The Education of Jessica Rivera

Jessica Rivera (not her real name) is a slight, composed 20-year-old Hunter College student. She grew up in the Bronx, raised by her mother and extended family. No one in her family has completed college, so Rivera was thrilled to get accepted to Hunter College, one of the best schools in the City University of New York. "It was my top choice," she says.

In the legendary heyday of City College in the 1930s and '40s, Rivera's could have been a classic story of upward mobility. Had she enjoyed similar opportunities, she might even have wound up with Irving Howe and Daniel Bell, "arguing the world" in the cafeteria alcoves. But Rivera's mother--who was injured at the Bronx factory that she worked at many years ago--is on public assistance. When Rivera turned 18, welfare caseworkers told her she would have to report for twenty to thirty hours a week to the city's Work Experience Program (WEP) if she wanted to keep collecting the benefits she and her mother depend on. "They offered me jobs working in the park, cleaning toilets, cleaning transportation." The long hours would have made it nearly impossible to continue at Hunter as a full-time student. At 18, Rivera was faced with a choice between quitting school for a dead-end job and losing her family's income.

For middle-class Americans, society offers myriad incentives for higher education: scholarships, interest-free loans and the "Hope" tax credits. But for women on welfare, it's a different story. In September the 1996 welfare reform law was up for Congressional reauthorization. The vote did not happen then, because of divergences between a bill in the Senate, written by moderate Republicans and Democrats, and the Bush Administration's vision of welfare reform, reflected in a House bill. The welfare law expired September 30, and no compromise bill or temporary legislation is yet ready to take its place.

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