College Groups Say Guidelines for New Federal Grant Programs Are 'Unworkable'
By STEPHEN BURD
Washington
The nation's leading higher-education associations alerted the U.S. Education Department on Thursday that they believe guidelines it has issued for setting up two new grant programs for academically talented low-income students are "unworkable" and need to be revised.
"Our comments request changes in a small number of high-priority provisions that will directly impact the success or failure" of the new grant programs, David Ward, president of the American Council on Education, wrote in a letter the group sent to the Education Department, on behalf of itself and seven other associations. Two of those groups, plus two others, representing admissions officers and college counselors, also sent in separate letters echoing those concerns.
At issue are interim final regulations that the department released in May detailing how it would put into effect two grant programs that Congress created as part of the $39-billion deficit-reduction package it approved in February (The Chronicle, May 3). The grants will be available to students eligible for Pell Grants and will, for the first time, introduce criteria not based solely on need into the federal programs for undergraduates from low-income families.
Starting this fall, low-income first-time freshmen and financially needy sophomores could receive additional awards of $750 and $1,300, respectively, under the Academic Competitiveness Grant program if they have completed "a rigorous secondary-school program of study" and maintain a 3.0 grade-point average in college.
The other program approved in February would provide additional awards of up to $4,000 a year to Pell Grant-eligible juniors and seniors who major in engineering, mathematics, science, or certain foreign languages. Recipients of those awards -- known as Smart Grants, for the National Science and Mathematics Access to Retain Talent Grant program -- also must maintain a 3.0 grade-point average.
In their letters, the college groups complain about the role they are supposed to play in verifying whether first-year students are eligible to receive Academic Competitiveness Grants. Under the Education Department's guidelines, students who believe they are eligible for the grants would notify the agency, which would alert the colleges those applicants planned to attend that the students might qualify for the grants. The colleges would be responsible for verifying the information the students provided (The Chronicle, April 6).
According to Mr. Ward, such a requirement will place a "breathtaking new administrative burden" on colleges, who admit students well before they graduate. "For reasons of timing, most colleges and universities must base their admissions decisions on six -- or sometimes seven -- completed semesters of high school," he writes. Asking colleges "to begin that kind of retrospective, granular analysis on every transcript of every" grant recipient to make sure the students completed rigorous high-school programs "is not feasible and may not even be possible," the letter says.
The American Association of Community Colleges is one of the groups that singed the ACE letter and sent a separate letter of its own. Its president, George R. Boggs, wrote that the requirement to verify the courses a student took in high school will be "especially problematic" for its members.
Many community colleges do not collect high-school transcripts. "Community colleges tend to provide an 'open door' admissions policy, and instead use front-end testing instruments to determine student readiness for particular programs," Mr. Boggs writes.
The groups also complain that the department has made the programs unnecessarily complex by using the definition of "an academic year" from student-aid law to determine a student's eligibility for the awards, rather than simply defining a freshman as a first-year student and a sophomore as a second-year student. Under Title IV of the Higher Education Act, an academic year is 24 credit hours or the equivalent, earned over 30 weeks. By using that definition, the associations state, the department will inadvertently penalize students receiving Academic Competitiveness Grants who are on an accelerated schedule and are taking classes over the summer. Those students will earn too many credits to remain eligible for the grants for the duration of their sophomore year.
"It is baffling that the department would choose to impose so hindering and complicating an interpretation of progression as it has adopted," Dallas Martin, president of the National Association of Student Financial Aid Administrators, wrote in a letter to the department. The group is also among those that signed the ACE letter.
The associations also object to a department requirement that colleges monitor students with Smart Grants to make sure they are taking "the right kinds of courses" to fulfill their majors in one of the required fields. Such a requirement is overly burdensome and unnecessary, the higher-education groups say.
"Any student who has, pursuant to institutional policies, declared a major is, ipso facto, enrolled in course work that satisfies that institution's and that major's requirements," officials of the American Association of Collegiate Registrars and Admissions Officers and the National Association for College Admission Counseling write in their groups' letter.
The following are other complaints that the groups have:
The community-college group says the department has wrongfully made students in certificate programs ineligible for the Academic Competitiveness Grants.
The organizations representing admissions officers complain that the regulations restrict the grants to Pell Grant recipients. They note that the law requires that all students who are eligible for Pell Grants qualify for the awards, even if those students never applied for Pell Grants.
The groups, in general, oppose the requirement that colleges participating in the Pell Grant program must offer the new grants. They do not believe that the institutions should be compelled to participate, particularly when, they say, the department's guidelines are so burdensome.
College lobbyists acknowledge that the department would not be able to make the proposed changes immediately. But they note that the agency is expected to issue new guidelines in November for how the programs will operate in 2007-8 academic year. They say that department officials have told them that once the new guidelines are out, colleges will be given the opportunity to abide by them in the second semester of the current academic year.
Besides ACE, the community-college group, and the financial-aid-officers association, the other groups that signed the council's letter were the American Association of State Colleges and Universities, the Association of American Universities, the Association of Community College Trustees, the National Association of College and University Business Officers, and the National Association of State Universities and Land-Grant Colleges.
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Copyright © 2006 by The Chronicle of Higher Education
Washington
The nation's leading higher-education associations alerted the U.S. Education Department on Thursday that they believe guidelines it has issued for setting up two new grant programs for academically talented low-income students are "unworkable" and need to be revised.
"Our comments request changes in a small number of high-priority provisions that will directly impact the success or failure" of the new grant programs, David Ward, president of the American Council on Education, wrote in a letter the group sent to the Education Department, on behalf of itself and seven other associations. Two of those groups, plus two others, representing admissions officers and college counselors, also sent in separate letters echoing those concerns.
