Section 1 of 5 [00:00:00 - 00:10:04]

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Al Letson: Hey, hey, hey. It is Al Letson and this show that you're listening to right now, which you're listening to, is the type of journalism that you've come to expect from Reveal. What does that mean? That means that we go in. We go deep. We get the answers that you are looking for because, well, my friends, that is what we do. This is a two-way exchange. We go deep and we need you to go deep too. Give us a little bit of love. Look, let's seal the deal, all right? I'm going to give you great stories, and you can donate to Reveal. I mean, I think that's a fair exchange. Can we do that?

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From the Center for Investigative Reporting and PRX, this is Reveal. I'm Al Letson. I want to start today's show off by introducing you to someone who's behind some of the biggest headlines of the past two decades.

Speaker 2: Chances are you've never heard of Bill McRaven, but you know his work. He was in charge of the missions that captured Saddam Hussein and killed Osama bin Laden. Here's our power player of the work. Bill, welcome.

Bill McRaven: Thank you, Chris.

Speaker 2: It's an honor to have you.

Bill McRaven: It's great to be here.

Al Letson: Bill McRaven is a former four-star admiral and Navy SEAL. His last military post was Commander of the US Special Operations command, and then he took on a completely different mission.

Bill McRaven: Over a year ago, this board took a gamble and they hired me to lead the University of Texas system, even though I had no experience in higher education or clinical care.

Al Letson: He went from commanding SEAL Team 6 to leading the UT system, which oversees 14 campuses, including the University of Texas at Austin. It's hard for him to shed that military skin, though. You can just hear it in his voice.

Bill McRaven: But I think you hired me because for the previous 37 years, I have been leading men and women under some of the most challenging conditions in the world.

Al Letson: This is a speech that McRaven made back in November of 2015, and it was a big deal. He was a big deal, and so was his grand vision for the UT system.

Bill McRaven: I will outline some broad and bold initiatives, some quantum leaps that will make us the envy of every system in the nation.

Al Letson: These quantum leaps would be expensive. This one would cost $36 million.

Bill McRaven: We are going to develop a collaborative healthcare enterprise that will leverage our size and expertise.

Al Letson: The next one, $10 million.

Bill McRaven: Our intent is to establish a UT network for national security, a system-wide alliance.

Al Letson: McRaven lays out nine big ideas, and when he's done ...

Bill McRaven: I hope your bold gamble in allowing this old sailor to lead this great institution will be a winning hand. I look forward to the years ahead and watching this vision unfold. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.

Al Letson: The UT system's governing board is thrilled. They agree to greenlight McRaven's vision, which will cost hundreds of millions of dollars. Then, just three months later, McRaven's back in front of the same board, this time talking about tuition.

Bill McRaven: Thank you very much Mr. Chairman, members of the board. I am going to recommend that you approve our tuition and fees. We have made some adjustments to our academic institutions.

Al Letson: Let me explain what he means by adjustments. Bill McRaven wants to increase tuition by as much as 10%. He says the schools need the money.

Bill McRaven: The fact is, is most of our tuition and fees are at or well below the national average. The fact is that tuition and fees are the single greatest driver for revenue. The fact is, state appropriations continue to decline.

Al Letson: How can Bill McRaven propose spending hundreds of millions of dollars on his grand vision, and then three months later ask students to pay more? Nina Satiga and Matthew Watkins, from our partners at the Texas Tribune, have been trying to answer this question for months, and in order to answer it, they had to travel hundreds of miles from where all these big decisions are being made in Austin. They had to go to west Texas.

Richard B.: If you want to understand how a state-funded institution like the University of Texas can spend the kind of money Bill McRaven is proposing to spend, you have to come here, and you have to talk to this guy, named Richard Brantley.

Is that a pump jack on your shirt, on the map of Texas? Is that what that is?

Nina Satiga: That is a pump jack, that is.

Richard B.: I had to ask that.

Nina Satiga: Richard manages this plot of land we're standing on right now. "Plot" is probably an understatement. We're actually standing on an oilfield bigger than the size of Rhode Island and Delaware combined. Texas set aside all this land in the 1800s as a kind of investment for public universities. No one thought it was worth much at the time, but now?

Richard B.: I feel very blessed to wind up in the [Permean 00:05:23] Basin, which is now the center of the world for oil and gas development. That's where everybody wants to be, it's where a lot of the money's going.

Nina Satiga: This one old pump jack we're in front of slowly rocks like a seesaw as it pulls the oil from more than a mile underground, making that slow creak and that sad low humming noise. Kind of like a sick cello.

It's kind of a horror movie type sound, isn't it? Not like ...

Richard B.: That's a check valve that you hear.

Nina Satiga: Spring load check valve.

The money generated here goes into something called the Permanent University Fund, which we'll call the oil fund. It's worth $20 billion today, and the UT system gets most of it. It's the reason UT has the biggest public university endowment in the world. The money's supposed to last for generations, so you can't spend it all at once, but each year, the oil fund generates $600 million for the UT system. That's about as much as all 50,000 UT Austin students spend on tuition each year. Again, why is the UT system raising tuition?

It turns out it's a question people are asking about colleges all over the country.

Speaker 6: The hearing will come to order. Welcome to the Ways and Means Oversight Subcommittee Hearing entitled "Back to School: A Review of Tax-Exempt College and University Endowments."

Nina Satiga: For two hours last year, members of Congress and experts talked about private colleges with huge endowments.

