MIAMI -- Continuing cutbacks in student financial aid are taking a disproportionate toll on poor and minority students, according to a recently released report on the nation's higher education funding crisis."Higher education is the cornerstone of democracy. Yet, in the world's richest democracy, college is increasingly inaccessible to the poorer people in American society," says the report from Eduardo Padron, president of Miami Dade College, the nation's largest college."It is perilous for a nation, any nation, to forego the talents of large numbers of young people. This failure reverberates throughout the political, economic and social environment," says the report, which calls for new increases in state and federal funding."The detailed findings of this important new report confirm the very real crisis we face in trying to keep the doors to college open in this uncertain economy," says Hispanic Higher Education Association of Colleges and Universities President and Chief Executive Officer Antonio R. Flores. "Certainly, the stakes are critical for the country's youngest and largest ethnic population, which also is disproportionately poor and, thus, less able to afford the soaring costs of a college education."The leadership of HACU, which represents 360 colleges that collectively serve more than two-thirds of all Hispanic higher education students, visited Capitol Hill last week to persuade Congress to make substantial new investments in infrastructure support and student financial aid for historically under-funded Hispanic-Serving Institutions. Padron is a founding member and former chairman of the HACU Governing Board.The report from Padron, whose college enrolls more than 166,000 students including the largest Hispanic and second-largest black student enrollment in the country, describes a national higher education system struggling to meet the needs of surging enrollment at a time of continuing state and federal funding cutbacks.Tuition and fees rose in every state last year. While personal incomes increased only 10% over the past decade, the cost of attending a public four-year institution rose 47%, writes Padron, who has received presidential appointments from three U.S. Presidents and has served on the boards of the American Council on Education, The College Board, Carnegie Foundation, U.S. Congressional Hispanic Caucus Institute and League for Innovation in the Community College."Since the early 1970s, the cost of paying for public college, as a percentage of family income, has risen for low-income families from 42% to 71%, as opposed to a constant 19% and 5% for middle- and upper-income families, respectively," Padron writes. "Up to 25% of academically qualified low-income students no longer even apply to college."Overall state funding to higher education increased only 1.2% for the 2003-2004 school year, the smallest increase in a decade. In California and Texas, two states with the largest Hispanic populations, state funding increased only 1%. State higher education appropriations actually decreased in 14 states, according to the report.Padron says a "deficit of understanding" has led some in Congress to suggest that higher education institutions "function more like a business" in the face of shrinking revenues. "Such a business-like approach would alter the mission of the institutions," he writes. "They would offer fewer courses, close departments, eliminate remedial programs, cut back on support services like counseling, and hire more adjunct instructors in place of full-time professors."Congress has the opportunity to substantially increase federal support for higher education through the pending five-year reauthorization of the Higher Education Act, which governs federal spending policies for all public colleges and universities, he adds.The report, titled "A Deficit of Understanding: Confronting the Funding Crisis in Higher Education and the Loss of Access to College for Low-Income and Minority Students," calls for substantial increases in state and federal support for higher education, including increases in federal Pell Grant funding to offset the declining "purchasing power" of student aid grants that covered 84% of college costs 25 years ago but only 39% of those costs today.Visit Miami Dade College: www.mdcc.edu"