Low income students to receive aid

By Jordan Blum

The LSU Board of Supervisors on Thursday will discuss the “Pelican Promise” plan. It would offer an average of $3,000 annually, beginning this fall, to accepted freshmen with family incomes no more than 50 percent above the poverty level. Currently, 50 percent above equates to a family income of $25,755 for a family of three.

Meanwhile, the Louisiana Board of Regents is finalizing a statewide, need-based financial aid proposal to give $2,000 annually to needy full-time, first-year students and $1,000 to part-time students at all public two-year and four-year colleges in the state.

LSU students could get both awards.

Financing both programs is largely dependent on the Louisiana Legislature, which starts its regular session April 30. LSU System officials said they could initially fund their program on their own.

The new proposals buck the nationwide trends of programs, like Louisiana’s TOPS, that base awards on merit only and not financial need.

Such programs have garnered some national backlash for aiding many students whose families could already afford college.

The Pelican Promise for LSU’s main campus and the statewide Regents’ plan fall in line with a newer trend to offer more scholarships to low-income students as college costs have skyrocketed.

“We want to ensure (that) any qualified resident of this state has the opportunity to come to the flagship university — despite finances,” LSU Chancellor Sean O’Keefe said.

The goal is to fill the often-costly gap left after an able student receives TOPS — Tuition Opportunity Program for Students.

O’Keefe said nearly all incoming LSU freshman are on TOPS, which pays tuition — but not all costs — for students who meet certain standards in high school.

There is a big difference between the “sticker price and the actual cost” to attend college, O’Keefe said.

For instance, the basic TOPS award is $3,328 per year, and the actual annual cost to attend LSU is $18,463, counting everything from room and board to textbooks and transportation, according to LSU statistics.

Luke Swarthout, higher education associate for the U.S. Public Interest Research Group, said merit-based aid gained popularity in the 1990s at the expense of need-based aid because legislators wanted to make voters happy.

So it is good to see some need-based aid gaining traction, he said.

“Politicians don’t want to rely on the Pell (federal need-based grant) because they’re low-income and less likely to vote,” Swarthout said. “Merit aid is much more politically friendly.”

Louisiana Commissioner of Higher Education Joseph Savoie said the still-unnamed statewide Regents need-based plan complements the Pelican Promise, and an LSU student could receive both.

“Ours is about access, not about choice,” Savoie said, noting the proposal that would give money to students attending everything from Louisiana’s technical colleges to its flagship campus.

Students would receive the Regents’ award based entirely on federal Pell grant eligibility for low-income students. The expectation is to assist 25 percent of all first-time public college students in the fall.

“What ours does is add $2,000 to the Pell grant,” Savoie said.

The LSU Pelican Promise is more restrictive, awarding admitted students who are Pell-eligible but also have a family income no more than 50 percent above the poverty level.

Currently, 50 percent above equates to a family income of $25,755 for a family of three. The plan is to eventually expand the program as money becomes available to 100 percent of the poverty level, which is $34,340 for a family of three, said Jim McCoy, LSU vice provost of enrollment management, who authored the proposal.

In four years, as the program is phased in, about 1,300 students at LSU should be aided by the Pelican Promise, he said.

Although the $4 million that will eventually fund the program at LSU is not a huge amount, McCoy said, it also is a big motivator just by offering students hope.

“It could be the last piece to put someone in college without taking any loans out,” McCoy said. “So I think that’s a huge thing.”

LSU System President William Jenkins said the hope is it can eventually be expanded to all schools in the LSU System.

“It’s a very important initiative,” Jenkins said. “We have to get this done now.”

Charles Zewe, LSU System vice president for communication and external affairs, said the new LSU proposals are race-blind. But one side effect could be increasing diversity.

“LSU needs more minority students,” Zewe said. “There’s been a problem and concern for a long time that we’re not attracting enough African-American students to LSU on the perception that LSU is not friendly to them.

“And that’s not true,” Zewe said.

LSU currently has about an 11 percent minority enrollment.

Julie Scott, co-founder of the non-profit Career Compass of Louisiana college-advising organization in East Baton Rouge Parish, said all extra help for financially struggling students is great.

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