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Cash-Lean Students Beg For Aid

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By ADAM EMERSON

The Tampa Tribune

Published: August 22, 2008

The calls are coming into college financial aid offices daily.

"I lost my job."

"My employer cut my salary."

"I can't pay the rent, and I think I may have to leave school."

With the downturn in the economy, area colleges and universities are reporting double-digit increases this year in the number of families reporting hardships that weren't on their initial financial aid applications.

Last school year, administrators at Hillsborough Community College's Brandon campus reviewed 127 requests from students seeking urgent aid because they fell on hard times. The new school year began only this week, and campus officials already have reviewed 139 requests.

"It's scary," said Joe Bentrovato, HCC Brandon's dean of student services. "There's still time for this to go on."

HCC isn't alone. The University of South Florida has seen similar requests increase by 32 percent from last year. At private Eckerd College in St. Petersburg, they have gone up nearly 30 percent.

But financial aid options for students are tightening as the fall semester looms. Many banks have fled the student loan business, and even some federally backed loans are out of reach for families with shaky credit histories.

Sometimes a student's hardships result in additional federal aid, including scholarships often awarded to lower income students. An increased number of hardships, however, may hit schools in another way: Faced with the choice of paying their electric bill or paying their tuition, students will drop out.

USF, for one, is trying to set up an emergency fund to keep that from happening.

The university's ombudsman, former state Sen. Les Miller, is seeking help from donors and local merchants to develop a fund that would dispense gift cards or quick money to students in imminent danger of dropping out.

If the financial aid office can't help meet short-term needs, Miller said, his office may provide credit at the campus dining halls or aid to keep the electricity on.

The university is calling the effort, "Don't Stop, Don't Drop," a slogan emblazoned on signs and electronic monitors throughout campus.

"Retention is the main goal," Miller said.

'They Just Disappear'

How many students may seek that help remains unknown, however. Students who exhaust their financial aid options don't often cry for help, said Billie Jo Hamilton, USF's director of financial aid.

"What often happens with kids in these instances, they just disappear," Hamilton said.

"You don't know how many are out there."

Miller and others have spent the past few weeks asking school advisers, faculty members and student leaders to watch out for signs that a pupil might drop out and direct them to Miller's office for help.

Such attention helped keep Johanna Navarro at HCC, which for the past several years has provided the same type of emergency aid to students that USF is trying to develop.

Last winter, Navarro, 35, was close to wrapping up two years of study at HCC when she told her instructor that she may have to drop out. A car accident on Interstate 75 crushed her husband's legs, forcing him into months of physical therapy without a steady paycheck. Compounding that was a repair bill of more than $500 for their other car.

"It was a matter of, was he going to physical therapy, or was I going to school," Navarro said recently.

Her instructor told her about the college's DreamKeepers fund, an emergency program backed by the Lumina Foundation for Education in Indianapolis. The fund was set up to relieve students such as Navarro who faced situations that might force them to abandon college.

Full-time students who have at least 12 credit hours can apply to receive up to $500 if they show they need it. Part-time students can receive up to $250.

"I thought it was way too good to be true," said Navarro, who used the $500 to repair her car and stay in school.

As required, she showed the university the invoice for the repair bill and finished her classes in May. She's starting at USF this semester. Her husband, Gary, a large-motor mechanic, is back at work.

Needs such as Navarro's have been on the increase at HCC. Administrators don't grant everyone's request, but Bentrovato at the Brandon campus says he approved money from the DreamKeepers fund for 22 students from January to June. That's on pace to exceed the 28 he approved through all of 2007.

Emergency aid helps only a part of those suffering from the downturn in the economy. More frequent are the families who face a loss of income and ask a college or university to review their financial need.

Quickly Changing Circumstances

The Free Application for Federal Student Aid contains income information from the prior year. Financial aid offices everywhere are fielding calls from students who say they or their parents have since lost their jobs.

Because of that, administrators say more students are qualifying for the federal Pell grant, which typically goes to lower-income students.

Overall, applications for financial aid are up. Because the more popular Stafford loans are capped and many private loan options are drying up, more parents are taking out federal loans for their children, which they can do under the Parental Loans for Undergraduate Students program, or PLUS.

PLUS loan volume at Eckerd College, for instance, has gone up 8.5 percent from last year, said Pat Watkins, the college's financial aid director.

However, parents have to pass a credit check to receive the PLUS loan. That means that as fewer loan options become available and more unemployed parents fall behind on their bills, their odds of being rejected for the loan increase, Watkins said.

"I have had more families struggling with financial problems," Watkins said. "It's been a very hectic year with all the uncertainty."

Reporter Adam Emerson can be reached at aemerson@tampatrib.com or (813) 259-8285.

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