Changes to the federal student financial aid formula will cause some students at Rhode Island public universities to see their Pell Grant awards decreased or even eliminated.
About 20,000 students in Rhode Island receive Pell Grants, which range in size from $400 to $4,050, each year.
Though individual students are not likely to see decreases of more than $100 in their awards, 90,000 grants will be eliminated nationwide, according to an analysis by the American Council on Education.
"It's problematic, and people need to be aware of it, but I don't think people should be frightened - it's not what I would call a huge change," said James Hanbury, director of financial aid at Rhode Island College, which had 1,844 Pell recipients this year in an undergraduate student body of 6,531.
"Pell Grants are an extremely important program for us," Hanbury said, and the decrease in certain students' awards is "troublesome - we never want to see Pell Grants reduced. On the other hand, we don't want people thinking they can't go to school next year and not even applying."
Students on the margin of eligibility - and at risk of losing their eligibility next year - currently receive minimal grants of $400.
For some students, $400 makes a big difference, according to Christina O'Reilly, public relations officer at Community College of Rhode Island.
"We are most concerned for our students who are working" because of the additional hours they may be forced to take on, O'Reilly said.
"There's also the concern of whether or not they're going to have to borrow more money. That's going to be an issue for a lot of our students - they're coming out already saddled with debt for their education, and a lot are going to want to go on to four-year colleges and aren't going to be able to because they're going to be responsible for paying back those loans, money they wouldn't have otherwise borrowed," O'Reilly said.
A quarter of CCRI's 16,000 students receive assistance at some level from Pell Grants, and the college processed $7.9 million this year from the grants, according to O'Reilly. "A small minority of our students stand to benefit from (the changes to Pell Grant eligibility)," O'Reilly said, "but the large majority will suffer."
Angie Bonin, a University of Rhode Island sophomore, said she believes the system already suffers from insufficient resources.
"I think they don't give them to a lot of people who need them," she said. "I can only say from my own experience, but I could probably use one right now," she said, adding that her own request for a Pell Grant was rejected.
About 2,300 of URI's 10,320 students receive a total of $2 million in Pell grants each year, according to URI Director of Communications Linda Acciardo, and of these almost all receive the maximum award of $4,050.
"We estimate that 200 URI students will completely lose their grants, which is certainly significant," she said.
Alex Roskowski, also a sophomore at URI, gets $1,000 in Pell Grant awards each semester, but says he is not worried about his award decreasing. "It wouldn't be devastating to my family, but it would be a hassle," he said. "I would probably have to get another job." Though Roskowski does not currently work, he was employed at a deli in East Greenwich for 60 hours a week last summer.
U.S. Sen. Jack Reed has vocalized his opposition to the cuts to federal financial aid, pledging to work with lawmakers to restore money to the Pell Grant program. "Everyone keeps talking up education as the engine, especially in a global economy, but when it comes down to the budget, we are squeezing, squeezing, squeezing," he told the Providence Journal last week. "Frankly, I don't think that's sound policy."
