POSTED BY MARTIN KICH

The Department of Education just distributed this press release. It appears to be a formal announcement of the monies that we have all been discussing for several weeks. It seems to suggest that those monies are just now being released–now that the initial $6.2 billion in direct aid to students has been disbursed.

WASHINGTON — After quickly making available more than $6 billion for colleges and universities to provide direct emergency cash grants to students, U.S. Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos announced today an additional $6.2 billion is now available to higher education institutions to ensure learning continues. The funding is available through the Higher Education Emergency Relief Fund authorized by the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security (CARES) Act, signed into law by President Donald J. Trump less than one month ago.

“This pandemic has made clear every single education institution should make important investments to ensure learning continues when unexpected circumstances arise,” said Secretary DeVos. “Accordingly, the additional funds made available today can be used to expand remote learning programs, build IT capacity, and train faculty and staff to operate in a remote learning environment so that at any moment institutions can pivot quickly. I hope that institutions that already have robust remote learning capacity will consider using this funding to support additional emergency cash grants for students.”

The CARES Act allows institutions to use up to one half of the total funds received to cover any costs associated with significant changes to the delivery of instruction due to the coronavirus. The funding for these “Recipient Institutional Costs” is separate from the funding previously made available for “Emergency Financial Aid Grants to Students.” In order to access the funds, higher education institutions must submit a Certification and Agreement for Recipient Institutional Costs, which can be found here. Institutions must also have executed the Certification and Agreement for Emergency Financial Aid Grants to Students before submitting the second certification and agreement. So far, about 50% of eligible postsecondary institutions have applied to receive the Emergency Financial Aid Grants to Students. 

School allocations are set by a formula prescribed in the CARES Act, which is weighted significantly by the number of full-time students who are Pell-eligible but also takes into consideration the total population of the school and the number of students who were not enrolled full-time online before the coronavirus outbreak. The Department is utilizing the most recent data available from the Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System (IPEDS) and Federal Student Aid (FSA) for this calculation.

Yet, as has been the case with most of the $2 trillion to be disbursed under the CARES Act, the degree to which the funds allocated to direct emergency aid to students have been disbursed is something of an open question. On April 9, the Department of Education issued this press release:

WASHINGTON — U.S. Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos announced today more than $6 billion will be distributed immediately to colleges and universities to provide direct emergency cash grants to college students whose lives and educations have been disrupted by the coronavirus outbreak. The funding is available through the Higher Education Emergency Relief Fund authorized by the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security (CARES) Act, signed into law by President Donald J. Trump less than two weeks ago.

“What’s best for students is at the center of every decision we make,” said Secretary DeVos. “That’s why we prioritized getting funding out the door quickly to college students who need it most. We don’t want unmet financial needs due to the coronavirus to derail their learning.”

The CARES Act provides nearly $14 billion to support postsecondary education students and institutions. Colleges and universities are required to utilize the $6.28 billion made available today to provide cash grants to students for expenses related to disruptions to their educations due to the COVID-19 outbreak, including things like course materials and technology as well as food, housing, health care, and childcare. In order to access the funds, the Department must receive a signed certification from the higher education institution affirming they will distribute the funds in accordance with applicable law. The college or university will then determine which students will receive the cash grants.

School allocations are set by formula prescribed in the CARES Act that is weighted significantly by the number of full-time students who are Pell-eligible but also takes into consideration the total population of the school and the number of students who were not enrolled full-time online before the coronavirus outbreak. The Department is utilizing the most recent data available from the Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System (IPEDS) and Federal Student Aid (FSA) for this calculation.

But the press release was distributed two days after an article by Kery Murakami, published by Inside Higher Ed, reported the increasing concerns over when any of the allocated monies would be distributed:

When Congress set aside about $14 billion specifically for higher education in the stimulus bill it passed two weeks ago, lawmakers had the well-intentioned goal of most of the money going to colleges and universities that serve larger shares of lower-income students.

But lawmakers also didn’t want to penalize large institutions that don’t enroll as many lower-income students.

The way Congress decided to deal with the issue, however, has complicated how billions of dollars of aid will get to colleges, lobbyists representing colleges and universities worry, and it could delay the money as campus leaders are anxiously dealing with a financial hit from the coronavirus epidemic.

“We are deeply worried the institutions’ money won’t go out, in the best-case scenario, for a month, and in the worst-case scenario for several months,” Terry Hartle, the American Council on Education’s senior vice president for government and public affairs, said during a webinar last week for members of the Education Writers Association.

A Republican Senate committee aide, however, said colleges should stop “whining.”

In an interview on Monday, the aide said, “If they were to call me two months from now, that’s one thing. But it’s 10 days [since the measure passed]. It’s whining. For God’s sake, it’s 10 days old. Let’s cool it a little.”

The comment by the committee aide seems wryly funny. But the humor is undercut by what is revealed just a few paragraphs later—as well as the broader awareness in the gaps between what the CARES Act has promised and what it has actually managed to deliver:

Instead of giving out the money only based on one factor, like enrollments of Pell Grant recipients, the inclusion of full-time-equivalent enrollments in the formula means the Education Department has to combine different databases. And higher education lobbyists said it’s unclear if some of the needed information even exists.

And the department isn’t able to say how long the process will take.

“Most of the money will go out through a formula that doesn’t exist. The Department of Education will have to create it, and that will slow them down,” Hartle said during the webinar.

“Because of our colleges’ emphasis on serving low-income students, we initially backed the concept of distributing funds simply on the basis of relative Pell Grant enrollment, but Congress went in another direction,” said David Baime, the American Association of Community Colleges’ senior vice president for government relations and policy analysis. “The Education Department is working as fast as they can, but we haven’t been told” when the money will be available.

The Senate GOP aide, though, said the department hasn’t given congressional staff members any indications that merging the two databases is a problem. But slowed somewhat by working remotely, department officials will need to do round after round of tests to make sure billions of tax dollars are handed out accurately.

In addition, the department still has to issue guidance on questions like how the money–half of which must be used for emergency grants to students–can be used, the aide said. The money likely won’t be sent out until late this month or in May, the aide said, acknowledging that the department hasn’t been able to give a date.

Thus, the article highlights the ambiguity between a wry admonition for a reasonable degree of patience and a snarky deflection of a very warranted concern.

Kery Murakami’s complete article is available at: https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2020/04/07/where-stimulus-money-colleges-ask.