Speaker 7: Topping the list are schools with endowments over $20 billion, Harvard, Yale, Princeton, and Stanford.

Nina Satiga: And the fact that they get to invest all this money tax-free.

Speaker 8: You had suggested as one of your solutions that endowment should be taxed.

Speaker 9: Yes, only large endowments.

Nina Satiga: The Trump administration has a plan to do just that: tax private college endowments at 1.4%. He actually talked about it at a campaign rally last year, around the same time as that congressional hearing.

Pres. Trump: I'm going to work with Congress to make sure that if universities want access to all of these special federal tax breaks, that they are going to make good faith efforts to reduce the cost of college and to spend their endowments on their students rather than other things that don't matter.

Nina Satiga: Here's the thing, though. College endowments are, for the most part, a black box. Private colleges don't have to tell us how they spend this money. But the University of Texas system happens to be a public institution with a huge endowment, so we can dig through public records to figure out how it spends all that money, which is exactly what Matthew and I did.

Matthew: It turns out half the money goes to the flagship campus in Austin. A chunk of it also goes to building labs and classrooms at the other UT campuses. But a lot of it goes to things like the quantum leaps you heard about in the beginning of the show, the $36 million healthcare project, the $10 million national security initiative, and this.

Bill McRaven: But there is one more quantum leap that we must take to elevate our status for the world's finest university system. We are completing the acquisition of over 300 acres of real estate off Buffalo Point, just 3.5 miles from the Texas Medical Center.

Matthew: McRaven announced that the UT system would buy a piece of land bigger than Harvard's main campus in the middle of Houston for $215 million, all from the oil fund. Let me put that number in perspective for you. Those tuition hikes McRaven asked for would bring in $30 million for UT Austin. This land alone cost seven times more, and that raised a lot of eyebrows.

Senator Nelson: Okay, let's get started. Senate Finance Committee will come to order. Clerk, please call the roll.

Matthew: It's January 2017, and McRaven is at the Texas State Senate to talk about money. This is Republican State Senator Jane Nelson.

Senator Nelson: All right. We're going to call Chancellor McRaven. Good morning!

Bill McRaven: Good morning Madam Chair, how are you?

Senator Nelson: I am good.

Matthew: Almost right away, Republican Senator Paul Bettencourt brings up the Houston land buy.

Bettencourt: Right, now that is a significant sum of money by any measurement that I'm aware of. This is ... I mean, a quarter billion dollars is a quarter billion dollars. It's a big commitment.

Bill McRaven: I don't debate the fact that it's a lot of money.

Bettencourt: Okay.

Bill McRaven: What I would offer to you is that the potential for the University of Texas system to really do something in the area of research and educational research and other opportunities ...

Matthew: At this point, it's been more than a year since McRaven announced the-

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Section 2 of 5 [00:10:00 - 00:20:04]

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Matthew: At this point, it's been more than a year since McRaven announced the land buy, and he's been saying for months he wants to do something big and bold, except he's never said exactly what.

Speaker 2: Why did you buy this land, and what are you doing with it?

Bill McRaven: Sure. I'm happy to answer that. What we've done of course is we've formed a task force, we have looked at some tremendous options for how we can develop this land in combination with anybody that wants to join us.

Matthew: This answer doesn't go down well with Republicans or Democrats. Here's Democrat John Wittmeyer.

Wittmeyer: I don't think, and all due respect, I don't think you give a damn what the legislature thinks.

Bill McRaven: Sir, that is absolutely wrong. I spent 37 years in uniform, and I'm not going to tout the military, but I swore an oath to support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic. I mean, I raised my right hand to do that, and I think I did that pretty well for 37 years, and I think I went before an awful lot of committees-

Wittmeyer: That's not the issue this morning.

Bill McRaven: Sir, you just said ... You said I do not respect this body.

Wittmeyer: That is my opinion.

Bill McRaven: Sir, I recognize that's your opinion, and I can tell you that's not true.

Wittmeyer: It is based on your actions.

Bill McRaven: If my actions were...

Wittmeyer: You just said-

Matthew: Tensions get so high Jane Nelson has to step in.

Senator Nelson: All right, Senator Wittmeyer, we know how strongly you feel.

Wittmeyer: No! I'm just not going to sit here and let misinformation go out.

Senator Nelson: Okay, okay, okay, we're going to stop right here, and I think you can certainly ...

Bill McRaven: Yes ma'am, I got the message.

Senator Nelson: Understand some of the concerns that we all share ...

Bill McRaven: Yes, ma'am.

Senator Nelson: That Senator Wittmeyer has expressed.

Matthew: The message during this grilling is clear: You can't cry poverty and raise tuition, while at the same time spending $215 million on a bunch of land. But McRaven tries to make one more argument. He says the oil fund is written into the Texas Constitution, which sets up limits on how the state can spend the money. You can give the money to UT Austin, you can pay for capital projects like buying land, or you can spend it on UT system administration costs.

Nina: UT leaders don't think they can just give all the money directly to students. But they've used the oil fund to pay for things like IT expenses and library software at certain UT schools to help tuition there stay low.

Matthew: But tuition has continued to go up, even though the value of the oil fund has gone up by a lot. The oil fund has delivered hundreds of millions of extra dollars to the UT system. Students say they could have used some of that cash.

Ali Runes: My name's Ali Runes. I'm going to be a junior at UT, and I'm studying electrical engineering.

Nina: We meet up with Ali because a few months back, we put a call out on social media. We wanted to hear from students struggling to pay for college.

