When Florida A&M University lost nearly 1,000 students at the start of last fall’s school year, it found a significant number of the students were casualties of the federal government’s new and tighter rules governing Parent Plus Loans used by thousands of parents to help pay college costs.
While the U.S. Department of Education, administrator of the PPL program, eventually bowed to demands that the new rules be revisited, it’s still unknown how many families had their loan applications reconsidered and approved.
Today, as FAMU and many other HBCUs heavily dependent upon federal aid for their students rev up their recruiting efforts for the fall, there’s new attention being focused on fixing the damage done by the PPL rules changes.
Meanwhile, many of the same institutions are pondering how the most recent layer of bad financial news — the across-the-board federal budget cuts called sequestration — will impact them.
“Everyone is really looking at their budget and their enrollment because tuition is really going to drive that budget,” said Dr. William Hudson, FAMU vice president for student affairs, offering an overview of what many heavily tuition-dependent institutions are monitoring as they gear up for the next school year.
Hudson and several others interviewed said they are making extras efforts in conjunction with the Department of Education to make sure students whose families’ PPL applications were rejected last year know there is an appeals process by which their applications can be reconsidered.
