Come and get it!
Posted on 12/16/2006 1:08:21 PM PST by Liberty Valance
EDINBURG TEXAS — University of Texas-Pan American will announce a plan next week to cover all tuition costs and fees for Texas students whose families make less than $25,000 annually.
Administrators are still ironing out details of the plan, which is part of a system-wide UT effort to make college more affordable for the lowest-income students.
Although many low-income students contribute little out of pocket — their costs are largely covered by federal and state grants — the word "free" sends a powerful message to poor students who do not think college is an option, according to administrators and local counselors.
Additional funds needed to cover fees and tuition after such grants will come from institutional grants, according to the proposal, although administrators could not provide a complete estimation of the costs involved.
Six thousand of UTPA’s 17,000 students come from families with incomes below $25,000, said President Blandina Cárdenas. Since top administrators began considering the proposal a month ago, they have run careful projections of the cost of the program and future revenues to determine what UTPA could afford to commit, she said.
With so much of the student population affected by the new program, "any little wrinkle can easily become a very expensive one," she explained.
The institutional aid portion of poor students’ tuition will come from school revenues, which were bolstered by a tuition hike this year that moved UTPA from its place as the UT system’s least expensive school. Students now pay around $2,075 per semester to take 12 credit hours, in addition to lab fees and other expenses.
The median household income in Hidalgo County is $24,500, according to the U.S. Census Bureau’s 2005 Community Survey.
The exact income ceiling and the amount of aid existing students will receive are still being determined, said John Edwards, the vice president for enrollment and student services.
"We want to push the ceiling up as far as possible," Cárdenas said. In her wildest dreams, any family making less than $35,000 would qualify, she said.
Cárdenas calls her good students from low-income backgrounds "education heroes." The tuition benefit will, she hopes, bring more of these to UTPA. "We think there’s a lot more out there," she said.
The proposed financial-aid plan has been fast-tracked in the last month, administrators said. Often, new grant programs need to be rolled out rapidly and early to ensure students have time to consider the benefits and apply, said Bill Morley, an assistant director of financial aid.
Educators and observers applauded the plan Friday, noting that anything that increases the number of college-educated workers in the Rio Grande Valley will be beneficial to the local economy.
"From a staffing-agency point of view, qualified people for administrative positions are becoming harder to find," said Carmen Gaona, a staffing specialist at Manpower Inc. Encouraging more poor students to attend college will add more graduates to the area, she said.
Cynthia Brown, the director of the university’s Center for Border Economic Studies, said that the growth of an educated population produces a "synergistic effect" for the economy. Better demographics "attract higher-level employers to the region, which produces spin-off benefits economically," she said.
The program also will benefit students who may have qualified for full financial aid before but were not aware college was financially possible. "When they hear it’s going to be free, then they know they can do it," Brown said.
Cristina Peña was busy applying for a Hispanic Ford scholarship at her high school’s college office Friday. The Valley senior is planning to go to UTPA in 2007.
"I’ve been applying to as many scholarships as I can," she said. Her mother, Diana Peña, said at the moment their household income is around $11,000, well below the threshold for aid.
Any additional financial aid the school can provide will help, Cristina said. "It would make my life way easier."
"Where there’s a will, there’s a way," said her college adviser, Roxanne Garza. Even without such programs, financial resources are out there to help anyone get into school, she said.
However, "the financial worry is always there," she said.
The program is intended to provide extra incentive for students to apply for financial aid early, said Elias Ozuna, associate executive director of financial aid. While Pell grants of up to $4,050 per year are a federal entitlement, the university distributes its share of TEXAS Grant money based on both need and application date. When the money is gone, it’s gone, Ozuna said.
Like UT San Antonio and UT El Paso, which have made public some of their plans, UTPA likely will require students participating in the new aid program to carry 30 credit hours per academic year. "We want students who are poor students to not spend an extra year of their life in college," Cárdenas said.
Unlike those schools, however, the proposed UTPA plan extends the assistance to existing students as well as incoming freshmen, said Edwards, the vice president for enrollment and student services.
According to Cárdenas, $94 million in financial aid went through the school last year. Of that, only $1.5 million came from private scholarship grants. UTPA gets $17 million from the state grant program, claiming the second-largest share of the available funds despite being the 10th-largest university.
Sara Perkins covers Starr County and general assignments for The Monitor. You can reach her at (956) 683-4472.
"Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached." -Manuel II Paleologus
I hope I've got my ducks in a row to be out of there before it comes to my college. Free is bad. Every little jerk who doesn't have anything else to do will show up and fubar the classes for students trying to study.
Bingo! and it only took two posts. :o)
All you folks out there paying off student loans are just a bunch of suckers!
"Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached." -Manuel II Paleologus
So working nights, scholarships, grants, student loans and every good thing that struggling teaches is going to go by the wayside and become another entitlement.
Exactly right!
"Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached." -Manuel II Paleologus
Just like hospitals and health care insurance--this is nothing but cost shifting. Why should anyone pay more to educate someone else at the college level. If you want the education bad enough you go out and work, take classes part time, borrow the money, in other words you do what it takes. How many of us have done it that way? What is wrong with being self reliant?
I agree.
Well that should go a long way in these students supporting socialist and communist thinking then. Why shouldn't they? Look what it did for them.
Now if they actually had to earn that money through grade based scholarships or if they were given loans to pay off, then they would see the benefits and be conditioned to be members of a capitalistic society.
What does one do when they leave college and have student loan debt? They get a job. Many times they have to work hard to get a high paying job overtime to pay not only the loans off, but to afford housing and other costs of living. Keeps them off the street from protesting the breaking of someone's fingernail, which many are taught and brainwashed to do in college, when they usually have loads of free time and little if any responsibility.
Very Bad Decision Texas!
My point was that there is no struggle involved if you throw the doors open. I grew up 5 miles from the border. I'm white, and middle class and I still had crappy summer jobs, then I earned a NROTC scholarship that I had to "pay" back with five years of very hard work. I am concerned that the value of working for what you want will be lost on many of these students, who will see college now as just an extension of high school.
FREE! I am so glad that the profs will give up part of his salary for each freebie student in his classes. That is the true meaning of Christmas, eh?
I've got the solution to the education for illegals problem. Tell me where to send it and I'll kick in a couple of George Washington's for a semester at the Universidad Estado de Michoacan for Juanito. I want to do my part.
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