Matthew: Ali saw our message and she emailed me. She said it's been hard for her to keep up, even on little things, like when UT Austin raised the fee for official transcripts from $10 to $20.

Ali Runes: I don't apply to internships that require a transcript, because I'm like, "I don't have a $100 budget to go apply to jobs."

Matthew: Ali's grandparents are helping with tuition now. She's trying to download books instead of buying them. She's moved farther away from campus to save money.

Ali Runes: My dad was like, "Is there any way you can do it in three and a half semesters?" Trying to figure that out, don't think it's going to happen.

Nina: Ali's always assumed tuition is going up because state funding is going down, because the university needs the money.

Have you heard of the quantum leaps? That sounds like a really weird question if you haven't heard of them.

Ali Runes: I think that it rings a bell, but I couldn't tell you what it is.

Nina: Have you heard of something called the Permanent University Fund?

Ali Runes: No, I have not.

Nina: No. Okay.

I explain what these are, and it's a lot for Ali to take in, because when UT Austin communicates with her, it acts like it's poor. Recently, the school even asked her for help.

They actually get UT ...

Ali Runes: They actually ask students to donate.

Matthew: How did that work, exactly?

Ali Runes: They sent us an email, and they're like, "Hey, it's contributee time. Send us money!" Yeah.

Matthew: And did you contribute?

Ali Runes: I did not. I can't believe they asked us to donate money!

Nina: The Houston land buy isn't the only example of big spending by the UT system. Another big chunk of oil money went to something that's meant to help students. It's called the Institute for Transformational Learning.

Speaker 8: The landscape of higher education is changing, as is the landscape of industry and employment.

Speaker 9: It is all about experience. I think in our world, that really has a focal point.

Matthew: The institute started years ago, back when Bill McRaven was still in the military, but since he became Chancellor, we found its budget grew ten times bigger, from $2.5 million a year to $25 million last year. Nina emailed the Institute asking for an interview. They responded within two minutes, and she sat down with Chief Innovation Officer Marnie Baker Stein.

Nina: Can you give me the cliffs notes of what this place is?

Marnie Baker: Do you want the cliff notes of what it is right now, or do you want the brief history?

Nina: Both would be good.

Marnie Baker: Okay, so, I think the essence of what we are is a central capability to ...

Nina: I get the sense Marnie and her team work on things like online classes for UT students and digital learning software. But it still feels like a lot of buzzwords. For instance, there was this product called Techs. Here's how Marnie pitched it to the UT system back in 2014.

Marnie Baker: This stack and this ecosystem is a beautiful, engaging, mobile-first learning environment that will power adaptive pathways that close learner gaps and encourage learner strengths, personalize state-of-the-art content and learning objects, deep integration with applications that allow for high-end ...

Nina: When Marnie made this presentation, the UT system's governing board had already agreed to spend $50 million on the Institute for Transformational Learning, and after her presentation, they agreed to spend $50 million more. All of the money would come from the oil fund. Marnie promised Matthew and me a second interview, plus a live demo of that Techs product, but for months, we didn't hear back.

Matthew: In the meantime, I got an anonymous tip, an email claiming that Techs was practically unusable and had low educational value. The tipster said the one university trying to use Techs in its classrooms had abandoned it.

Nina: Then we learned Marnie had resigned. Then we learned her boss had resigned. Finally, after three months of waiting, we sat down with someone who oversees the institute now.

Steve Leslie: My name is Steve Leslie. I'm the Executive Vice Chancellor for Academic Affairs, University of Texas system.

Nina: We had some tough questions for Steve, and he was surprisingly open with us.

Is it fair to say that back in 2011 when this investment was first made, $50 million, there wasn't much of a business plan for sustainability?

Steve Leslie: I would say that would be an accurate statement, yes.

Nina: But then another $50 million allocation was made. Do you think that second allocation was made with the understanding that there does need to be a business plan now?

Steve Leslie: No, the expectation was that there would be a business plan, but there was not the foundations of a business plan at the time that either pot of money was put in place. It was expensive, but it led to where we are now, which has also been expensive. It is where it is right now.

Matthew: Steve did make a couple things clear. The institute is in trouble, and the staff there have some explaining to do. There's no way the institute is getting any more money from the oil fund. We tried for months to get an interview with Steve's boss, Chancellor Bill McRaven. He turned us down every time. But we did catch him at a public meeting a few months ago.

What's your-

Bill McRaven: I've got only a few more minutes, I've got to go catch an airplane, I'm sorry.

Matthew: Sure. There's been questions raised here, not just in the board.

I asked McRaven if the Institute for Transformational Learning is still worth the money.

Bill McRaven: Well, I think that's something we're going to have to look at.

Matthew: And I ask him, why spend the oil fund on things like the Institute and 300 acres of land in Houston.

How do you explain and defend the choices of how that money should be spent?

Bill McRaven: I don't have an hour, unfortunately. The board is always looking at how do we manage access and affordability and exceptional faculty. That's that.

Speaker 12: We've got to let him go now guys, sorry.

Bill McRaven: Yeah, sorry folks. I've got to go talk to my staff and catch an airplane.

Nina: Thank you.

Matthew: Thank you.

Ali Runes: Hey.

Nina: We wanted to know how students feel about all this, so we go back to see Ali.

Hey, how are you doing?

Ali Runes: Nice to see y'all.

Nina: Good to see you again!

