Congressman Proposes Financial Help for Low-Income College Students
- Author: Mary Singleton
- Posted: 2024-01-25
The CARES Act Only Helped Some College Students and Not Enough
Many college students were left out in the cold in the CARES Act when it came to receiving their own $1,200 stimulus check. Many of these students are claimed by their parents as a dependent. Even their parents did not end up receiving any help from the stimulus because it excluded the extra payment for dependents who were over the age of 17. This was a harsh result for parents who struggle to pay college tuition while simultaneously being impacted by the pandemic.
For families, the difficulty is that the students are now home, and the parents will incur extra bills for things such as electricity and food. The students are largely shut out of the summer job market as the economy has largely ground to a halt and the seasonal jobs that employ college students simply do not exist right now.
The current proposal has been sponsored by Rep. Bobby Rush (D-IL). He has proposed that Congress give a stimulus check of $1,200 to each college student who receives Pell Grant funding. This government program is reserved for families that earn less than $50,000, but most funding goes to students in families that make an average of $20,000 per year. There are slightly under seven million college students who receive this funding for their college education. The total amount of money necessary to write these stimulus checks would be roughly $8 billion. This money would undoubtedly be spent as these are lower-income students who need money to put food on their table.
Some have criticized Rush's grant proposal because students already received money under the first CARES Act. However, in the initial stimulus bill, the money was distributed based on criteria largely set by the universities themselves. Some students received as little as $800 while others got significantly more than that. It all depended on how universities chose to allocate the money.
This means that college students who were not among the poorest also got money, cutting the share of the students who needed the money the most. In addition, the law limited the uses of the grant money to things such as bandwidth for online learning and supplies to facilitate home classes. Accordingly, low-income college students still have a profound need for money to help with their daily lives while they are kept from their campuses.
The Proposed Bill Would Retroactively Change the Stimulus Criteria
Rush's bill would work by amending the criteria for the previous program providing for stimulus checks for taxpayers. It would retroactively change the rules to make these college students eligible for their own stimulus check. The total cost of this measure would slightly exceed $8 billion. This is a fraction of the $268 billion that the original stimulus check program cost.
The bill has seven co-sponsors but has relatively long odds of passage. The measure will almost certainly be opposed in the Republican-controlled Senate if it is even able to pass the House.
With many colleges moving education online again for the coming academic year and leaving tuition largely unchanged, college students will continue to need financial assistance until life returns to normal after the pandemic. Both branches of Congress have recognized the need for more stimulus in the future, although the two sides remain far apart on the appropriate legislative package. There is a desperate need to assist not only college students but struggling public academic institution with a mix of grants and loan packages.
The grants featured in the previous CARES Act only covered the last half of the second semester of the previous academic year. With more upheaval on the way for college students, more help will be needed before the 2020-21 academic year begins.
