Months After Congress Sent Emergency Aid to College Students, Distribution Remains Spotty

For Esosa Ruffin, the $800 in federal Covid-19 relief that she received on Monday from Monmouth University, in New Jersey, was crucial.

Ruffin, a low-income student who graduated this spring, had received a considerable amount of financial aid, through Pell Grants and other assistance. But when the coronavirus broke out, in March, her family’s financial situation worsened: Her mother’s work hours were slashed, her sister quit her job because she was considered at high risk of contracting the disease, and Ruffin was forced to move back from Washington, D.C., where she had taken an internship, to her family’s home, in New Jersey.

“We really had to stretch ourselves really thin to keep our heads above water,” Ruffin said. “We live paycheck to paycheck, and so when the paychecks stop coming in, you really have to eat what’s in your house.”

But at first, she and a few hundred other students at Monmouth weren’t in line to get any of the emergency federal aid provided under the Cares Act, which was enacted in March. That’s because Monmouth’s formula to distribute the aid was based on unmet need; 272 students like Ruffin, who had cobbled together lots of aid covering a certain level of need, were left out.

According to Monmouth’s president, Patrick F. Leahy, the problem resulted from an oversight in the university’s effort to quickly get relief into the hands of students with “high financial need.” The remaining funds were given to those students, including Ruffin.

Such hiccups are hardly unexpected, given the vast leeway afforded by the U.S. Education Department to colleges in distributing the funds, coupled with unclear and evolving federal guidance about which students are eligible to receive the money. Two and a half months after the Cares Act was signed into law, distribution of the much-needed money remains inconsistent across higher education.

Many colleges lack the ability and infrastructure to distribute the funds and were caught unprepared, said Sara Goldrick-Rab, a professor of higher-education policy and sociology at Temple University.

As a result, some colleges did not distribute the money fairly to students. Those colleges, particularly ones with a cumbersome application process for Cares Act funds, relied solely on data from the Free Application for Federal Student Aid, which does not accurately reflect a student’s need; some took more than two days after they had received applications to put the money in students’ hands, Goldrick-Rab said.

The Chronicle reached out to the top recipients of federal Covid-19 relief funds through the Cares Act, including large public universities, community colleges, and private nonprofit institutions, about how they are distributing the money and the number of students that have received it. The numbers and methods are all over the map: Some colleges have distributed a lot, others have distributed very little; some have used a formula or cut checks to everyone eligible, while others have created their own application process.

The University of Central Florida, for example, on Monday started distributing funds totaling $950 or less to the more than 18,000 students who had applied for assistance. The same with Valencia College, a mostly two-year college that’s also in Orlando, Fla.

Meanwhile, as of last week, Georgia State University had already distributed 61 percent of the $22 million it received in emergency student aid under the Cares Act. Some students obtained the assistance from the university through an application process; others automatically qualified for funds through a formula based on their financial need.

Grand Canyon University, an Arizona-based private college, as of June 3 had distributed about 79 percent of the nearly $11.2 million in Cares Act funds it had received, and it did so without an application process. It planned to distribute the rest of the money later that week.

A fair process is crucial for students such as Andrea Concepción, a new graduate of Valencia College who will be pursuing a journalism degree at the University of Central Florida in the fall. At the start of the pandemic, Concepción, who lives with her parents but chips in on utilities and other expenses, lost her job as a substitute teacher in the Orlando area. Her parents also saw their job hours cut, and the family has been struggling.

Last week Concepción told The Chronicle that she had applied for Cares Act funds through Valencia on June 1, and received $750 a week later. She recently started a new job at a grocery store, but that $750 will allow her to help her family make car-loan and mortgage payments, and enable her to become independent.

“We were all trying to put our pennies together and make it work,” Concepción said. “Now I can get back on my feet again. I’ve got this extra funds, I’m working, I can help my parents, I can save up for college.”

A ‘Major Chilling Effect’

The Cares Act did not provide colleges and universities with enough money to assist all students who needed relief due to Covid-19, which made the distribution process a challenge, said Ben Miller, vice president for postsecondary education at the Center for American Progress.

In some ways, colleges benefited by being flexible in how they distribute the funds rather than having to observe strict federal guidelines, said Megan Coval, vice president for policy and federal relations at the National Association of Student Financial Aid Administrators. However, they haven’t gotten much help from the Education Department, which has still provided little clarity on which students are eligible.

In April the department issued guidance that limited the funds’ distribution to only students who were eligible for Title IV financial aid. That guidance made it difficult for colleges to distribute aid to students who had not filed a Fafsa. On May 21, after the department was sued by the California Community Colleges system and Washington State’s attorney general over the restrictions, the agency updated its guidance to say it would no longer enforce the Title IV requirement.

On Thursday the department issued an emergency final rule confirming that all recipients of Cares Act funds must be eligible for Title IV aid. But in the rule the department also stated that it would not enforce the Title IV-eligibility requirement retroactively, before the rule was issued, Miller said.

In a written statement, Angela Morabito, the department’s press secretary, said the agency had been “clear and consistent” that Congress tied Cares Act funds to Title IV eligibility and that the final rule is needed to make the earlier guidance legally binding.

Miller said the inconsistent guidance has had a “major chilling effect” on colleges’ ability to get funds out the door. The result has been delays because “colleges now have to decide between getting dollars to students for a term that is now over versus helping those in the future.”

Inconsistent federal guidance caused Broward College to delay finalizing its criteria for distributing the funds, according to a college spokeswoman, Jodi Brown-Lindo. As of June 3 the Florida college had still not distributed funds to any of the more than 7,000 students who had applied, although it planned to start doing so later that week, she wrote in an email.

“The college struggled with the reality that less than half of the students enrolled at the institution at the time of the disruption to on-campus classes due to Covid-19 would be eligible to receive any funds under the current guidance,” she wrote.

But as administrators continue to grapple with how the funds should be distributed, students like Raven Hawkins, a rising sophomore at Portland State University who has received the aid, will have a little more stability over the summer. Hawkins received $1,135 from the Oregon university in late May, shortly after applying.

“If I hadn’t received the money from the Cares Act, I probably wouldn’t be enjoying my summer this year,” Hawkins told The Chronicle over social media. Instead, she would be “picking up a bunch of extra shifts and cutting money from other things like food, or going a month or two without phone service.”