Changes made to Pell Grants, altering new eligibility requirements, will not only affect incoming students in the fall but could also affect current students receiving aid.
Pell Grant eligibility now limits the number of semesters a student can qualify for aid, eliminates government subsidized interest payments on federal student loans after graduation and lowers the required family income to qualify for a zero expected family contribution.
The new changes are the result of a bill passed by Congress on Dec. 17, which alters eligibility requirements for all current and future federal Pell Grant recipients.
The bill, however, does maintain the maximum awarded Pell Grant at $5,550.
According to Cal State Long Beach director of media relations Rick Gloady, 13,581 CSULB undergraduate students and 168,337 students in the entire CSU system received Pell Grants during the 2010-11 academic year.
The new changes imposed limit the number of semesters a student can use federal Pell Grants from 18 to 12 semesters. Past full-time semesters completed by students will count toward the 12-semester limit, even if they were completed before the new bill was passed.
Another change the bill created is the maximum annual income a family makes in order to qualify for federal aid. In the past, a family’s income needed to be $30,000 or less in order to qualify for the zero expected family contribution, but with the new bill, $23,000 is the new maximum.
Erik Fallis, a CSU spokesperson said Pell Grants have been a major concern of CSU Chancellor Charles B. Reed and the CSU board, who have been in contact with Congress and are fighting to maintain the Pell Grant program.
“We have been incredibly vocal,” Fallis said.
Fallis also said the board is concerned that private for-profit universities receiving Pell Grants to distribute to their students could be adversely affecting the federal aid.
“Something has to be done or there will be so many of these [private for-profit universities] … and then we’ll see our Pell Grants dry up rather rapidly as we are fighting for them right now because of the 30 percent they’re getting,” President F. King Alexander said during the last CSU Board of Trustees meeting on Jan. 24.
The changes in qualifications for federal Pell Grants are meant to reduce federal spending by cutting the overall spending for the Pell Grant program.
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