College students lose grant money

Published 5:00 pm Wednesday, September 18, 2002

Measure 19 redirects money from college scholarships to K-12Bridget Burns has nothing against kindergartners – except when $150 million is at stake.

Now that Oregonians have voted to take that amount from a fund that was partly used to provide scholarships to college students and give it to public schools, Burns, student body president at Oregon State University, is worried about the fallout.

“I honestly hate fighting with 5-year-olds,” she said Wednesday, the day after Oregonians passed Measure 19. “And we understand how important all 16 years of education are. But Measure 19 means even fewer students will have access to higher education.”

The poorest college students will be the hardest hit by the passage of Measure 19, which redirected $150 million from a lottery-backed education endowment fund to the struggling public school system.

Twenty-five percent of the interest from that fund is directed to the Oregon Opportunity Grants, scholarships given on a need basis to students attending community colleges or universities in Oregon.

The reduction of the principal in the fund means less interest and less money available for the scholarships.

It comes at a time when need is especially high, said Bruce Marks, of the Oregon Student Assistance Commission, since Oregon’s struggling economy has sent many laid-off employees back to school. And most colleges and universities will be hard pressed to make up the slack on their own, since their bottom lines have also taken a hit in the state’s budget crisis.

Marks said the real impact of Measure 19 probably won’t be felt until the next budget cycle, which begins on July 1, 2003. That’s when his agency will have about $4.8 million less in interest-generated scholarship funds to offer students, he said. And that doesn’t count any additional cuts in general funds in the Student Assistance Commission’s grant budget that the Legislature might mandate in their next session.

Clatsop Community College Financial Aid Director Sharon Boring said students have already received their financial aid package – packages that don’t yet account for Measure 19’s impact.

“We don’t know exactly yet what the reduction will be because we haven’t heard from the Oregon Student Assistance Commission,” she said.

Already, the state had to turn away 13,000 applicants for the grants, he said, about 30 percent of those who applied.

Jason Shaw, a student at Chemeketa Community College in Salem, said he’s nervous about the uncertainty surrounding his financial aid package. Already, counselors at Chemeketa are telling students that it could be several months before their financial aid packages are ready, and that they will waive late fees and offer book loans in the meantime, said Kathy Campbell, director of financial aid there.

“It’s very frustrating not to know how much money I am going to receive, whether I am going to have to get a second job this year,” said Shaw, who is hoping to finish his education at Western Oregon University and become an elementary school teacher. “Measure 19 helps some students at the elementary grades, but I really question whether, by the time they get to college, whether there will be any money left for them.”

Shaw said he’s also concerned that voters may think that by passing Measure 19, they have done enough for schools, and may not pass a proposed three-year-income tax hike in January.

Historically, most students have sought loans to cover reductions in their financial aid packages, Marks said.

The measure put higher education advocates in a tough position, he said.

“How do you say which is more important, K through 12 or post-secondary education?” he asked. “I have children in high school and college-age kids. It would be best to provide adequate funding for both, but we are not in that kind of economic time period.”

Burns worries that the state’s tough economic situation might spark a move to raise tuition midyear or for administrators to ask for permission to set their own tuition and fee levels.

It doesn’t seem right, she said, to “cut financial aid and then raise tuition. Folks in Oregon are not going to be able to get into these public universities anymore.”