Arkansas Parents Question Financial Aid Tactics

According to the U.S. Census Bureau, the population of non-traditional students on college campuses was 40.9% totally 6.2 million students. A non-traditional student is one who is at least 24 years of age; normally between the ages of 24 and 69. They are married and single and many of them are parents! Some have been to college before, left and are now returning after a number of years; others went straight into the workforce. A new group of non-traditional students are popping up on college campuses all over the country. Those are the students are attending class alongisde their children!

I am one of those in the new classification. I am a junior, my youngest daughter is a freshman. I am pursuing a degree in Advertising/Public Relations,as she majors in Early Childhood Education. I want to go on and get my Master's while she wants to teach Kindergarten after graduation. I have a Pell Grant and she doesn't.

What?

Lauren lives on campus, her dad and I support her, and pay for the portion of school that her scholarships don't. Yet, I receive Pell money and she doesn't. It makes no sense to me, but this is the way that the system was set up.

The first thing you must do is fill out FAFSA (Free Application for Federal Student Aid) which is required for all students seeking any kind of financial assistance for higher education. One of the steps to this process is to figure your Expected Family Contribution. It asks for your student status: Are you full or part time? Are you dependent or independent student? Then it asks for your family size and wants to know how many are in college.

At this point, it says "Parents are not included in the college figure but instead must contact the school for a professional judgement review." Seems simple enough, yet, I've not spoken to anyone who has ever come out on the positive end of a professional judgement review. We certainly didn't.

When I questioned the ruling, I was told by Financial Aid personnel at both Williams Baptist College and The University of Arkansas at Little Rock that they didn't make the rules, they simply enforced them. I was told of other parent/child students who were in the same predicament as we were.

When I started talking to others I knew had children in college at the same time as they were, I heard over and over again. "It isn't fair."

Connie, who started school the same semester as her twin daughters, can count her both of her daughters as being in school on her EFC worksheet. The girls cannot count their mother, yet they can count each other. Connie, a single mother is paying for all school expenses not covered by the girls financial aid.

"They both received Academic Scholarships, and were elegible for Federal Work Study, but we were told their Dad made too much money for them to receive Pell." Connie said in a recent interview. "I was awarded less than $500 a semester in Pell money." The amount that her twins' bills are each semester? $750 each after scholarships and work study are applied to their accounts.

"If the girls had received the same amount of Pell that I did, their bills would be paid, and they could purchase some of their books." Connie went on to say. "Instead, we are out $1500 right from the start. My Pell money barely covered the cost of my books much less theirs!" All told, the family's out of pocket expense per semester for the mother-daughter trio was close to $3,000. The girls live at home and commute to school with their mother. The out of pocket expense does not include gas, rent or groceries.

Connie and myself have started a letter-writing campaign among other non-traditional students at UALR to our Senators and Congressmen, in the hopes of having someone look at the rule and possibly change it. The process isn't fair, and non-traditional students who are doing nothing more than trying to better themselves and their families, are the ones being punished.