Students Could Wave Goodbye to Merit–Based Federal Aid
In another move to restructure the federal financial aid system, President Obama has proposed ending the government’s five-year foray into merit-based student aid and redirecting those financial aid funds to the need-based Pell Grant program, reports The Chronicle of Higher Education (“An Experiment in Merit-Based Student Aid Is Likely to End,” June 26, 2009).
The Academic Competitiveness Grant and the National Science and Mathematics Access to Retain Talent Grant programs were created by Congress
in 2006 to encourage students to take academically “rigorous” coursework in high school and then choose college majors in fields with labor
shortages.
Only students who are eligible for need-based Pell Grants can qualify for the Academic Competitiveness Grants, which provide $750 and $1,300
to college freshmen and sophomores respectively, and for the SMART grants, which provide $4,000 to college juniors and seniors who major in
science, math, and certain foreign languages.
But so far both grant programs have fallen short of their participation projections, due in large part to the Department of Education’s
failure to promote the programs, as reported by the department’s own inspector general in 2008.
The other major problem has been the programs’ vague qualification criteria, which has made it difficult for financial aid officers’ to
determine award recipients. The American Council on Education, in a 2006 letter to the Department of Education, called the grant program’s
guidelines “unworkable” and defined them as placing a “breathtaking administrative burden” on colleges’ financial aid officers.
Obama’s Proposal Receives Support From Education Officials
Education Department officials support the president’s proposal to make the Pell program an entitlement with annual increases tied to
inflation and to raise the maximum Pell awards by $200 to $5,500 by the 2010–11 academic year because, they say, the Pell Grant program
better serves low-income students than the competitiveness grant programs.
This proposal “would benefit the vast majority of the nearly six million Pell Grant recipients worldwide,” even though the annual increases
amount to significantly less funding for the one in 10 students who qualify for the Academic Competitiveness and SMART grants.
Even former Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings, who crafted the merit-based programs under the Bush administration, backs the
proposal.
“Do higher education officials and K-12 officials prefer free money with no strings attached? Absolutely,” Spellings said. “But if we’re
trying to move the needle, putting resources behind our policy goals is a more powerful and prudent way to go."