New England Board of Higher Education » Pell Grant

DC Shuttle: Maximum Pell Grant Increased; Education Dept. Updates Lists of College Costs

Erica Pritchard — Mon, 18 Jun 2012 17:26:57 +0000

On Thursday, the Senate Appropriations Committee voted along party lines to approve FY2013 authorization for Labor-HHS-Education programs, including $68.5 billion for the Department of Education. This includes an $85 increase in the maximum Pell Grant award level, from $5,550 to $5,635, beginning in the 2013-14 school year. Funding for most other student financial aid programs would remain at current levels. Lawmakers approved an amendment which would allow students who lack high school diplomas or GEDs to qualify for federal financial aid by passing an "ability to benefit" test. These students had been ruled ineligible for federal aid in FY2012's spending bill, as a cost-saving measure to help preserve funding for Pell Grants.

Under the Senate Appropriations bill, the Race to the Top competitive grant program for K-12 education reform would receive level funding with 2012 at $549 million, with a $51 million increase included at the subcommittee level being shifted to the Math and Science Partnerships program. Sen. Richard Shelby (R-AL) submitted the amendment to redirect the funding to the math and science program and bring its total funding up to $150 million in order to ensure that the funding continue to be distributed as a formula grant, rather than as a competitive grant, as required by the Elementary and Secondary Education Act when funding falls below $100 million. The college-level Race to the Top grant program aimed at containing rising college costs, for which the administration had requested $1 billion, would receive no funding from the legislation.

The "First in the World" program, which encourages colleges to develop innovative approaches to education, would receive $40 million. The 2013 spending bill would also increase funding for the National Institutes of Health (NIH) by $100 million: from $30.6 billion to $30.7 billion. Sen. Tom Harkin (D-IA), chair of the Appropriations Subcommittee on Labor-HHS-Education, said that the increased NIH funding will "promote our nation's long-term economic prosperity" and "help the United States remain the world leader in biomedical research."

In accordance with the Higher Education Opportunity Act of 2008, the Education Department released an updated snapshot of tuition and college costs around the country through its College Affordability and Transparency Center on Tuesday. The lists include institutions with the highest and lowest tuition, net cost to students, fees, and those whose costs are most rapidly increasing and decreasing. See the lists.

As a member of New England Council, we publish the DC Shuttle each week featuring higher ed news from Washington. This edition is drawn from the Council's Weekly Washington Report Higher Education Update, of June 18, 2012.

Founded in 1925, the New England Council is a nonpartisan alliance of businesses, academic and health institutions, and public and private organizations throughout New England formed to promote economic growth and a high quality of life in the New England region. The Council's mission is to identify and support federal public policies and articulate the voice of its membership regionally and nationally on important issues facing New England. For more information, please visit: www.newenglandcouncil.com.

Saving Pell Grants in an Era of Cost-Cutting

John O. Harney — Mon, 09 May 2011 20:51:25 +0000

In the context of the recent efforts to arrive at a federal budget, articles abound in the popular media and trade publications debating both the value of Pell Grants and their rising cost to the U.S. government.

Both pros and cons of the debate hold value. Pell Grants are what enable many of our low-income families to send their children to college and, when more and more jobs require a minimum of a bachelor’s degree, the value of these grants cannot be underestimated. While some eligible students still do not apply for these grants (due to the still-existing hurdles of the FAFSA), many more students have sought these grants than ever before (from 6.2 million recipients in award year 2008-09 to an estimated 9.4 million in 2011-12).

And therein lies the rub. With increased utilization, up goes the price tag. It is estimated that the cost of the Pell program has more than doubled over the last five years.

Solutions to this situation are not in short supply either. Apart from those advocating complete elimination of Pell Grant support, officials have suggested everything from grant reductions to changed eligibility requirements.

