Financial Aid Eludes the Poorest Students

Tens of thousands of poor students in California community colleges do not receive federal financial aid, records show, because of apathy, confusion and, in some cases, ignorance about programs used routinely by students at more elite institutions.

“I didn’t know. Believe me, I didn’t know. . . . No one told me there was this program,” said Sulma Mena, 20, a third-year Los Angeles City College student who recently learned that financial aid exists. Hers was one of many stories told by students working long hours and scraping by--sometimes at high cost to their studies--because they lack financial aid.

“I thought it was a big joke. I didn’t think the government would give you money for college,” said Nick Chambers, 25, who only realized for his last semester at City College that he qualified for a Pell Grant of several hundred dollars.

Mena’s mother, a Salvadoran housekeeper living in east Hollywood, has been putting her daughter through school on the $10,000 or so she earns a year.

The price of sending a child living at home to a community college averages about $5,600 per year in California--far less than what it costs to send one to a university. Even so, Mena’s housekeeper mother pays a greater portion of her income to send a daughter to Los Angeles City College than a family earning $70,000 would pay to send a daughter to Stanford, where tuition, room and board is about $29,000.

Experts say that had Mena known to apply for financial aid, she probably would have gotten well over $1,000 per year in the form of a Pell Grant--the federal government’s primary grant program for poor students.

Pell Grants are the type of federal financial aid most commonly made available to community college students. Some very small amounts of state grants are also available. Many community colleges discourage loans because of the high default rates.

Community college leaders say they have no idea how many other students are in Mena’s financial situation. But analyses completed at The Times’ request suggest there may be a considerable gap between those students who would probably qualify for Pell Grants and those who now receive them.

In one analysis, the number of students likely to qualify for federal financial aid in the Los Angeles district was found to exceed the number receiving it by about 50%--in other words by about 10,000 students, or roughly 10% of enrollment.

In another, figures provided by colleges to qualify for federal vocational funds included data on nearly 100,000 students enrolled in California community colleges last year who were poor enough to be on welfare, but did not receive Pell Grants.

Neither figure is conclusive because financial aid can be affected by many complex factors, such as student loan records or residency status. But what’s clear is that some portion of California’s poorest students are on their own when it comes to college.

“It’s not a surprise. We have always known the lowest-income kids understand the financial aid system the least,” said Tom Mortenson, senior scholar at the Center for Study of Opportunity in Higher Education.

The implications of so many students falling through the cracks are serious, given the high attrition rates in community colleges. “Our colleges really are the critical gateway to real economic opportunity,” said Christopher Cabaldon, a California Community College vice chancellor. “Students need to have the basic resources to pay.”

California community colleges are by far the cheapest public college system in the country. Fees are $11 per unit, a negligible amount compared to fees at most public four-year schools.

But fees are not the only cost. There are books, transportation and living expenses--the same as at any college. Even if students live at home, parents pay the bills for feeding and housing them.

‘She Wants Me to Be Somebody’

For Mena’s family, that is the steepest cost. Mena said she has argued with her mother because she feels she should drop out of school to help pay the bills, especially lately since her mother has been ill. Her mother won’t let her: “She wants me to be somebody,” Mena said.

Estimates of the extent of the federal financial aid gap in community colleges vary, with some system administrators saying no problem exists and others guessing that hundreds of thousands of students are losing out.

The analyses requested by The Times suggested that the problem is in between--and perhaps, as some financial aid experts suggest, concentrated on urban campuses with high rates of poverty.

A Los Angeles district analysis identified about 33,500 students as reasonably likely to qualify for Pell Grants, compared to 22,563 who received them this year.

The analysis was restricted to students in credited programs attending half time or more. It was based on self-reported income data of students living alone on $5,000 per year or less, or on family incomes equivalent to $15,000 or less for three people. State officials called the calculation conservative.

A second analysis flagged about 96,000 welfare recipients statewide enrolled in certain vocational programs for credit who did not receive Pell Grants.

Of those, about 34,000 did not even receive a state fee waiver, the minimum financial aid available to community college students. The data--provided by officials of the state chancellor’s office--is based on college records of students’ Social Security numbers, matched with county welfare records.

