Cuteness is priceless

Federal changes bog down student aid payments \

Oakland Tribune September 4, 2006 | Michelle Maitre, STAFF WRITER Too much of a good thing is proving taxing for financial aid officers at Bay Area colleges.

They’re facing an administrative headache trying to keep up with federal changes that provide more grant money for low-income students, which are forcing campuses to revise some students’ already complex aid packages.

At the University of California, Berkeley, some aid payments have been delayed as the Financial Aid Office scrambles to cope with the changes, and officials are encouraging students to take out emergency loans from the university until their regular aid checks can be processed.

“It’s great that it’s new money, and we’re really pleased we have the ability to give students something more, it’s just the bureaucracy around it is extremely difficult,” said Cheryl Resh, director of financial aid at UC Berkeley.

The delays have also been hard on students.

“I have to come here every week and ask for more money,” said junior Johnny Aguilar, 20, of Roseville, who picked up an emergency loan check for $650 Friday at the financial aid office in Sproul Hall. web site free grant money

The biology major said this is the first year he’s had to wait for his aid check, which is usually deposited automatically into his bank account.

“I can’t buy books,” said Aguilar, who’s been borrowing heavily from his brother and eating a lot of peanut butter-and– jelly sandwiches while waiting for the money. “I’m a starving student.” In the first six days of the semester, the campus granted 152 emergency loans, compared with 69 last year. Students have 60 days to pay back the no-interest loans.

“We want to make sure that everyone who has not been paid at least has some money and can register (for classes),” said Resh, who hopes that all pending financial aid packages will be processed by the end of September.

“By November, it’ll all be behind us,” she said.

Officials at other Bay Area campuses say none of their aid payments has been delayed, but it will take at least a few weeks to incorporate the change into student awards. in our site free grant money

“It’s a financial aid director’s nightmare, of course,” said Rhonda Johnson, financial aid director at California State University, East Bay, in Hayward.

Some students may get notices announcing changes in their packages — including the possibility of additional cash, or a smaller loan or fewer work study hours — but officials are being extra careful not to inadvertently overpay a student.

In February, Congress approved two new grant programs for low– income students as part of the Higher Education Reconciliation Act. The first, called the Academic Competitiveness Grant, provides up to $750 for qualifying first-year students and $1,300 for second-year students. The second grant provides up to $4,000 for juniors and seniors in some math and science fields.

The federal government was still finalizing some of the program guidelines in early August — just weeks before the fall semester began at UC Berkeley, San Francisco State and community colleges throughout the Bay Area.

Typically, financial aid changes are announced a year or more in advance to give colleges time to plan. Instead, officials are scrambling to figure out who qualifies.

“They want us to implement this now, but we were like, ‘How do we do this?’” said Deborah Griffin at Ohlone College in Fremont, where classes started Aug. 28.

Officials are revisiting students’ files to determine if they qualify for the additional grants, Griffin said, and will adjust students awards if necessary.

Officials at Chabot College in Hayward and Las Positas College in Livermore said they’ll likely adjust student awards when they hand out a second-round of financial aid payments in November.

“We’re just packaging our students with their regular financial aid as always,” said Chabot financial aid director Kathy Linzmeyer. “If a student gets (a new grant), we may have to reduce their loan or their work study hours. Free grant money is certainly better than having to repay a loan.” Barbara Hubler, financial aid director at San Francisco State University, plans to have new regulations sorted out in the next few weeks and hopes to have distributed all grant money by the beginning of October.

“We’re being really careful,” Hubler said. “We don’t want to go out to students with a nice new grant they’re not entitled to.” Students at Cal State East Bay, where the fall quarter begins Sept. 27, will also have to wait before they see any new money.

Johnson, the financial aid director, said the change has been implemented hastily and it will take until at least late fall to determine how to distribute the money. He said, “Ideally you want to have everything in place at the beginning of your fall term and you want to be able to disperse this money along with everything else, but I think very many of us have already accepted that this is just not the case.” Contact Michelle Maitre at mmaitre@angnewspapers.com.

Michelle Maitre, STAFF WRITER

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