to scale down K-12 education and other funding types. This essentially will make the investment a wash, says Bixler.

In Texas, there is a constant political waggling between Gov. Rick Perry and Lloyd Doggett, US Rep. This has tied up the funds that are now attached to an amendment that governor must use it towards supplementing present school spending.

In order to prevent government shutdown, the US Senate saw a federal budget negotiation on 12th April through which the state of Texas was allocated an amount of $830 million in Federal money towards public education.

Says sophomore education Major Maria Rivera, our President’s plan is in fact extremely promising especially as we now know that funds for public education institutions are going to be severely cut by the state legislature. She says that Hispanics and other students will definitely benefit from this new opportunity.