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In 1996, when the U.S. Congress legislated President Clinton's promise to "end welfare as we know it" by passing the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act, the opportunity for single parents receiving assistance to pursue a college education ended. Now, small percentages of TANF (Temporary Aid for Needy Families) recipients are allowed to finish high school or pursue 1 or (on an exception basis) 2 years of vocational education; the majority of recipients are forced to take the first job offered to them, even though low-skill, low-income jobs rarely enable families to escape poverty. Although basic literacy skills are obviously essential to financial survival in this country, access to a career that can support a family typically requires the technical and critical literacy skills that are best acquired and symbolized by a college education. Census data (U.S. Census Bureau, 2001) and popular wisdom both support the concept that baccalaureate degrees are the most effective means of expanding career opportunities and increasing potential income; this way of breaking intergenerational cycles of poverty, however, is now illegal. In Minnesota, recipients of the Minnesota Family Investment Program (MFIP), the state's enactment of TANF, who do not abide by the strict regulations of welfare reform are sanctioned: Their cash and food assistance is cut by 30% and they lose their child-care grant.
Sanctioning Education: The Story of an Educational Program
The story of the Student Parent MFIP (SPMP), a pilot program at the University of Minnesota's General College (the University of Minnesota's open-access unit) that was designed to provide access to a college education for welfare recipients, makes vivid both the enormous potential of such programs and the political obstacles facing these programs and their participants.1 Ironically, the need for educational programs that will help families to escape poverty is increasingly urgent: Under TANF, single parents have a strict 5-year lifetime limit for receiving assistance. Even while they are in school, this 5-year "time clock" keeps on ticking: In 2002, the first wave of welfare recipients who were unable to secure employment under TANF reached their 5-year lifetime limit. Those "success stories" who left the welfare rolls by finding employment can rarely secure jobs that provide health insurance, child care, opportunities for advancement, or even sufficient income to...