Budget cuts remain on the minds of many education advocates:
Undergraduate enrollment: 830
Graduate enrollment: 332
Undergraduates on financial aid: 95%
Undergraduate students receiving need-based financial aid: 84.2%
Undergraduate students receiving merit-based financial aid: 75.2%
Average size of need-based financial aid award: $15,922
Status on student aid funding in the budget deal between the House, Senate, and White House.
Student Aid for the Academic Year Beginning July 1, 2011
- Pell Grant maximum remains at $5,550
- Year-Round Pell is eliminated immediately
- SEOG is maintained, but with a cut of $20 million (from $757 million), in addition to the across-the-board cut of 0.2 percent (below)
- Federal Work Study, and most other non-defense, domestic programs, have a 0.2 percent across-the-board cut
- The previous decision to eliminate LEAP state grants was sustained.
Your advocacy efforts have been a major factor in students not being faced with more dire cuts this year. Congress was particularly persuaded by the fact that student aid letters had already gone out. Many education programs had a worse fate, and the GEAR UP and TRIO programs were also trimmed. Please see below for all cuts and eliminations.
Budget Deal (H.R. 1473, FY 2011)
Summary of Education Program Cuts (Effective July 1, 2011)
- All programs are subject to a 0.2 percent across-the-board cut; not reflected in the numbers below.
- The Pell maximum award is maintained at $5,550 and $23,002 billion is appropriated.
- Rejects a 15 percent cut to the maximum Pell Grant award that would have jeopardized the ability of millions of low- and middle-income students to receive a higher education.
- Prevents 218,000 low-income children from being kicked out of Head Start.
- Maintains funding for AmeriCorps, which would have been eliminated under H.R. 1.
- Rejects a cut to Title I education grant funding that would have cost approximately 10,000 jobs and reduced educational services to 1 million students.
- Provides $700 million for the Race to the Top education reform program, which will now include a new initiative to improve the quality of State early childhood care and education.
- Continues the nation’s regional educational laboratory system, which helps schools apply research-based practices to education; H.R. 1 eliminated this funding.
The final FY11 compromise bill, H.R. 1473, includes numerous cuts to Labor-HHS programs. But it preserves far more than H.R. 1, the spending bill originally passed by the House.
- Race to the Top = $700 million.
- Investing in Innovation = $150 million
- Promise Neighborhoods = +$20 million (total of $30 million)
Program cuts and eliminations:
- ESEA Evaluation = -$1 million
- School Improvement Grants = -$10 million
- Striving Readers = -$250 million (eliminated)
- Even Start = -$66.5 million (eliminated)
- Literacy through School Libraries = -$19.1 million (eliminated)
- Education technology State Grants = -$100 million (eliminated)
- Arts in Education = -$40 million (eliminated)
- Exchanges with Historic Whaling and Trading Partners = -$8.8 million (eliminated)
- National Writing Project = -$25.6 million (eliminated)
- Reading Is Fundamental =-$24.8 million (eliminated)
- Javits Gifted and Talented = -$7.5 million (eliminated)
- State Assessments = -$20 million
- Comprehensive Centers = -$5 million
- Teacher Quality State Grants = -$5 million (earmark for New Leaders for New Schools)
- National Board for Professional Teaching Standards = -$10.6 million (eliminated)
- Close-up Fellowships = -$1.9 million (eliminated)
- Teach for America = -$18 million (eliminated)
- Teaching of Traditional American History = -$73 million
- Grants to Gulf Coast States’ LEAs = -$12 million (eliminated)
- Safe and Drug-Free Schools National Programs = -$97 million
- English Language Acquisition State Grants = -$15 million
- Special Olympics = -$8.1 million (eliminated)
- Recordings for the Blind = -$13.3 million
- FIE projects (Earmarks) = -$88 million
- Smaller Learning Communities = -$88 million (eliminated)
- Training for Incarcerated Individuals = -$17.2 million (eliminated)
- LEAP = -$63.9 million (eliminated)
- Federal Supplemental Education Opportunity Grants = -$20 million
- TRIO = -$25 million
- GEAR UP = -$20 million
- Byrd Scholarships = -$42 million (eliminated)
- Strengthening Alaska Native and Native Hawaiian Serving Institutions = -$15.1 million (eliminated)
- Tribally Controlled Postsecondary Vocational Institutions = -$8.2 million (eliminated)
- Higher Education Demonstration Projects for Persons with Disabilities = -$6.8 million (eliminated)
- Thurgood Marshall Legal Scholarships = -$3 million (eliminated)
- B.J. Stupak Olympic Scholarship =-$1 million (eliminated)
- Underground Railroad Program = -$1.9 million (eliminated)
- B.A. and Master’s STEM Foreign Language Teacher Training = -$2.2 million (eliminated)
- Javits Fellowships = -$1.6 million
- FIPSE = -$101.5 million (earmarks)
- Emma Byrd Scholarships = -$1.5 million (eliminated)
- Regional Education Labs = -$13 million
- Civic Education = -$33.8 million
- Career and Technical Education = -$138 million
- Adult Education = -$31 million
- International Education and Foreign Language = -$50 million
- Institute of Museum and Library Services = -$44 million
There will be a new 1 percent competitive set-aside ($29.4 million) within the Teacher Quality State Grants program; groups such Teach For America, National Writing Project, and the National Board of Professional Teaching Standards will be eligible to compete for this funding.
What’s in store for the future?
Student Aid for the Academic Year Beginning July 1, 2012
The House Budget Committee started the process last week, and we now have details on the committee’s proposal for student aid funding effective July 1, 2012. This marks just the beginning of the funding deliberations, but Congress wants to move quickly.
The House budget proposal for 2012 would:
- Continue to trim Pell Grants, including an undecided cut to the maximum of at least $550.
- Eliminate the in-school interest subsidy for both graduate and undergraduate student loans.
- Repeal the 2007 expansion of Income-Based Repayment for student loans.
- Make major cuts to the overall pool of money available for Education, Labor and Health and Human Services (no list of specific programs is yet available)