By Katherine Leal Unmuth
Latino Ed Beat
A new report by a federal advisory committee concludes that several proposed need-based financial aid changes to the Higher Education Act (HEA) could threaten the completion rates of low-income college students, and in particular Latino and black students.
The Advisory Committee on Student Financial Assistance, which issued the “Inequality Matters” report, is a federal advisory committee chartered by Congress that provides advice to the U.S. Department of Education on financial aid policy.
The report says that a number of proposed changes could hurt students. They include denying aid based on students being at-risk of not completing their degrees, demanding budget-neutral funding of TItle IV Student Aid, eliminating Pell Grants to fund block grants to the states, dismantling partnerships in need-based student grant aid, and relying only on improvements to student aid.
The report also provides data broken out by race ethnicity on college enrollment and completion.