Recently, a group of well-respected higher education experts proposed solutions in a requested letter to the College Board. While I laud some of the proffered solutions, there is one particular suggestion made by the group with which I strongly disagree, namely that Pell Grants should be awarded only to students enrolled in at least 15 credit hours per semester.

The current eligibility requirements permit students enrolled in 12 credits hours to be awarded a Pell Grant. The group’s rationale for increasing the credit-hour requirements is that “full-time” enrollment at most colleges is 15 credits. So, if we limit the Pell Grants to students enrolled “full-time” and graduating in four years (120 credit hours), we will reduce both the number of enrolled students and the amount paid to each student over the course of his/her undergraduate education.

The authors are not wrong in their conclusion: Restricting eligibility in the manner described will lower the cost of Pell Grants. But the proffered approach suggested fails to address and hence acknowledge the academic and psychosocial context within which Pell Grants are awarded.

Most Pell-eligible students, as pointed out with stunning clarity by Richard Kahlenberg in his book, Rewarding Strivers, will struggle to complete their undergraduate education in six years, let alone in four years. And, students not enrolled at elite institutions will struggle even more. Indeed, one of the best predictors of college success is a prospective student’s socioeconomic class.

For many colleges, while 15 credit hours is considered a full-load, a large percentage of students enroll in 12 credit hours a semester periodically over the course of their college career and are still considered full-time students—a point even recognized by the NCAA.

And why would students lower their credit hours? Lots of reasons and most are not trying to game the aid system.

For some first-generation students, enrolling in four courses for two or three semesters will foster success whereas handling five courses may create information overload, particularly in the first year or two of college. This is particularly true since many vulnerable students need added tutorial help and, importantly, they work part-time to help finance their education, including in Federal Work-Study jobs. Indeed, many institutions, Southern Vermont College included, counsel students to take four rather than five courses in certain semesters depending on their academic preparedness, their family home life in a given semester, and their need to concentrate on a particularly difficult course such as Anatomy or Physiology.

One point is clear: Even if a student can get 80% of a Pell Grant at 12 credit hours, as has been suggested, the loss of 20% of the grant is not insignificant. For many low-income students, every grant dollar matters and without these dollars and with the lack of parental access to credit at reasonable rates, these students will likely be unable to finance their undergraduate education.

Since when is getting through college a race where we only reward the fastest? I appreciate we do not want students taking a decade to complete their undergraduate education. But it seems to me that completing a degree in four and a half or five years is no sin, particularly when a slightly expanded time frame enables success.

Consider how we think about learning itself. It does not matter when you learn something—it matters that you learn it and the light bulb goes on for different students at different times. Children learn to read a different times but it should not matter, in the long run, whether one learns at age four or age eight.

The proffered suggestions by the College Board group are, it seems, geared to those Pell Grant recipients enrolled in America’s elite colleges, which, relatively speaking, do not enroll large numbers of Pell recipients. And for elite institutions, a four-year graduation is the norm. The experts who signed the letter to the College Board themselves hail from some of America’s best institutions of higher learning.

I also cannot forgo mentioning the proffered supportive cross-reference to "incentivizing" student success. To be sure, there are studies that link money with academic progress and achievement levels. But there are lots of variables that contribute to student success, including among others, attitude toward learning, supportive learning environments, mentor access, high school preparedness and rigor. Resting reduction of Pell Grant eligibility on one study about increasing credit requirements to ensure academic progression seems like an empirical reach to me.

I have no problem reflecting on how to curb the growing costs of Pell Grants to the U.S. government. I have no problem pondering how to get more students through college in a shorter time frame. What I object to is making full Pell Grants something that will, in practice, principally be available to the highest low-income performers at our more elite institutions, with the result that we will be ignoring the many low-income students enrolled at less elite institutions—for whom Pell Grants are the gateway to success.

It’s worth remembering that, as the story goes, the tortoise turned out to be wiser than the hare and did proudly cross the finish line.

_________________________________________________________________

Karen Gross is president of Southern Vermont College.

