| Author |
Message |
    
Tom Reingold
Supporter
Username: Noglider
Post Number: 4970
Registered: 1-2003
| | Posted on Wednesday, December 29, 2004 - 4:42 pm: | 
|
This is from the Washington Post, or http://tinyurl.com/4jexs
Change Means Fewer Students Will Be Eligible for Pell Grants
By Dan Morgan
The Department of Education yesterday announced a new formula for calculating eligibility for college financial aid, a move that will eliminate federal Pell Grant scholarships for an estimated 80,000 to 90,000 low-income students and force a modest scaling back of other types of state and federal assistance to broader categories of undergraduates.
Bush administration officials said the new formula -- which is used to measure a family's ability to pay college costs -- will save the government at least $300 million in the 2005-2006 academic year. The neediest students, who receive the maximum federal scholarship of $4,050, will be unaffected and only a small fraction of the 5.3 million Pell recipients will lose their grants entirely, officials said.
The previous formula was a decade old and relied on 1990 data that are widely acknowledged to be out of date. The new formula uses tax data from 2002.
Congress, however, had resisted the change in a series of bills approved by both houses over the past 18 months, and education officials indicated yesterday that they were taken aback by the timing of the announcement, just two days before Christmas.
Sen. Arlen Specter (R-Pa.) said he was "very unhappy" and promised to renew the battle for broader Pell Grant funding next year. Sen. Jon S. Corzine (D-N.J.) said he was "outraged that the Bush administration is going forward with these punitive cuts," adding that the change in the eligibility rules was "nothing more than a backdoor effort to cut student aid funding."
"For those working to get ahead, this is a scene from 'The Grinch who stole my education,' " he said.
The Chronicle of Higher Education called the move the "December Surprise," and Terry W. Hartle, senior vice president of the American Council on Education, representing 2,000 colleges and universities, said the timing was "unfortunate and probably deliberate."
"This will have a modest but noticeable impact on a very large number of low- and middle-income students," he said. "I don't think it means they won't go to school. But they will borrow more money on credit cards, work longer hours or take fewer classes."
Because many states use the federal formula to calculate aid to students at state universities, the changes announced yesterday will have a ripple effect, education officials said. Eligibility for subsidized federal student loans could also be affected. But non-subsidized loans, which are not tied to a family's income, would not be affected.
The most direct repercussions will be in the Pell Grant program, the federal scholarship aid program for the needy that has grown steadily over the past decade with strong bipartisan support in Congress.
An estimated 90 percent of the families receiving help through the program earn less than $35,000 a year. The average grant is about $2,400 a year. Most of those expected to lose eligibility next year are families at the upper margin of eligibility who receive only the minimum grant of $400, according to Susan Aspey, spokeswoman for the Department of Education.
"Our projections show that nearly half the Pell Grant recipients won't see any change at all, and on average the losses [for those affected] will be less than $100," she said. Although the changes will cause some to lose eligibility, the department still expects a 25,000 net increase in the number of Pell scholarships in 2005-2006.
Driving the program's rapid growth is the rising number of high school graduates from minority or low-income backgrounds. Congress approved $12.4 billion for Pell Grants for 2005, up $400 million from 2004 but less than the administration requested. The fiscal pressures will only intensify when high schools graduate the largest class in U.S. history in 2008.
With demand outpacing funds appropriated by Congress, the government has borrowed about $3.6 billion to provide grants to all those eligible under the formula. At the same time, advocates of federal student aid say the present maximum grant of $4,050 to the neediest covers only a third of average college costs and is plainly inadequate.
The outdated eligibility formula, said David Schnittger, spokesman for the House Committee on Education and the Workforce, was "a de facto cut on the poorest students" because it provided grants to some who should not have been eligible and hampered Congress's ability to increase the maximum grants -- a goal of key members in both parties.
The formula change, a seemingly small, technical one, involves replacing 1990 data with 2002 data on state and local taxes, to recalculate a family's expected disposable income available for college costs. In most states, those taxes were lower in 2002 than in 1990, suggesting grant applicants had more disposable income to put against tuition charges.
Hartle said it was "inevitable" that the formula would have to be updated.
But Brian K. Fitzgerald, director of the Advisory Committee on Student Financial Assistance, which was created by Congress, said the panel recommended last summer that changes in the formula be "phased in." Many states raised taxes after 2002, so "the updated data is still old data and doesn't give a true picture of the current tax burden facing students in many states, because those rates have risen."
Staff writer Helen Dewar contributed to this report. |
Spanish Inquisitor
Citizen
Username: Sinq
Post Number: 36
Registered: 4-2004
| | Posted on Wednesday, December 29, 2004 - 4:52 pm: |
|
The Bush plan to foster stupidity and grow the GOP's voter base. |
Mark Fuhrman
Citizen
Username: Mfpark
Post Number: 1038
Registered: 9-2001
| | Posted on Wednesday, December 29, 2004 - 4:59 pm: |
|
Tom:
I think your thread title is a wee bit inflammatory. Taking lessons from Straw?
In the small picture, the eligibility rules do need to be updated. There are also loopholes that allowed lenders to sock it to the government at inflated rates that I think are being closed at the same time, which is good.
In the big picture, you gotta wonder that Bush's only college education program is to do minor tinkering with student aid and which reduces the amount of aid available. I would think the EDUCATION PRESIDENT would have proposed sweeping new programs to encourage higher education so poor people can bootstrap themselves into better jobs and higher incomes.
