The higher education relief fund is on its way to eligible students
On March 27, Congress passed the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security Act. Inside the two trillion dollar package is the Higher Education Emergency Relief Fund.
According to the U.S. Department of Education’s website this fund “provides funding to institutions to provide emergency financial aid grants to students whose lives have been disrupted, many of whom are facing financial challenges and struggling to make ends meet.”
Students can only access this fund directly through their school. “Institutions have the responsibility of determining how grants will be distributed to students,” according to the website.
Lane Community College is currently working out the details on how they will give this money to the students. President Margaret Hamilton says she has been meeting with peers and lawyers deciphering the act.
One of the conditions of this act “is that 50 percent of all money received by these community colleges must go directly to students,” Hamilton said.
The relief fund is approximately $14 billion, and according to Provost Paul Jarrell, “When you look at Lane’s share of that it’s about three million.”
He went on to say, “There is no real good guidance on how we distribute that.”
Since the announcement that LCC would be receiving roughly $3 million, the administration formed the C.A.R.E.S act committee which met twice a week.
According to Jarrell, the committee was composed of “representatives from Financial Aid, the bursar’s office, a student advocate, Student Engagement, athletics, TRiO, International Programs, Student Success, the Office of the President, and the Associate Vice President of Student Affairs.”
Starting on the week of May 11, all students that meet the eligibility status will be rewarded $380. The financial aid office will be notifying these students via email.
“Each week, there was new federal guidance related to who would be eligible for the funding and how it would be distributed. Eventually, undocumented students and international students were excluded from eligibility as well as those who did not have a GED [General Education Development],” Jarrell explained.
The original plan for the allocation of funds was an application system, but recently that changed to a block grant. This delivery platform allows LCC to distribute the money to all who are eligible without the need for an application.
Jarrell says that this method is “the most inclusionary and equitable given the parameters.”