At issue are interim final regulations that the department released in May detailing how it would put into effect two grant programs that Congress created as part of the $39-billion deficit-reduction package it approved in February (The Chronicle, May 3). The grants will be available to students eligible for Pell Grants and will, for the first time, introduce criteria not based solely on need into the federal programs for undergraduates from low-income families.
Starting this fall, low-income first-time freshmen and financially needy sophomores could receive additional awards of $750 and $1,300, respectively, under the Academic Competitiveness Grant program if they have completed "a rigorous secondary-school program of study" and maintain a 3.0 grade-point average in college.
The other program approved in February would provide additional awards of up to $4,000 a year to Pell Grant-eligible juniors and seniors who major in engineering, mathematics, science, or certain foreign languages. Recipients of those awards -- known as Smart Grants, for the National Science and Mathematics Access to Retain Talent Grant program -- also must maintain a 3.0 grade-point average.
In their letters, the college groups complain about the role they are supposed to play in verifying whether first-year students are eligible to receive Academic Competitiveness Grants. Under the Education Department's guidelines, students who believe they are eligible for the grants would notify the agency, which would alert the colleges those applicants planned to attend that the students might qualify for the grants. The colleges would be responsible for verifying the information the students provided (The Chronicle, April 6).
According to Mr. Ward, such a requirement will place a "breathtaking new administrative burden" on colleges, who admit students well before they graduate. "For reasons of timing, most colleges and universities must base their admissions decisions on six -- or sometimes seven -- completed semesters of high school," he writes. Asking colleges "to begin that kind of retrospective, granular analysis on every transcript of every" grant recipient to make sure the students completed rigorous high-school programs "is not feasible and may not even be possible," the letter says.
The American Association of Community Colleges is one of the groups that singed the ACE letter and sent a separate letter of its own. Its president, George R. Boggs, wrote that the requirement to verify the courses a student took in high school will be "especially problematic" for its members.
Many community colleges do not collect high-school transcripts. "Community colleges tend to provide an 'open door' admissions policy, and instead use front-end testing instruments to determine student readiness for particular programs," Mr. Boggs writes.
The groups also complain that the department has made the programs unnecessarily complex by using the definition of "an academic year" from student-aid law to determine a student's eligibility for the awards, rather than simply defining a freshman as a first-year student and a sophomore as a second-year student. Under Title IV of the Higher Education Act, an academic year is 24 credit hours or the equivalent, earned over 30 weeks. By using that definition, the associations state, the department will inadvertently penalize students receiving Academic Competitiveness Grants who are on an accelerated schedule and are taking classes over the summer. Those students will earn too many credits to remain eligible for the grants for the duration of their sophomore year.
"It is baffling that the department would choose to impose so hindering and complicating an interpretation of progression as it has adopted," Dallas Martin, president of the National Association of Student Financial Aid Administrators, wrote in a letter to the department. The group is also among those that signed the ACE letter.
The associations also object to a department requirement that colleges monitor students with Smart Grants to make sure they are taking "the right kinds of courses" to fulfill their majors in one of the required fields. Such a requirement is overly burdensome and unnecessary, the higher-education groups say.
"Any student who has, pursuant to institutional policies, declared a major is, ipso facto, enrolled in course work that satisfies that institution's and that major's requirements," officials of the American Association of Collegiate Registrars and Admissions Officers and the National Association for College Admission Counseling write in their groups' letter.
The following are other complaints that the groups have:
The community-college group says the department has wrongfully made students in certificate programs ineligible for the Academic Competitiveness Grants.
The organizations representing admissions officers complain that the regulations restrict the grants to Pell Grant recipients. They note that the law requires that all students who are eligible for Pell Grants qualify for the awards, even if those students never applied for Pell Grants.
The groups, in general, oppose the requirement that colleges participating in the Pell Grant program must offer the new grants. They do not believe that the institutions should be compelled to participate, particularly when, they say, the department's guidelines are so burdensome.
College lobbyists acknowledge that the department would not be able to make the proposed changes immediately. But they note that the agency is expected to issue new guidelines in November for how the programs will operate in 2007-8 academic year. They say that department officials have told them that once the new guidelines are out, colleges will be given the opportunity to abide by them in the second semester of the current academic year.
Besides ACE, the community-college group, and the financial-aid-officers association, the other groups that signed the council's letter were the American Association of State Colleges and Universities, the Association of American Universities, the Association of Community College Trustees, the National Association of College and University Business Officers, and the National Association of State Universities and Land-Grant Colleges.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Copyright © 2006 by The Chronicle of Higher Education
posted by Joe | 8:20 AM
1 Comments:
Hello,
I recently published an article on the dangers and benefits of student loans and other forms of college financial aid – here is a quote from it, in case you are interested:
Student loans repayment can be a real nightmare without adopting some strategies that would help the new graduates to organize their social and financial life. Here are some strategies they can use to do this:
- An additional part-time job;
- Freelancing is another option (meaning that they can do particular pieces of work for different organisations, without working all the time for a single organisation);
- They should try to keep their living expenses as low as possible (live in a smaller apartment, live with a roommate to share some of the expenses, find an apartment that is closer to the job, to eliminate the extra-expenses for transport etc.);
- To apply for forbearance (this is an immediate solution for hard times when the new graduate is in impossibility to re-pay the amount of money and the need for student loan consolidation becomes apparent; it is a temporary period, when the graduate can postpone or delay his or her re-payments until a later time on a federal or direct loan after the beginning of the re-payment, and when the student doesn’t qualify for deferral). The forbearance must be applied through the lenders of the loans.
- To consolidate the payments.
If you feel this help, please drop by my website for additional information, such as federal student loans information or additional resources on private student loans .
Regards,
Michael
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