‘NMC students safe from new Pell grant rules’

New rules governing college financial aid are feared to eliminate federal Pell Grant scholarships for an estimated 80,000 to 90,000 low-income students nationwide, but Northern Marianas College expects the change to cause no major impact on CNMI students.

Starting next fall, the U.S. Department of Education will use a new scholarship eligibility formula that involves replacing 1990 data with 2002 data on state and local taxes to recalculate a family’s expected disposable income for college costs. Since those taxes were lower in 2002 than in 1990, more families are expected to be deemed capable to pay for college.

But Kurt Barnes, NMC dean of student development, said the college does not anticipate the new rules to impact the eligibility of its students.

“The new formula will affect mainly higher-income families. Most of our students here are low-income,” Barnes said.

NMC finance director Raaj Kurapati said some 600 NMC students are receiving help through the Pell Grant. This represents about 75 percent of NMC’s resident students and 50 percent of the college’s total enrollment.

He said the two main reasons some students do not qualify for the scholarship are their financial status and academic progress.

Most of the Pell recipients are getting the maximum federal scholarship of $4,050 every year. In total, the college receives an average $1.5 million in Pell Grant awards annually, Kurapati said.

Barnes also noted that aside from the Pell Grant, various other channels are available for NMC students to help them pay for their education. He cited scholarship programs sponsored by the CNMI Scholarship Office and the Saipan Mayor’s Office, among other agencies.

In a Dec. 24 report, the Washington Post quoted Bush administration officials as saying that the new college financial aid formula will save the government at least $350 million in the 2005-2006 academic year.

The neediest students, who receive the maximum scholarship, will be unaffected and only a small fraction of the 5.3 million Pell recipients will lose their grants entirely, the report added.

Quoting USDE spokesperson Susan Aspey, the Washington Post said an estimated 90 percent of the families receiving help through the program earn less than $35,000 a year. The average grant is about $2,400 a year. Most of those expected to lose eligibility next year are families at the upper margin of eligibility who receive only the minimum grant of $400, Aspey told the Washington Post.