Bush budget impact: college kids

The Charleston Gazette:

President Bush wants to eliminate the federal Perkins loan program that helped almost 6,000 needy West Virginians afford college last year, according to his proposed budget released Tuesday.

Bush also wants to force colleges to pay back all of the federal Perkins money they’ve given to students — about $6 billion nationwide — over 10 years.

Bush wants to plow the money into federal Pell grants, which needy college students don’t have to pay back. His spokesmen have said that would be a better use of the money.

Kay Whitney, director of financial aid and scholarships at West Virginia University, isn’t so sure. WVU helps 2,000 students a year with the extremely low-interest Perkins loans — students who probably won’t be “needy” enough for Pell grants.

“The Perkins loan meets the need of a certain group of students,” she said. “I don’t think eliminating one aid program to meet the need of another is a good thing.”

Bush promised during his first term to raise the maximum Pell grant to $5,100 a year. But although Congress has pumped extra money into Pell grants, it has never been enough to keep up with exploding demand — the maximum grant has been stuck at $4,050 for three years.

Bush’s new proposal would gradually boost the maximum grant up to $4,550 by 2010. But those bigger grants would help fewer students: An estimated 90,000 needy students nationwide would lose their Pell grants altogether because their families earn too much money under new requirements recently unveiled by the Bush administration.