Matthew: Good to see you. Thanks for coming in and meeting with us again. What is it? What are we looking at here?

Ali Runes: This is the Engineering Education and Research Center, but it's the new home for the electrical and computer engineering department. So, I spend all day here, and it's great.

Matthew: We walk inside to find a quiet room, and we tell Ali what we've found since our first talk.

Nina: The UT system gets $600 million a year from the endowment, and they spend $38 million on financial aid from that pot.

Matthew: That's just 6% of the oil fund money, and UT leaders told us they don't see anything wrong with that. The way they spend the rest of the money still benefits students.

The idea here is that we're going to use this money for extra things that's going to raise the profile, raise the prestige of the University of Texas.

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Speaker 1: Profile raised the prestige of the University of Texas.

Speaker 2: Yeah. It seems like one of those things like when you get your tax return, you're like, "Oh, well, I'm just going to go buy a new dress." It seems like we have a voiced student concern that there is not enough funding for people who need more financial aid. It does seem like a little bit of a like, "Oh, we have all this extra money, but it's not going to go to y'all."

Speaker 1: There will be more and more extra money as the oil fund keeps getting bigger. Where will it go? There's already been talk of change. Bill McRaven has abandoned the Houston project and promised to sell all the land. He has also promised to tighten spending. But just a few weeks ago, Allie got an email. UT-Austin wants to raise her tuition again.

Al Letson: That story comes to us from Neena Satija and Matthew Watkins at the Texas Tribune.

Some universities with big endowments have programs to help low-income students pay for tuition. Other are actually making it harder for poorer kids to afford school.

Eddie Medina: I forget her name but I was at the financial aid office and I started to cry. I had never felt more hopeless in that moment and started to cry too. She was like, "I don't know what to tell you."

Al Letson: That's next on Reveal from the Center for Investigative Reporting and PRX.

Byer Duncan: Hey, folks. Byer Duncan here from Reveal's engagement team.

Listeners and readers often tell me they want to go behind the scenes on our stories. They want to meet the reporters and here what it was like to dig up documents or nail a tough interview. We just kicked off a brand new series on our Facebook page that pulls back the curtain on your favorite episodes. Every week or so I'll sit down with reporters and talk through their findings and what it took to get them. Last week, I chatted with Reveal's Stan Alcorn about car safety, gun violence and what they have in common.

You can watch our new series by heading over to Facebook.com/ThisIsReveal and liking our page. Thanks.

Al Letson: From the Center for Investigative Reporting and PRX, this is Reveal. I'm Al Letson. I'm also the father of two college-age kids, and let me tell you, in the last segment when I heard all these people baffled about how some universities are spending their endowments while still raising tuition, it really hit home because figuring out financial aid, it can make your head spin. I'm just not that good with numbers, so looking at all the paperwork, sometimes I just get overwhelmed. The stakes are especially high because tuition keeps going up and it's pushing students into two groups: those who know they'll go to college, no matter what, and the rising number who may be forced to set aside their dream of a college degree because the price has finally grown impossible to afford.

Eddie Medina: Hi. Can I get the Tortellini, please, with Alfredo sauce?

Al Letson: Eddie Medina blends in with other students at lunchtime at a crowded cafeteria at Cornell University.

Eddie Medina: Thank you. Appreciate it. You have a good day.

Speaker 6: Thank you.

Al Letson: Eddie's the kind of person everyone at Cornell seems to recognize. He's involved in lots of activities, gets good grades and always seems upbeat. But Eddie is different from almost all the other students here, his family doesn't have a lot of money. His mother came to the United States from Mexico and works in a call center. His father is a U.S. Navy veteran. Neither went to college, but they pushed Eddie to study hard and set his sights high. Still, paying for Cornell is a huge stretch for them, and for Eddie.

Eddie Medina: I have maybe one big meal a day but I mostly snack, to be completely honest. It's something that I've just become accustom to.

Al Letson: To try and fit in with his wealthier classmates he wears what looks like a vintage Omega watch.

Eddie Medina: My father gave this to me. He found it in a pawn shop. I don't even know if it's real.

Al Letson: That watch is kind of like Eddie's entire life here at Cornell. He doesn't want his friends to think he's a charity case, so he keeps up appearances.

Eddie Medina: I had made that conscious decision to have something that would make me seem presentable in that kind of fashion.

Al Letson: Eddie gets some financial aid both from the government and from Cornell, but it doesn't go anywhere near as far as you might think. That's because more and more of the money for financial aid in America is going to a different kind of student, one that might surprise you. Higher education editor John Marcus from our partners at The Hechinger Report bring us this story.

John Marcus: Eddie's majoring in economics and on the day I visit him, he's in a class on immigration. They're talking about immigrant stereotypes in popular culture. The professor mentions an old Looney Tunes cartoon character she remembers from years ago.

Speaker 8: You might not know this, but there used to be a cartoon character called Speedy Gonzalez. Oh, you've heard of Speedy Gonzalez. How do you all know about Speedy Gonzalez.

Eddie Medina: I mean, back in the day, like that's how I know. Not anymore.

Speaker 8: No, but you're not that old. Back in the day, so when would you watch Speedy Gonzalez?

Eddie Medina: Yeah, when I was younger.

John Marcus: Eddie grew up in San Diego. He worked hard in school and got good grades, but he still never expected to get into a place like Cornell. When the acceptance letter came, he was shocked.

