Jun. 18—A major budget bill passed by the U.S. House last month includes limits on eligibility for federal financial aid for low-income students that could be especially devastating for Maine’s community colleges and their students.
The proposal would limit access to federal Pell grants based on how many credit hours students enroll in, specifically targeting the part-time students who make up roughly half of all enrollees at two-year colleges and potentially thousands more in the University of Maine System.
That would cut off people like Marissa Hamilton, 22, a part-time student at Southern Maine Community College in South Portland who receives the maximum Pell grant amount. The Biddeford native, who dropped out of high school and later got her GED, says she only considered attending college because of federal grant programs.
“If I didn’t know my whole cost would be covered, it would have never been an option for me to begin with,” she said.
About 24,000 of the roughly 71,000 college students in Maine, including more than 7,000 community college students, rely on Pell grants to afford a college degree. Higher education leaders in Maine say the proposed limits would be both a hit to low-income students, and to the state’s declining workforce.
“The current attitude in Congress is that we really have to cut down on our spending. So it’s kind of hard to say we have to cut down our spending, except for …” said David Daigler, president of the Maine Community College System. “There have been categorical areas where they’ve increased spending, and I would continue to argue that Pell should be one of the places where that would be important for the economy as a whole. And I don’t necessarily think that that’s a partisan argument.”
Although the House passed its version of the bill, the Senate version of the education bill unveiled last week walked back the limits on eligibility.
‘WORST POSSIBLE THING YOU COULD DO’
The House narrowly passed the Republican spending and policy bill on May 22. Along with controversial cuts to Medicaid and tax cuts for wealthy Americans, the bill would roll back Pell eligibility for many students by increasing the required coursework for maximum Pell eligibility from 24 credits a year to 30, and eliminate the grants entirely for students who attend school less than part time, defined as carrying fewer than 15 credits a year.
Proponents of the eligibility limits say they’re necessary to save money, and argue students perform better academically when they enroll full time. Currently, there is a $2.7 billion shortfall in the Pell grant program.
Nationally, the changes could impact as many as 4.4 million students, 1.2 million of whom are not full-time students and could lose grant funding entirely. Those students are overrepresented in community colleges.
“Twenty-three percent of the students receiving Pell grants are in community colleges, and the sheer way in which you change those eligibility criteria and map them against the community college-going population … I don’t think anybody said let’s get the money out of the community colleges, but that’s what happened,” Daigler said.
He presented his concerns to Sen. Susan Collins, and emphasized both the negative impact on low-income students and the implications for the shrinking workforce in Maine.
“I said right now, from a policy standpoint, this is the worst possible thing you could do,” Daigler said.
The Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, of which Collins is a member, released the Senate’s response to the higher education portion of the House bill that eliminated the eligibility limits. The two versions of the spending bill still need to be reconciled, so it’s uncertain what will happen.
Collins said she’s a strong supporter of federal student financial assistance and providing educational opportunities for low-income families.
“I have long advocated for Pell grants and opposed efforts to change eligibility requirements for this program,” she said in an emailed statement. “Those provisions were dropped in our Senate version, which also includes additional funding for Pell grants this year.”
STUDENT IMPACT
Hamilton, the SMCC communications student, takes between six and nine credits a semester and would lose Pell Grant eligibility entirely under the House bill. She thinks lawmakers probably aren’t aware of who community colleges students are, or the reasons they may not be in school full-time, like having a job, parenting or mental health.
“Community college students are everyone and their mother’s grandmother,” Hamilton said. “I’ve seen so many people of so many ages and so many backgrounds here, not just 18- to 20-something-year-olds fresh out of high school. I don’t think people realize it’s a lot of moms who work a full-time job, or sometimes older grandparents who are going back because they never got to before.”
Abygail Ridlon, 19, a fellow SMCC student studying criminal justice, receives Pell grants and takes about 24 credits a year. Ridlon, who has autism and struggles with depression and anxiety, said taking more classes is not realistic. She worries that increased eligibility requirements will push people to take an unsustainable number of credits for the sake of getting financial aid.
“We’d be learning to do instead of learning to learn,” Ridlon said.
Since the pandemic, Daigler said students have been taking more time to complete degrees because of learning loss issues from remote learning during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Maine also has offered free tuition to community colleges since 2022, but that’s a “last dollar” scholarship, meaning students must first apply for federal aid like Pell. The state-funded program then covers the the remaining tuition. But that program is poised to sunset after the Maine Legislature’s budget committee declined to continue funding that program and instead allocated $20 million to cover students graduating high school this year.
More than 7,600 students in the state’s public university system also rely on Pell Grants.
“Need-based federal Pell grants enabled a record 52.8% of our undergraduates to access door-opening University of Maine System education this year,” system spokesperson Samantha Warren said. “Despite our system’s region-leading affordability, any cuts to Pell awards and access will harm our most price-sensitive students and limit their upward mobility, and the growth and competitiveness of Maine’s workforce and economy.”
Warren said many system schools offer “Pell promise” programs that allow in-state students who qualify for Pell grants to pursue a bachelor’s degree without paying out-of-pocket for tuition and fees. Only 40% of undergraduates enrolled in the system this spring were taking the 15 or more annual credits the bill would require to qualify for the maximum Pell, and Warren said students increasingly spread their courses over the entire year, not just the traditional fall and spring semesters, to accommodate work or caregiving responsibilities.
Both the House and Senate versions of the spending bill include the creation of a long-discussed program called workforce Pell. It would provide financial aid to students taking short-term credential programs, like a welding certificate course.
Daigler said that provision is a good thing, as Maine’s community colleges have been growing their short-term programming through outside grants and business partnerships. However, he said the challenge is that the pool of funding for Pell grants will stay the same, while the number of eligible receivers could increase. Critics of the provision have also said it could incentivize nonaccredited, for-profit programs.
Collins said she also supports the workforce provision. She was behind a bipartisan bill introduced earlier in the legislative session that would have allowed students to use Pell funding for shorter-term job training programs. Sen. Angus King, Maine’s other U.S. senator, was also a sponsor of that bill.
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