<p>And exactly how are students and parents to know about alternatives to loans. Which would after all be part of responsible decisions regarding educational funding…</p>
<p>When the system responsible for providing those alternatives seems to pretend these do not exist, and tries to minimize dissemination of information about them…?</p>
<p>The following refers to another one of Paul Baskin’s investigative articles, which was published today in the Chronicle of Higher Education…</p>
<p>Source: 08/04/2008 © The Chronicle
View Original Article</p>
<p>In the past couple of years, as participation in the government’s Academic Competitiveness and National Smart Grant programs has run well below expectations, the Education Department has offered reasons for why more low-income students are not taking advantage of the new college aid.</p>
<p>Initially, department officials suggested the program was just having the usual problems with getting started and noticed. And at a conference last month in Chicago, Education Secretary Margaret Spellings complained that not enough high schools were teaching students the challenging courses necessary to qualify.</p>
<p>In an audit released on Friday, however, the department’s own inspector general is suggesting another factor: The department itself isn’t doing enough to promote the grants.</p>
<p>The department “did not conduct sufficient follow-up with nonparticipating schools to ensure those required to participate in the ACG and/or National Smart program were doing so,” the office of the inspector general said in the audit.</p>
<p>Low-income college students are eligible for the Academic Competitiveness Grants, known as ACG, in their freshman and sophomore years. They’re eligible for the Smart grants in their junior and senior years. Freshmen are eligible after completing a “rigorous” program of study in high school, as defined by each state, with Education Department approval. College students in later years must maintain a 3.0 grade-point average and, for the Smart grant, be enrolled in one of several specific majors such as engineering, science, or a critical foreign language.</p>
<p>Unused Funds</p>
<p>Congress approved spending $790-million on the grants for the 2006-7 academic year and up to $4.5-billion through 2010. But only $242-million in ACG funds were given to 310,000 students in that first year, and only $206-million in Smart-grant funds reached 64,000 students. During the first 10 months of the 2007-8 year, the government gave out just $284-million in ACG funds and $184-million in Smart grants, the audit said.</p>
<p>Some education lobbyists have complained that Congress placed too many restrictions on the grants. Ms. Spellings, at a department-sponsored conference last month in Chicago, faulted high schools for not doing enough to prepare such students. “There is a rationing of rigor, of course work, that is embarrassing,” she said.</p>
<p>But the Education Department’s inspector general said on Friday that it was able to find many schools and colleges where administrators didn’t realize they and their students were eligible. The department often failed to pursue those institutions after an initial attempt to alert them, the inspector general said.</p>
<p>Confusion Over Eligibility</p>
<p>The department had a list of 640 nonparticipating schools that were potentially eligible for the ACG program in the 2006-7 year, the audit said. More than half, a total of 330, did not respond to a department contact. Checks at a random sample of 75 of those schools found 83 percent of them appeared to be eligible, the audit said.</p>
<p>And among the 310 nonparticipating schools that did respond to the department’s outreach, administrators at 23 percent of them said they did not believe they were eligible. Among those, 73 percent did in fact appear to be eligible.</p>
<p>The audit reported similar or smaller levels of confusion and uncertainty after it performed the same checks on colleges participating in the Smart-grant program.</p>
<p>The office of the inspector general recommended the department do a better job of reaching out to schools and colleges with eligible students. It also suggested the department begin fining institutions or making them ineligible for the federal Pell Grant program if they do not participate in the ACG or Smart grant programs when they have qualified students.</p>
<p>Education Department officials, in a written response to the audit, called it an opportunity to improve their operations and said they “concurred with the finding and its associated recommendations.”</p>
<p>Department officials also said in their response that a recent move by Congress to expand the eligibility criteria for ACG and Smart grants “will reduce the administrative barriers that may have contributed to school-participation rates during the first two years of the programs.”
[Florida</a> Board of Governors : Press Room](<a href=“flbog.org”>flbog.org)</p>
<p>Now since these grants would be instrumental in student aid, especially for the target population of low income students, it would seem the USDOE would bloody well make sure schools and students knew it was available. And ethically since they administer these grants that publicity would be an integral component of such administrative obligations. </p>
<p>However its obvious other agendas were involved beyond any real intention to aid lower income students. And as this kind of nonsense seems to be a day to day norm at the USDOE, there’s much more behind the tendency of students to make poor financial decisions about student loans, than a presumed mass of bovinely stupid students. </p>
<p>If entire sections of non loan programs are essentially buried by political appointees and questionable agendas within the USDOE, and information about those same programs is also buried…exactly how do students and parents make reasoned decisions about student loan funding and other better alternatives. And it seems no matter how many problems the USDOE IG exposes nothing seems to be done, either within the USDOE or by Congress…</p>