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"U.S. Senate Rejects Changes in Federal Student-Aid Formula," The Chronicle of Higher Education, September 11, 2003, online.
By WILL POTTER
WASHINGTON — The U.S. Senate on Wednesday rejected proposed changes to a student-aid formula that would have made thousands of students ineligible for federal assistance.
Lawmakers approved an amendment, tacked on to an annual spending bill, that prohibits the Bush administration from changing the formula the federal government uses to calculate a student's need for financial aid. Budget officials at the Education Department have estimated that 84,000 students would lose their eligibility for Pell Grants in the 2004-5 academic year if the change, announced in May, went into effect.
The vote on the amendment was 50 to 45, with several Republicans voting with Democrats to reject the administration's policy. The measure will have to survive negotiations with the House of Representatives to become law.
Education Department leaders initially had said that the formula change — a routine update that had not been done in a decade — would have only "a minimal impact on a handful of students."
Sen. Jon Corzine, a New Jersey Democrat who proposed the amendment, said the problem stemmed from the department's decision to lower the amount of state and local taxes that families could deduct in the federal need-analysis formula. As a result, many families would appear to have more money available to pay college costs than they really did, and would seem less qualified for federal aid.
"The changes proposed by the Department of Education would give American families less credit for paying taxes when those taxes are going up, and provide less financial aid to students when tuition costs are skyrocketing," Mr. Corzine said in a prepared statement. "We need to be providing more opportunity for students who want to further their education, not less."
Mary Cunningham, legislative director of the United States Student Association, called the Senate's approval of the amendment a "victory for students."
"Students have called us about the department's change, and were completely outraged that something like that could jeopardize their financial aid," she said.
The amendment was attached to a $138-billion bill that would finance the Departments of Education, Labor, and Health and Human Services in the 2004 fiscal year, which begins October 1.
The bill, along with the amendment blocking the changes to the eligibility formula, next will go to a conference panel of senators and representatives. Rep. George Miller of California, the senior Democrat on the House Committee on Education and the Workforce, has said he hopes to stop the formula changes, but it is unclear how much support he has from other representatives.