Eddie Medina: I get the envelope and it's the big one. I'm like, "That's not right." You only get the big one if you got in. I open it up and then I read it all and I broke down. I started crying. I was like, "Wait. No, no, no." I'm like, "That's not right." I'm like, "That's not right."

My mom still didn't know what was going on. I sat her down to explain it to her. I was like, "Mom, I got in."

John Marcus: But getting in was only the first hurdle. Now, Eddie had to figure out how he was going to pay the more than $43,000 for tuition and fees his freshman year. It was much more than his family could afford, but there was no way he was going to turn down the chance to go to a place like Cornell; so he got a job at Sea World and studied every chance he got.

Eddie Medina: My coworkers used to make fun of me because I would during my breaks immediately open a book.

John Marcus: But the money he earned at Sea World wasn't going to come close to what Cornell expected Eddie's family to pay.

Eddie Medina: My family contribution was around $20 to $22,000.

John Marcus: $22,000 each year, that's after the financial aid from the government and the university. And it didn't include books, supplies or room and board. His parents didn't have that kind of money. They're divorced and paying two separate rents and supporting other relatives.

Eddie Medina: It was really difficult for me to fathom why it was anywhere near that. My mom's way of doing that, she's like, "Well, the only money I can get is, from what I understand, my life insurance. I'm going to get penalized for it, but sure, I can help you with that." I was like, through your $5,000, and my father had sold some of his belongings as well to raise money.

John Marcus: Raiding retirement savings and selling possessions those are things you can only do once. Each semester Eddie and his family try to scrape together more money, and Eddie took out loan after loan. But by his junior year, even though he was doing well in school with a 3.4 grade point average, he'd fallen behind in his payments.

Eddie Medina: My family got the email and it read that, "We're sorry to inform you that you have been withdrawn from the university," that you're no longer a student.

I was at the financial aid office and I started to cry. I just said, "What can I do?" I'm like, "Do I take a semester off? Do I work?" She told me, "No, don't do that because you'll make more money and it'll hurt your financial aid package." I was like, "Okay." I had never felt more hopeless in that moment and she started to cry too. She was like, "I don't know what to tell you."

John Marcus: Eddie's parents' poor credit meant he had to resort to private instead of federally subsidized loans. Those have higher interest rates and tougher repayment terms. He also got a work study job and after a few weeks was back at Cornell. In the meantime, the University kept charging him late fees.

Eddie Medina: You get hit with the first fee, which I believe was $350. The second fee comes, if you still haven't paid, on top of this fee as well. I think it's around $500.

John Marcus: For a student like Eddie, $350 or $500 fees are a big deal. That's money that would have gone to groceries or rent. While it's charging students like Eddie for missing payments, Cornell itself is doing fine. The university has nearly seven billion dollars in its endowment. It's been running annual budget surpluses of nearly 400 million dollars tax free.

Eddie's situation is becoming more common as universities shift financial aid away from lower income students like him and toward wealthier kids. At Cornell since 2008, the amount the poorest students pay after discounts and financial aid has increased more than four times faster than what the richest students pay.

Cornell wouldn't talk about Eddie's case with us, or how it makes financial aid awards or anything else, so we went to see Ron Ehrenberg. He's a Cornell professor who studies the economics of higher education. He has photos in his office of the grandkids he's planning to help put through college.

Ron Ehrenberg: I'm busy saving for four grand children so that they can go to the most expensive private college that they want to.

John Marcus: He says financial aid programs do little to help low-income families that want the same thing for their children.

Ron Ehrenberg: If you're a bright kid coming from a relatively low-income family, your chances of enrolling and eventually completing college are mu=

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Aaron Berg: ... enrolling and eventually completing college on much, much lower than a less talented student coming from a wealthy family. I think we're not helping the right people go to college as much as we should.

John Marcus: I asked Aaron Berg why this is happening.

Aaron Berg: Lots of the higher ed policies basically are built in a way that would win support for middle and even upper income tax payers.

John Marcus: So, it's not only universities giving more money to wealthier families, it's the government, too. A lot of financial aid comes in the form of tax breaks. Families can often deduct at least part of what they pay in tuition, and they also get a tax break when they put money into 529 savings accounts. Those billions of dollars worth of benefits go to families making as much as $180,000.00 a year. Then, there are private scholarships. Eddie's counselor in high school didn't tell him about scholarships from rotary clubs, chambers of commerce and other groups. But, counselors at wealthier schools help their students find those.

All of this financial aid ends up going to wealthier kids who could probably afford to go to college without it. Like, Alex Stakovich, an economics major at Cornell. Can we ask how you pay for college?

Alex Stakovich: My parents do. I'm on some financial aid. I know I'm on a bunch of scholarships and stuff, but my parents deal with all that. It's really for the students like me that have financial aid, it's just a little supplement.

John Marcus: Alex says he would have been able to go to college whether he got financial aid or not.

Alex Stakovich: For sure. I definitely would have, but that's the sad thing. There's kids that need that to go to college.

John Marcus: Since Cornell wouldn't talk to us, we head a mile away to a much smaller Ithaca college. It's on a hill above the town with a view of Cornell across the valley. Ithaca's endowment is 120th the size of Cornell's, but it manages to enroll a larger proportion of low income students. Head Financial Aid Officer Lisa Hoske shows us around the office. She has photos, too, of students who received aid and did well at the school.

Lisa Hoske: There are probably eight or nine pictures there of students, several on the ball, I'd say four or five. You can see actually one that's somebody being quite successful in their wrestling programs.