Oh, wait, that would require money, which unfortunately is being sucked up at record rates by that lovely war in Iraq, and which was lost in scads to tax cuts for the richest Americans (who do not qualify for student loans anyway).
Stupid conservatives who believed that Bush would follow the (truly) conservative philosophy of helping people help themselves. His real focus is helping the rich help themselves to more largess, while cutting the poor loose to fend for themselves. |
Tom Reingold
Supporter
Username: Noglider
Post Number: 4971
Registered: 1-2003
| | Posted on Wednesday, December 29, 2004 - 5:04 pm: |
|
Let's not forget Grover Norquist's hope, to reduce government to where he can drown it in the bathtub. |
jennie
Citizen
Username: Jennie
Post Number: 32
Registered: 5-2001
| | Posted on Wednesday, December 29, 2004 - 9:10 pm: |
|
Washington Post, the next day
CORRECTIONS
Saturday, December 25, 2004; Page A02
The headline on a Dec. 24 article about the Education Department's new formula for federal college scholarship aid incorrectly said that fewer students will be eligible for Pell Grants. Although 80,000 to 90,000 grantees at the higher-income end will be dropped from the Pell program in the 2005-2006 academic year, the department expects more students to be eligible overall because of a rising number of low-income high school graduates. |
Local_1_crew
Citizen
Username: Local_1_crew
Post Number: 312
Registered: 3-2004
| | Posted on Wednesday, December 29, 2004 - 10:18 pm: |
|
i am all in favor of this plan though i despise george w.
i think government subsidized school grants should be completely disgarded.
the government bureacracy has become bloated and should divest itself of many of its cash hand out policies |
Rastro
Citizen
Username: Rastro
Post Number: 548
Registered: 5-2004
| | Posted on Wednesday, December 29, 2004 - 10:33 pm: |
|
Local, we're all aware of your hard-on about public education.
Everyone else, it seems like the program is a victrim of its own success. More students need Pell Grants (more low income students graduating high school and wanting to attend college), so that even increasing funding for the overall program can cause some to lose eligibiity if there are more people applying for them.
As much as I would like to see this program fully funded for all students who want it, perhaps it should be indexed to the poverty line, or some other indication of RELATIVE need, rather than absolute need. I know little of what makes one eligible for Pell Grants. I know I wasn't, but a number of my friends were,a dn they were not "poor." Of course, that was over two decades ago... |
Montagnard
Citizen
Username: Montagnard
Post Number: 1370
Registered: 6-2003
| | Posted on Wednesday, December 29, 2004 - 10:35 pm: |
|
The war in Iraq will certainly be educational to those stupid enough to volunteer. |
Dave
Moderator
Username: Dave
Post Number: 4837
Registered: 4-1998
| | Posted on Wednesday, December 29, 2004 - 10:36 pm: |
|
CSM today:
quote:About 850,000 people who probably would qualify for a federal Pell Grant do not fill out the financial-aid form known as the Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA), according to a recent study by the American Council on Education in Washington. Currently about 5 million people receive those grants - ranging from a few hundred dollars to a maximum of $4,050 a year.
But a controversial update in the way Pell Grants are calculated will cut off eligibility for 80,000 to 90,000 moderate-income students. The Advisory Committee on Student Financial Assistance (ACSFA), created by Congress, also projects that 1.2 million lower-income students stand to lose $200 to $300 each.
That may not sound like much, but some experts say the students could also lose state or institutional aid that's based on the federal formula. "It's a double whammy that may hit some families," says Dallas Martin, president of the National Association of Student Financial Aid Administrators in Washington.
The state and local tax information that the federal government has been using to calculate a family's ability to pay for college is more than a decade old, and will now be replaced by 2002 tax data. Congressional opponents argue those figures are also out of date, and any adjustments should be phased in to avoid sticker shock for current students. But the Department of Education says the changes will take effect in 2005. The government expects to save $300 million on a $12.4 billion program.
Some students who lose Pell dollars will automatically get more money from their college to make up the difference. Mr. Belvin says Duke and many of its competitors will cover whatever amount of need is not met by grants, subsidized loans, and student jobs.
But many schools don't offer their own aid, so students will have to borrow more, including unsubsidized loans with less favorable rates.
"The bottom line is, it's making it harder for moderate-income families to pay for college," says Brian Fitzgerald, staff director of ACSFA.
The broader problem, Mr. Fitzgerald says, is that there's nearly a $4,000 gap between the average aid awarded to low-income students and the amount of financial need they demonstrate. "That's keeping hundreds of thousands of students out of four-year colleges and almost 200,000 out of school altogether."
No one really expected Republicans to support education for the poor, did they? |
notehead
Supporter
Username: Notehead
Post Number: 1841
Registered: 5-2001
| | Posted on Wednesday, December 29, 2004 - 11:28 pm: |
|
Um.... NO. |
Dr. Winston O'Boogie
Citizen
Username: Casey
Post Number: 931
Registered: 8-2003
| | Posted on Wednesday, December 29, 2004 - 11:53 pm: |
|
This is actually a strategy to help the military reach their recruiting goals. |
shestheone
Citizen
Username: Shestheone
Post Number: 114
Registered: 5-2003
| | Posted on Thursday, December 30, 2004 - 12:19 am: |
|
sure...we've all heard the recruiters. 'sign here, you'll never really see active duty. just invest some of your time and the military will pay for college.'
(and whatever you do, don't mention IRAQ) |
|
Closed: New threads not accepted on this page