Arkansas colleges are preparing to distribute the $65 million allocated to them for emergency student aid, some after weeks of awaiting clarity on how they can use the funds.
The money is intended to support students whose educations and lives were disrupted by the coronavirus pandemic. The U.S. Department of Education has urged institutions to give the money to the students most in need.
But the schools, within some constraints, created their own plans for distributing the money, including the amount of money and what would qualify a person to receive more. The difference for students, according to plans reviewed by the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, can be a few hundred dollars.
Schools for a few weeks have been issuing memos to students on how to access the funds, with several making announcements last week.
"Essentially, they're all giving out the majority of their funds as quickly" as possible, said Ben Beaumont, senior director of policy and public affairs for the University of Arkansas System.
Arkansas State University Chancellor Kelly Damphousse in an email Friday afternoon announced that the school plans to use three-quarters of the $4.7 million it's getting to give $925 to its 3,240 Pell grant-eligible students. The rest of the money will go to $378 grants for its remaining 2,369 students who are eligible for federal stimulus aid.
The U.S. Education Department has allocated more than $12 billion to thousands of colleges and universities nationwide. At least half of that is required to be student aid, and the other half is for institutions to refund or pay for costs associated with transitioning to remote learning this spring.
In Arkansas, 77 institutions -- including public and private universities, colleges and professional schools -- received $130 million in aid from the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security Act, with $65 million being the minimum set aside for students.
The student aid has been distributed first, although not all schools have received the money yet. Some have been waiting for further federal guidance on how to use the money before certifying to the federal Education Department that they will use the money properly. Schools must certify their intentions before they can receive the funds.
Largely, colleges in Arkansas and across the country have opted to make some of the federal money -- typically totaling a few hundred dollars -- available to students with greater financial needs, based on their Free Application for Federal Student Aid filed last year. They've also chosen to make the rest of the money available to all students -- excluding online-only or international students not eligible for Title IV funding -- also in the form of grants of a few hundred dollars for which a student must apply.
UA System trustees received a memo this week detailing all of the system schools' plans to distribute the money to students. System schools chiefly chose to base the grants on need. Some also chose to base them on credit hours.
A few, including the University of Arkansas at Little Rock and the University of Arkansas Community College at Rich Mountain, held some of their funds for needs expected to be incurred from remote classes this summer or in the fall, typically no more than about 20% of the student aid.
In at least one instance in Arkansas, a school has decided to use half of its student aid toward grants for summer enrollment.
The University of Central Arkansas will allocate no more than $2.4 million of the $4.8 million in student aid to fund up to 4,000 $600 grants to anyone who signs up for at least three credit hours of summer courses. The funds are first-come, first-served, and the university will distribute money from its own accounts to summer students not eligible for the federal funding.
A three-credit hour course at UCA costs $986.63 for undergraduates and $1,058.13 for graduate students.
Using funds for summer enrollment doesn't appear to violate the federal rules, experts said, but one national advocacy group cautions that summer enrollment isn't an option for every student.
Pell grants, which can be used for summer courses, still max out during the school year at $6,195, and many students who rely on them may not have any funds left over for summer school, said Clare McCann, deputy director for federal higher education policy for New America, a Washington, D.C., based think tank. She sees the grant as an incentive to enroll in more courses.
"My concern is institutions doing this ... are putting their bottom lines above students' needs right now," McCann said.
After Eastern Michigan University announced its plans to use half of its student aid on summer enrollment grants, Ben Miller, a policy expert for the left-leaning Center for American Progress, told The Chronicle of Higher Education that he wasn't surprised to see a university try to use funds toward future enrollment and that he expected to see more.
Other education organizations, such as the Association of American Colleges and Universities, have contended publicly that institutions need more flexibility in how they can use the funding to remain financially sound.
UCA, like other schools, also has set aside money for $400 grants to students who are Pell grant-eligible.
The university plans to define need more broadly than based on Pell or financial-aid applications.
UCA originally announced plans to use part of the student aid to pay off remaining student account balances from the spring semester. But days later, the U.S. Department of Education published a Frequently Asked Questions document stating that schools could not give aid to students for the purpose of repaying debts to the institution.
A spokeswoman for the university said Friday that the institution pivoted after discussing its plans with federal officials to instead define students in need as those who have outstanding account balances, as well as those who have a higher need based on their financial-aid applications.
The university formulated its plan in conversation with, among others, the school's Student Government Association.
"We believe students have deemed the distribution of the money to be satisfactory, as the priority of our administration and representatives of SGA is to ensure that every student's needs are met and resources made available while courses are taught remotely," association president Jamaal Lockings wrote in an email to the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette. "The university has done this, by prioritizing individuals on the basis of need."
NW News on 05/11/2020