John Marcus: I ask Hoske why colleges like Ithaca and Cornell give growing amounts of money to people who can afford to send their kids to college anyway.

Lisa Hoske: Wherever you're sitting with somebody, when they're looking for financial aid, I think they feel like they need it regardless of the income level. There's very few people, even the more wealthy among us, that can actually afford to say fund the whole education here at Ithaca. I have talked with families who have well over $200,000.00 of income, and still find it challenging to meet the cost of school, and still may appeal for additional funds.

John Marcus: She said colleges like Ithaca need those families to come and pay at least part of what it costs to keep the campus going. So, they give them some financial aid to get them in the door. Say a college has $20,000.00 to give away. It could give it to one poor kid, and it gets one student and no revenue. Or, it could divide it up among five wealthier kids and it gets five students whose families can afford to pay the rest of the tuition.

Lisa Hoske: I know people don't often think that there's a bottom line, but there is.

John Marcus: That bottom line is pushing college education even further out of reach than it already was for low income students. Students like Maya Portillo, she's a friend of Eddie's at Cornell. She says she gets what colleges are doing.

Maya Portillo: It's like a business, right? They have to make profit some way, and so what are they going to do? Fund the one really smart, low income kid, or the five just as talented individuals to come. It's a hard balance.

John Marcus: Maya started life in the middle class, then her father walked out and her mother lost her job. They moved in with Maya's grandparents and Maya and her younger sister went to work to help support the family.

Maya Portillo: It's really hard to talk about, but when you have to help put food on the table when you're in high school, it does something to you. It makes you very aware of the income inequality in the country. I had people tell me that I shouldn't come here because, not that I wasn't smart enough, but because I couldn't handle the amount of wealth that would be in front of me.

John Marcus: Maya was one of the lucky ones. She got in the financial aid to cover her tuition, but that includes loans she'll need to pay back. Being poor at a college where most other students don't have to worry about money has another consequence. You can miss out on important opportunities like the prestigious Pre-Law program Maya got accepted to in New York City.

Maya Portillo: I was so excited. Hold on, they don't pay you? It's done. Can't do it. I had to turn it down.

John Marcus: Rich students can afford to take unpaid internships. Poor students can't. On my last day in Ithaca, I meet up with Eddie again. He takes me to his favorite spot on campus.

Eddie: Yeah, so we are in the Johnson Museum at Cornell University on the fifth floor, which is the Asian gallery floor.

John Marcus: From up here, you can see all of Cornell's impressive campus spread out below.

Eddie: These three buildings starting here, to the second, to the third pass, they were the first buildings at Cornell. These used to be dormitories, actually.

John Marcus: Eddie likes to come up here where it's quiet, and think about how far he's come.

Eddie: It's very humbling. It keeps you going, and it also reminds you that this a different place and language that you're used to, language you know.

John Marcus: Eddie thinks that paying for college shouldn't have been so much harder for him, than it was for his wealthier classmates. After all, Cornell's motto is "Any Person, Any Study," but he spent a lot of his time just trying to pay the bill.

Eddie: It's almost like you try to make sense of it by saying to yourself, "This really sucks, but I guess I'm getting the degree," right? It should have worked out. The payoff should be just about right. I'm constantly trying to convince myself of that.

Speaker 7: Ladies and gentlemen, the first of the academic procession have arrived.

John Marcus: Still, Eddie did manage to graduate with a degree from Cornell. It took his very last dollar to pay his last month's rent. He's now living in New York City and weighing job offers from financial services companies. Once he has a job, he'll be able to start paying back his student loans. They come to $68,000.00.

Al Letson: Our story was produced by Matt Frassica, and reported by John Marcus from The Heckinger Report, a nonprofit that reports on education. There are some students like Eddie who've gotten the grades to get into a good university, they may even be able to afford the tuition. But, schools in their home state won't let them in, and law makers have even passed laws to keep them out. That story, when we come back. You're listening to Reveal from the Center for Investigative Reporting, and PRX.

From the Center for Investigative Reporting and PRX, this is Reveal. I'm Al Letson. Today, we've heard about how the cost of going to college is putting higher education out of reach for some students, but that's not the only barrier. Arturo Martinez lives in Georgia. Five years ago, he was getting ready to graduate from high school, and a lot of his friends were preparing for college.

Arturo Martinez: Senior year, I had a lot of friends who during the finals they would be excited to show off their acceptance letters, talking about college, where they were going to go. They were asking me, "Why are you not going to college?" I'm a [inaudible 00:38:19], you can go to Georgia Tech, or UGA.

Al Letson: Arturo had good grades and wanted to attend the University of Georgia or Georgia Tech, but he wasn't allowed. That's because when he was eight years old, he and his family illegally crossed the border into the United States from Mexico. Growing up, Arturo knew he'd be cut out of certain things. One time in middle school, he hurt his knee playing baseball. The other parents thought he should go to the hospital, but Arturo was afraid that someone there might ask questions.

Arturo Martinez: Something may come up and my parents are arrested, so I just wanted to put up with it, telling them it was fine, that I was actually scared of the doctors.

Al Letson: Did you catch that? He pretended he was afraid of doctors, rather than risk his family being discovered. In high school, Arturo's guidance counselor assumed he wanted to go to college, but when he asked Arturo if he had a social security number, Arturo started to duck the meetings.

Arturo Martinez: I tried to avoid the college talks with my counselors because the fact that I was undocumented, I didn't want to disclose my status.

