Betsy DeVos Distributes Billions to America's Schools to Assist Students
- Author: Kelly Cooke
- Posted: 2024-10-18
The coronavirus epidemic is in full force with no end in sight. President Trump wants to reopen the economy in May at the advice of his public health medical counselors. Meanwhile, students everywhere are suffering the fall-out of the pandemic with closed secondary schools, colleges, and universities until the end of the school year.
Colleges have taken it upon themselves to announce layoffs and furloughs. University provosts consider moving summer classes online, canceling tuition waivers, and waiving college fees. The unemployment rate has students concerned about their employment prospects post-graduation and for summer break.
Fortunately, Congress has extended a lifeline by including financial assistance for higher education inside the CARES Act. Betsy DeVos has provided the guidelines for support by extending grants to students and the officials for the nation's colleges and universities.
$14 Billion Education Grant
Schools have requested $47 billion to help offset the expenditures during the COVID-19 crisis. So far, only $14 billion has been allocated for the nation's educational institutions. The Department of Education has allocated funds based upon a complex formula for enrolled students who qualify for the Federal Pell grant.
As an example, Judson College will receive $369,009 in grant funding while $184,505 will go to the students. Jacksonville State University will obtain $6,050,640, and the students will receive $3,025,320. Arizona State will receive a major share of the grant funds with a total of $63 million.
The schools have received the first wave of funding for the students at $6 Billion. Educational institutions would like to use the grant funds to cover expenses already spent on student-related costs. However, out of the new funding, education institutions must spend the emergency grants on upcoming vital student services.
- Dormitory Housing and On-Campus Apartments
- Food
- Instruction Materials
- Technology
- Health Care
- Child Care
- Tuition and the Cost of Attendance
Students to Receive Aid First
According to DeVos, "I would like to encourage the leadership of each institution to prioritize your students with the greatest need, but at the same time consider establishing a maximum funding threshold for each student to ensure that these funds are distributed as widely as possible."
DeVos has suggested that educational institutions limit themselves to $6,195, which is the same limit for a regular Federal Pell grant for the 2019-2020 school year. Funds should be used for students who received free Federal financial student aid. DeVos has gone on to say that the remaining amount should go to assist the local and state governments.
To access funds, educational institutions must sign and return the Certificate of Funding with the agreement to www.grants.gov. The schools would acknowledge the terms and agreements. Furthermore, schools can use their emergency grants to draw down existing funding via the Department of Education's G5 system.
Schools Wait for Reimbursement of Expenses
The senior vice president for the American Association of Community Colleges in the areas of government relations and political analysis, David Baime, was grateful that the Department of Education had dispersed emergency funds to handle the student crisis amidst the pandemic fall-out. Nevertheless, he desired that the colleges and universities had been given leeway on how to handle efficiently these scarce resources.
Because of the pandemic, educational institutions had to cancel classes, cancel college sporting events, which brings in a significant amount of funding to pay college professors and staff salaries, and finally, schools had expenditures transforming traditional classroom instruction onto the virtual online environment. And finally, because of lack of funding, some colleges had to close operations. Students will be waiting for refunds for canceled classes and the closure of student housing facilities.
Ted Mitchell, the president for the American Council of Education, wrote in a letter to Betsy DeVos, "This crisis is causing massive disruption to students, institutional operations, and institutional finances. On some campuses, it is creating an existential threat, potentially resulting in closures."
Moreover, Mitchell wrote, "I fear this funding will be for naught for many institutions unless the department can act very quickly to make these funds available."
Betsy DeVos has promised that by the end of April 2020, more information will be forthcoming as to when the nation's fundamental educational institutions can expect the additional funds to be released directly to the schools to pay for operational expenditures.
Bobby Scott, Congressional Democrat for the chairman of the House committee on education, stated that the CARES Act stimulus package for education was just a "down payment" of relief to assist schools in coping with the crisis. Congress will pass a second stimulus bill to provide additional relief to all sectors of the American economy.
