GO! grants help put college within reach 3,345 apply for new state program

Eighteen-year old Shawanda Haynes is the first in her family to go to college.

When it came time to pay for it, her mother told her not to worry. Every month the single mother, who works for a plywood manufacturer and still has two children at home, pays $438 to the University of Arkansas at Pine Bluff to cover what financial aid doesn't.

Aunts, uncles and other extended family members help, too.

"My whole family encouraged me to go," said Haynes, a nursing major from Hamburg in Ashley County. "The whole family helps. Every time I go home they buy me groceries and things." Haynes was one of 3,345 Arkansas freshmen who applied for a new state Department of Higher Education grant for students from low-income families. On Thursday, she learned she'd received the $1,000 grant that will help relieve the burden on her mother.

Gov. Mike Beebe's office led a fast and furious campaign to promote the "GO! Opportunities Grant" after the General Assembly gave its final approval. The deadline for applications was Oct. 1.

"It was a very short period of time," said Stacy Sells, senior vice president of strategic planning with Cranford Johnson Robinson Woods, the Little Rock advertising firm hired to do marketing. "We had four weeks to run the campaign and about three weeks to plan it." Beebe said he's pleased by the response, but feels the state's only begun to meet the need.

"There are still students out there that stand to benefit from this grant program," Beebe said in a statement issued through his office. "We will not completely meet the need until every student who is capable of college level work has the opportunity to attend college." The deadline to apply for the spring semester is Jan. 1.

HIGH NEED

The GO! grants pay up to $1,000 a year for full-time students and $500 a year for parttime students.

The grants are available to anyone who graduated from high school or received their General Education Development certificate after Dec. 31, 2006. Recipients must meet federal Pell Grant requirements of an adjusted gross annual income of $25,000 or less for a family with one dependent child, with $5,000 added for each additional child.

The state appropriated $7.2 million this year and $11.4 million next year for the grant, said Steve Floyd, interim director of the Higher Education Department.

It is aimed at students who need "a little extra help" with finances and see cost as a barrier to college, Beebe said. It's the first financial-aid program in the state for traditional college students based solely on financial need.

Kati Haycock, president of the Washington D.C.-based advocacy group Education Trust, said $500 a semester can make a big difference for students scraping by to pay for college.

Arkansas is taking a "big step forward" by increasing aid based on income. Many states are headed in the opposite direction, she said.

"Right now the trend is away from need-based aid toward merit-based," Haycock said. "The amount of merit-based aid has doubled in the last seven to eight years.

"Low-income students are really left out in the cold." Charles Treadwell, chairman of the federal relations committee for the National Association of State Student Grant and Aid Programs, said many states are increasing merit-based aid to stem the "brain drain" of highachieving students to schools in other states.

"Each state has a need that it's trying to respond to," Treadwell said.

In its latest report on statesponsored student aid, the association found states awarded $7 billion in grant aid for the 2005-06 academic year, of which 73 percent was need-based.

Forty-six states reported having aid programs geared strictly to low-income residents, with need-based aid constituting 49 percent of all aid to undergraduates.

Arkansas gave $20.9 million in need-based aid in 2005-06, compared with $10.9 million in non-need-based aid, according to the report.

The GO! grant is aimed at getting more students into college, and making sure they stay to graduate, said Lu Hardin, president of the University of Central Arkansas in Conway.

"The number one reason students drop out of school is financial," Hardin said. "The GO! grant could mean the difference in many students staying in college - $500 a semester for a full-time student can make a substantive difference." Arkansas ranks 49th in the nation in college education, with 19 percent of adults over age 25 holding at least a bachelor's degree. The state is ahead of West Virginia at 15.9 percent and just behind Kentucky at 20.2 percent, according to U.S. Census Bureau figures.

The grant is a chance to familiarize students with the financial aid system and promote other need-based aid programs, Hardin said.

"Low income grants and scholarships has been a glaring need area for many years," Hardin said.

As of the latest count, 881 Arkansas college students received grants by Oct. 29. More awards will be given throughout November as state officials receive additional documents from about 1,800 students who submitted incomplete applications, Floyd said.

"I would guess we're going to top 1,000, maybe more than that," he said.

GETTING WORD OUT

With a $75,000 marketing budget - including $50,000 in donations - the Higher Education Department ran television and radio ads throughout September, had public service announcements in college newspapers statewide, and advertised on the social networking Web site Facebook.

Beebe, whose 2006 gubernatorial campaign called for increased need-based college aid, went on a three-day campaign to Pulaski Technical College in North Little Rock, Arkansas State University in Jonesboro and the University of Arkansas at Fayetteville.

"We ran a very heavy schedule," Sells said.

UCA had the highest response with 438 applicants, said Dale Ellis, spokesman for the Higher Education Department.

Of those, 102 have been confirmed so far, Hardin said.

To promote the grant, the university sent 500 e-mails, hung 4,000 fliers, and posted information prominently on UCA's Web site and newsletter.

ASU had the second-highest response with 388 applicants, of which 105 had been given grants as of Oct. 29, Ellis said.

Gregory Thornburg, director of financial aid at ASU, said the university promoted the grant through its First Year Experience course required of all freshmen, and sent letters home to 368 freshmen.

The total cost of a year at ASU is estimated at $5,940, including tuition, fees, room and board, and books and supplies, according to the university's admissions office. $1,000 can definitely help, Thornburg said.

"At the bare minimum it will at least pay for books," he said.

At UA-Fayetteville, the estimated cost of tuition, fees and room and board is $6,528 per year for in-state undergraduates, according to the UA Office of the Treasurer. Seventy students have received grants so far, said Kattie Wing, director of financial aid.

At UAPB, the majority of students come from low-income families, and 95 percent of students get some form of financial aid, said Carlia Smith, associate vice president for student financial aid services with the University of Arkansas System. Fifty UAPB students have been notified they will receive the grant.

"We have a lot of kids with very high needs," Smith said. "Everything helps. It can make a difference - $500 a semester can go a long way." At Pulaski Tech, only 10 students have received grants so far, said Tim Jones, director of public relations and marketing.

As a community college, it attracts many students who are older and therefore don't qualify. The average student age is 28.

"The requirements for this grant don't really meet the needs of a lot of our students," Jones said.

Brandy Stigger, 19, a freshman studying business at UCA, said she learned of the grant not through advertisements, radio or TV, but through her youth pastor at Agape Community Temple in Conway.

Stigger said the $500 a semester is helping her cover the cost of books without having to go into debt.

"This way I don't have to take out a loan that I'd have to pay back later," Stigger said.

To contact this reporter: cpark@arkansasonline.com This article was published 11/04/2007