The DC Shuttle: Higher Education News from Washington

John O. Harney — Mon, 18 Apr 2011 11:01:12 +0000

On Thursday, the House and Senate both passed a fiscal year 2011 budget compromise (H.R. 1473) which would make almost $40 billion in cuts to federal spending. The bill is much more restrained in its cuts to education programs than was the House Republicans’ spending legislation (H.R. 1) which passed the House in February. The Head Start program would receive a small increase over current funding levels and the competitive grants provided through Race to the Top would receive an additional $700 million. The Pell Grant program would maintain its current maximum award level of $5,550 for the 2011-12 school year and receive $23 billion in discretionary funds. In order to continue providing the same level of grant awards to a pool of students which is expected to increase as it has been for several years, students taking classes year-round would no longer be able to apply for a second grant in one year. College and student advocates claim that this cut, which would save an estimated $8 billion through 2012, disproportionately harms older students and those paying their own way through college. The bill would make significant cuts to some education programs and eliminate 27 others entirely. Teach for America and the Leveraging Educational Assistance Partnership (LEAP) program to support state-based aid for low-income students would both be eliminated, while the TRIO programs which help guide disadvantaged students through education from junior high to post-graduate levels would be cut by $25 million. Job training grants to states which would have been eliminated entirely under H.R. 1 would be cut by $182 million, and the bill would create a $125 million Workforce Innovation Fund for state and regional partnerships to improve current job training programs.

Republican members of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee wrote a letter to Chairman Tom Harkin (D-IA) heavily criticizing his efforts to impose a set of regulations on for-profit colleges and universities. They requested that Sen. Harkin abandon his series of “disorganized and prejudicial” hearings and work with them toward reforms which would address all institutions of higher education. If not, the senators “will not participate in the next hearing on for-profit institutions,” which Sen. Harkin has scheduled for May 10. While Republican committee members concede that increases in student debt and “questionable student outcomes at many institutions of higher education” merit attention, they believe that Sen. Harkin and other supporters of the Education Department’s “gainful employment” regulations are using too blunt an instrument to address the problem. The HELP Committee chair has accused for-profit colleges of deceptive recruiting practices and burdening students with debt which they are unable to repay after graduation. A spokesperson for Sen. Harkin said that the chairman hopes to work with committee members from both parties to introduce legislation addressing concerns about the for-profit higher education sector.

On Wednesday, the House Appropriations Committee’s subcommittee on Labor, Health and Human Services, and Education held a hearing on a report from the Government Accountability Office (GAO) on “Opportunities to Reduce Potential Duplication in Federal Teacher Quality Programs.” GAO Education, Workforce, and Income Security Issues Director George Scott reported that the GAO had “identified 82 programs supporting teacher quality which are characterized by fragmentation and overlap.” Subcommittee Ranking Member Rosa DeLauro (D-Conn.) pointed out that the GAO report did not identify any programs that could definitively be characterized as “duplicative” and instead conservatively indicated areas where there was “potential duplication.” When Scott acknowledged that no evaluation had been done of the potential impacts of cutting or consolidating these programs, Congresswoman DeLauro requested that additional funding be appropriated to these programs in order to conduct thorough internal evaluations of their effectiveness so that federal funding can be directed more judiciously. Committee member Congressman Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.) contended that while many of the programs have not been fully evaluated, some programs where there exists known fraud and waste, including Head Start, should be scaled back immediately.

From the New England Council's Weekly Washington Report Higher Education Update, April 18, 2011. NEBHE is a member of the Council and will publish this column each week.

Founded in 1925, the New England Council is a non-partisan alliance of businesses, academic and health institutions, and public and private organizations throughout New England formed to promote economic growth and a high quality of life in the New England region. The Council's mission is to identify and support federal public policies and articulate the voice of its membership regionally and nationally on important issues facing New England. For more information, please visit www.newenglandcouncil.com.