Whereas equality of opportunity for all people is one of the noblest aspirations of the United States; Whereas data on the benefits of higher education demonstrates that, in spite of ongoing barriers to access and student success, colleges and universities can still provide pathways to economic opportunity; Whereas the United States built a thriving middle class by funding colleges and universities to provide avenues to individual economic opportunity and shared economic growth; Whereas higher education enhances the economic mobility of individuals, which is evidenced by— (1) a finding by the Georgetown University Center on Education and the Workforce that the median lifetime earnings of holders of an associate degree are uniformly greater than the median lifetime earnings of holders of solely a high school diploma; and (2) a finding by the Pew Economic Mobility Project that, for an individual born in the lowest income quintile, obtaining a 4-year degree or a higher degree is associated with— (A) an approximately 80-percent difference in the probability of that individual earning an income outside the lowest income quintile; and (B) a threefold difference in the probability of that individual going on to earn an income in the highest income quintile; Whereas the Bureau of Labor Statistics reports that— (1) the unemployment rate of recent high school graduates not enrolled in college was 18.3 percent, nearly 5 times higher than the overall unemployment rate of the United States; (2) approximately 38 percent of 2022 high school graduates did not immediately matriculate to an institution of higher education the following fall semester, about the same percent as in 2021, and a 4.2 percentage point decline since 2012 in the rate of immediate matriculation of new high school graduates to an institution of higher education