Al Letson: He watched his classmates go off and start their new lives, and he grew depressed. Arturo is what some people call a "Dreamer," young people brought to this country illegally as children. Under the Obama Administration, they could get deferred action for childhood arrivals, or DACA. It gave them temporary permission to stay in two year work permits. That made it easier to go to college because they could work legally and pay tuition. They don't have access to federal grants and loans. Now, some states have generous policies for those students. In 21 states, they pay in-state tuition. But, Georgia goes the opposite direction. It bars students like Arturo from enrolling in its three-

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Al Letson: It bars students like Arturo from enrolling in its three top colleges and charges them nonresident tuition at state schools they're allowed to attend.

Arturo Martinez: I can't afford even if I had two jobs.

Al Letson: Defenders of Georgia's policies say immigrant living in the US illegally shouldn't take seats or resources away from people who are here legally. Sasha Aslanian with our partners at APM Reports looks at how some students in Georgia are pushing back.

Sasha Aslanian: Arturo's dream was to go to college and study computer science. Instead, he spent five years working construction with his dad. On most evenings, you'll find him in a room off his family's kitchen. It's pretty much a broom closet.

Arturo Martinez: This is where I do my work.

Sasha Aslanian: He's hooked together three computer monitors and blinged out the computer tower with tiny lights that change color.

Arturo Martinez: I built the whole computer so every piece that you see right there was put together. Basically my routine coming from work with my dad doing construction, this is where I free myself.

Sasha Aslanian: Arturo shows me examples of the graphic designs he's been practicing.

Arturo Martinez: Here's some of the pieces that I'm working on.

Sasha Aslanian: They're portraits made from geometric shapes with crowns of light like religious figures.

Arturo Martinez: One of my favorites is called Emiliano Zapata. He's the Mexican revolutionary leader that we learned from Freedom U.

Sasha Aslanian: That's Freedom University. It's an underground school for undocumented students in Atlanta. The experience opened the door to much bigger possibilities in his life. To visit Freedom University, I had to promise not to reveal where they meet.

Speaker 4: Make your small groups of whatever size.

Sasha Aslanian: On this Sunday night, about a dozen kids gather in donated space in a glassed in room with comfy purple and orange couches. Visiting professors from nearby colleges volunteer their time. Students don't pay, but there's also no credit. Tonight an English professor from Morehouse College is teaching a poetry class.

Speaker 4: That's a beautiful statement. When we become hard rock and so forth, that's when we're most vulnerable. That's when we break.

Sasha Aslanian: Freedom University is inspired by southern freedom schools from the civil rights era of the '50s and '60s. College students from the north established temporary schools for local black children as part of the overall push for legal and social equality. Freedom U has one paid employee, Emiko Soltis.

Emiko Soltis: Basically, I'm the provost and janitor of Freedom U.

Sasha Aslanian: Soltis has a PhD in human rights and social movement and a history of being what she calls a trouble maker. She was arrested for standing up for the rights of cafeteria workers when she was a grad student at Emory University. Freedom U was founded in 2011 in response to Georgia's policies that put up roadblocks for kids like Arturo. Soltis became executive director in 2014.

Emiko Soltis: This ban has now been in place for seven years. We have an entire generation of young people in Georgia who, since they were in middle school, now grade school soon, thought college was not a possibility and they gave up.

Sasha Aslanian: Last year, there were just 428 undocumented students enrolled in the university system of Georgia. That's one-seventh of one percent. Soltis tries to convince her students not to lose hope and to explore opportunities in other states. She drives a van up the east coast so they can meet Freedom U alumni now going to Ivy League schools. They tour campuses around the country that welcome students like them, and they even ask them to give talks sometimes. Back home in Georgia, Soltis has introduced them to an earlier generation of Atlanta student leaders who faced obstacles and fought back, people like Charles Black who's a board member of Freedom U.

Charles Black: There was no college in Miami that I could attend because of my race. None.

Sasha Aslanian: Black grew up in Florida. In 1958, he came to Atlanta to attend Morehouse, a historically black college. He was an early leader of the Atlanta student movement which challenged segregation.

Charles Black: It was illegal for blacks and whites to sit together in a place of public assembly. You couldn't use the same taxi cabs. The hospital had separate ambulances for blacks and whites. I mean all these things were the law just like this is the law now that we're fighting against.

Sasha Aslanian: For Arturo Martinez, Charles Black and the Civil Rights leaders of his generation are an inspiration. Black teaches them what it took to dismantle segregation from lunch counter to dime store to city hall. He was first arrested in 1960 while trying to desegregate the whites only waiting room at the train station where he'd first arrived in town.

Charles Black: Martin King's brother, A. D. Williams King, and I led two separate groups into the white waiting room of the [inaudible 00:45:09] train station. It should be noted that all of these places were scoped out beforehand so we knew about how many seats there were, where the entrances were, where there was a phone booth somewhere near where we could have a spotter who could report in. Things were planned with military precision.

Sasha Aslanian: And so are the protests that Freedom U organizes today. Their main target is the Georgia Board of Regents and its policies against undocumented students.

Speaker 7: Good morning. At this time, I'd like to call the Board of Regents meeting to order.

Sasha Aslanian: It's February, Valentine's Day actually. About a dozen Freedom U students and supporters have gotten dressed up. They take seats in the audience at a Board of Regents meeting. After a few minutes, the students stand up and begin handing the regents carnations and handwritten Valentines, asking them to remove the tuition and admission restrictions for undocumented students.

