Article from Inside Higher Ed on Use of Federal Student Grant Funds
Oct. 26
Where New Federal Student Grant Funds Are Going
As many college financial aid officers have continued to scorn the federal
government’s two newest student-aid programs, the Academic Competitiveness
Grant and National Science and Mathematics Access to Retain Talent (SMART)
Grant Programs, questioning the grants’ usefulness to students and
criticizing the burdens of administering it, Education Department officials
have urged patience. Let’s wait until we have good data to see how (and how
many) students benefited, they argued.
Well, the first year’s numbers are in (some of them, at least), and perhaps
predictably, the picture is mixed. The Education Department released data
showing that it had awarded nearly $430 million in funds from the two
programs to about 360,000 students in the 2006-7 fiscal year — $233 million
to 300,000 students in Academic Competitiveness Grants, and about $196
million to nearly 61,000 students in SMART Grants.
The $430 million is far short of the $790 million that Congress
appropriated for the first year based on the department’s projections about
how much it hoped to spend, a gap that could be read as a sign that the
programs have fallen well short of initial expectations. While department
officials discouraged such a reading — noting that the projections used by
Congress were “budget math, not based on sophisticated estimates,” as
Kristin Conklin, an aide to Under Secretary Sara Martinez Tucker put it —
they acknowledged that the program’s first year pointed out numerous
challenges that face the programs aimed at encouraging more low-income
students to be rigorously prepared to enter high-demand scientific and
other fields in college.
“We’re happy for the 300,000 [Academic Competitiveness Grant recipients]
who were able to add to their grant monies, and the 61,000 majoring in
much-needed fields,” Tucker said in an interview Thursday. “These are
monies these kids would have had to either work or borrow to complement. We
have to study why we had penetration in some markets more than others, but
you celebrate any penetration you’re able to accomplish.”
As Tucker suggests, the department’s data show great variation by state in
who qualified for the two grant programs, as seen in the table below.
States like Arkansas and Minnesota, both of which have programs that
encourage or require high school students (particularly those at low income
levels) to take a rigorous college preparatory curriculum, had
disproportionately high numbers of recipients of Academic Competitiveness
Grants, which provide $750 for the first year and $1,300 for the second to
Pell Grant-eligible, full-time, degree-program American citizens who have
completed a curriculum deemed rigorous by the U.S. education secretary.
(SMART Grants award up to $4,000 a year to juniors and seniors in certain
high-demand fields, as long as they maintain a 3.0 college grade point
average.)
Other states, meanwhile, had poor showings, as just 10 percent of the
estimated potential recipients of the grants in Arizona applied for and
received them, as did just 9 percent of Alaska’s potential recipients. “Are
there really only 60 students in the State of Alaska” who want this
additional federal money? Conklin asked. “Probably not. We probably need to
do a much better job of getting the word out there.”
But even in states where many students qualified for the two new grants,
which Congress created last year, there is great variation in how they are
distributed. The Education Department’s fact sheet about how the new grants
fared in the first year trumpets the fact that four University of
California campuses were among the top 10 recipients nationally of the
Academic Competitiveness Grants. (The top five recipients of the Academic
Competitiveness Grants were Pennsylvania State University, UC-Davis, the
University of Texas at Austin, UCLA, and Ohio State University; the top
five SMART Grant recipients were Brigham Young University, the University
of Phoenix, UC-San Diego, DeVry University, and Penn State.)
The University of California’s performance is due in large part to the fact
that applicants to the university are required to have successfully
completed a high school curriculum like the one that qualifies a student
for the federal grants. So it is logical that the university would fare
well in the department’s accounting, and “we are always interested in more
grant support from any source for low-income students, no matter what they
call it or how they award it,” said Nancy Coolidge, coordinator of
government relations in student financial support for the University of
California system.
Grateful as she might be for the support for her students, though, Coolidge
notes that because of the structure and requirements of the two grant
programs, students at other institutions in California don’t fare nearly as
well — and even UC’s own students may not benefit fully. The fact that
non-citizen permanent residents of the United States are barred from
receiving the grants limits the programs’ reach in a state where “that’s a
very large population,” Coolidge said.
And a far smaller proportion of students at the state’s other (and much
bigger) university system, the California State University, qualify for the
two new grant programs even though Cal State applicants must have completed
the same rigorous high school curriculum (known as the “A-G” requirements)
as students at the University of California. The difference? Many more
students at Cal State attend part time, and therefore are ineligible for
the grants.
The picture is even worse at California’s many community colleges, says
Linda Michalowski, vice chancellor for student services and special
programs for the California Community Colleges Chancellor’s Office. In
addition to the issues Coolidge identified about citizenship and part-time
enrollment, the two-year institutions are hampered by the fact that they
are basically open enrollment, and do not as a general rule collect the
transcripts of their students. So even though an institution like Long
Beach City College had 8,005 students whose family incomes were low enough
that they received Pell Grants in 2006-7, the two-year college had just 91
recipients of Academic Competitiveness Grants that year, Michalowski said.
Michalowski and Coolidge both said that while they appreciated the
Education Department’s goal of using the new programs to try to improve the
rigor of high school curriculums and the ambitions of low-income students
to aim higher, they were unsure it was the right thrust for federal policy.
“The students [at the University of California] who receive these grants
were already going to college, and this reduces their [financial] burden,
and that’s good,” said Coolidge. “But we support the federal contribution
being that of access. I hope more youngsters are stimulated to take more
rigorous courses, but the jury’s still out on that. But in the meantime, a
lot of needy students are being left out.”
The department aims to double the number of recipients of the two grant
programs by 2010-11.
See Recipients of New Academic Competitiveness and SMART Grants by State at the link below:
Source: U.S. Education Department
— Doug Lederman
The original story and user comments can be viewed online at
http://insidehighered.com/news/2007/10/26/grants.