Speaker 7: Excuse me, Steve. I would ask those who are interrupting our meeting and blocking our speaker who has prepared a presentation for us to please leave the room or return to your seats.

Sasha Aslanian: The regents are whisked from the room, carnations scattered on the floor, and an officer with the state patrol approaches the protesters.

Speaker 8: If you do not disperse immediately, you will be arrested. Your choice.

Sasha Aslanian: The protesters file out. It's a month after Donald Trump's inauguration and they can't risk getting arrested on misdemeanor trespassing charges. Trump's first week in office he'd signed an order that any criminal offense was grounds for deportation. Outside on the sidewalk, Freedom U student [inaudible 00:46:50] Sanchez is relieved the protest went smoothly.

Sanchez: My heart was racing just because the police were ready. Obviously police is not something that makes you feel amazing.

Sasha Aslanian: But tough enforcement is exactly what some Georgians want to see. Trump supporter D. A. King opposes Freedom U's activities. He runs a group that wants to make Georgia the least hospitable state in the country for unauthorized immigrants. I catch him on one of his frequent trips to the Georgia State Capitol to weigh in on immigration issues. King's white and a former Marine who quit his insurance business to devote himself to this cause. Today he walks through the metal detector carrying a letter.

D. A. King: I'm going to take this and deliver it to Governor Deal's office and ask for a 10-minute meeting. I'm also going to ask that I be given hair. The odds of either one of those happening are about the same.

Sasha Aslanian: King is bald and he's right; he doesn't get the meeting, but he's persistent and he's been on the winning side much of the time. He's at home at the Capitol. He visits with staff in their offices. He promises tacos to the aide of one of his Senate allies.

D. A. King: Donna does me a lot of favors. This is like a two taco favor. Then when I go by Taqueria del Sol then I deliver tacos up here.

Donna: He does.

Sasha Aslanian: He charms he into letting us use a conference room for our interview. What motivates King is a sense of moral indignation that people are coming and taking something that's not theirs.

D. A. King: For the first 10 years that I did this, people started coming to me instead of to our congressman and telling me that their kid couldn't get hired at McDonald's in Gainesville, Georgia because they didn't speak Spanish. Or small business owners would come to me and say "D. A., I lost business because my competition is hiring black market labor." We have homeless vets, but I have to hear people whining about an illegal alien not getting X. It doesn't wash with me. I think given a fair presentation, it doesn't wash with most Americans.

Sasha Aslanian: King feels a certain amount of sympathy for kids brought to the US as children who now don't have legal status, but he doesn't think their situation can be compared to the African-American people who faced Jim Crow laws.

D. A. King: When I lived in Montgomery, Alabama when I was eight years old, I saw colored-only bathrooms and water fountains, and I remember crying when I realized what was going on. For people to take the struggle of black Americans to obtain their constitutional rights and compare it to illegal aliens demanding amnesty and access to an America that they do not deserve nor have they earned makes me sick to my stomach.

Sasha Aslanian: Freedom U supporters say undocumented immigrants also have constitutional rights, and together with a Latino civil rights organization, they've filed two federal lawsuits. One challenges the ban that keeps students from going to certain universities. The other challenges the rules about paying higher tuition. One of the plaintiffs in that lawsuit is Arturo Martinez, the young man working construction with his dad.

Arturo Martinez: I wanted to find other ways to keep fighting. This lawsuit will push it even farther to put the pressure on the Board of Regents because I think the law is on our side.

Sasha Aslanian: As the lawsuit began its slow crawl through the courts, Arturo kept working alongside his dad and applying for colleges and scholarships out of state. This spring, he checked his email on his home-built computer and got some good news. He won a scholarship from TheDream.US. It's a private scholarship for students who live in the 15 states that have barriers for undocumented students. Arturo won a full ride to Eastern Connecticut State University.

Arturo Martinez: I went to my dad and told him "I think I'm going to college." He got up and he started jumping out of happiness. We started hugging each other. The reaction of my mom and even the reaction of my dog, she started licking me. It was a special moment for me.

Sasha Aslanian: It was a victory for the Martinez family even if Arturo had to go 1000 miles from home. This fall five years after graduating from high school, Arturo moved to Connecticut. He's double majoring in math and computer science.

Al Letson: Sasha Aslanian is a correspondent with APM Reports, the documentary and investigative journalism group at American Public Media. Arturo should graduate in 2021. By that point, his DACA will have expired. It's not clear what will happen to DREAMers like him. President Trump says it's up to Congress to come up with a solution. So at this point, Arturo doesn't know if he'll be able to stay and use the degree he waited so long to earn in the US.

Today's show was edited by Taki Telonidis. Neena Satija was our lead producer. Thanks to Dave Harmon from the Texas Tribune and Catherine Winter from APM Reports. Our production manager is Mwende Hinojosa, and our lead sound designer and engineer is Jim Briggs. He had help this week from Catherine Raymando and Kat [Shooknit 00:52:21]. Amy Pyle is our editor-in-chief. Susanne Weaver is our executive editor. Our executive producer is Kevin Sullivan. Our theme music is by [Comorado 00:52:28].

Support for Reveal is provided by the Reva and David Logan Foundation, the Ford Foundation, the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, the John S. and the James L. Knight Foundation, the Heising-Simons Foundation, and the Ethics in Excellence in Journalism Foundation. Reveal is a co-production of the Center for Investigative Reporting and PRX. I'm Al Letson. Remember there is always more to the story.