It is unclear how many of those students may be disqualified for reasons unrelated to income. But given the massive size of the state community college system--whose enrollment of 1.2 million dwarfs other state systems--even a small percentage of students missing out amounts to thousands of people.

State officials called the gap troubling. “I’m saddened, but I’m not surprised,” said Mary Gill, coordinator of student financial aid services for state community colleges.

The issue raises questions about access, said Morton Schapiro, an economics professor at USC. “For the poor, increasingly, the only option is community college,” he said. “If we can’t keep community colleges accessible, we are really in trouble.”

In interviews, community college students cited a variety of reasons for not applying for Pell Grants.

Some said they just assumed they didn’t qualify, then described financial circumstances that strongly suggested they would. Others said it wasn’t worth the hassle, they were too proud to apply or doubted that financial aid would help them.

“Can I still do that?” asked third-year Los Angeles City College student Alma Mendoza, 20. “Can I still apply?” Her mother, a single housekeeper from El Salvador, earns about $6,000 per year.

Mendoza has been working full time as a retail salesclerk for $6 per hour and, as a result, has only been able to attend school part time. She never looked into financial aid because a counselor in high school told her she had missed the deadline.

Mendoza said she would have gone to school full time had she known she could have applied any time.

Another student, Victor Ramirez, 19, in his second year at East Los Angeles College, is one of four children, three of whom are in college. His father is disabled; his mother works on a factory line.

Ramirez said a college worker had warned him not to apply for a Pell Grant because the money would “run out” if he transferred to a university. He is an A student who wants to go to UCLA, so he followed that advice.

Trouble is, it’s not true: Although Pell Grants impose some limits on units to make sure students make progress, Ramirez’s eligibility at UCLA almost certainly wouldn’t be affected by a Pell Grant now, state officials said.

Learning this, Ramirez seemed both relieved and angry. “That’s messed up,” he said. “No one said anything. . . . It would really help to have it.”

Students at four-year schools often fill out financial aid forms as a matter of course with college applications. But despite strong gains in recent years in grants approved, the process tends to be more haphazard at community colleges.

Stories abound of students who think financial aid means only loans or of others who think of applying only after their first trip to the bookstore. About 14% of community college students receive Pell Grants, compared to 57% of incoming Cal State freshmen.

Unfamiliar With Using the System

For the large cross-section of middle-class students who enroll in community colleges, the schools are so affordable that their financial aid programs have never been considered much of an issue, said Scot Swail of the College Board, a national nonprofit research group.

But the colleges also claim huge pockets of very poor people, especially in urban immigrant centers such as Los Angeles. Pell Grants are targeted at such students and are based on need. The massive federal program was created in 1972 to make sure college remained accessible to needy students despite rising costs. But often those students are also the ones most unfamiliar with the college system.

“My students have parents who went as far as the sixth grade in Central American schools,” said Scot Spicer, an administrator who oversees a program for low-income students at Glendale College. “They have no idea how college works.”

Several financial aid specialists said more outreach is needed. But community college financial aid offices are commonly strapped for funds, and most staff time is spent processing applications.

Fearful of federal audits, some counselors are under pressure to interpret the rules as narrowly as possible, administrators acknowledged. “The whole regulatory climate has been to worry about being too aggressive,” said one college bureaucrat.

Students, for whom counselors act as gatekeepers to financial aid, often find that that translates into tougher rules, denial of grants in borderline cases, and lengthy waits for checks--which makes it harder for students to benefit.

“My friend bought me one book . . . and I had some shoes and sold them,” said Bridgett Quinones, an 18-year-old East Los Angeles College student, explaining how she was getting by while waiting for financial aid.

Paradoxically, some of the steps California has taken to make community colleges more accessible to the poor may be fueling the financial aid gap. Critics point to the colleges’ low fees, and a system that waives fees for nearly 40% of students based on income formulas that are far more lenient than those used for Pell Grants.

Application Process Can Be a Roadblock

The waivers may disguise the real costs of college from students, critics say. Some students confuse the waiver forms with federal financial aid forms; others lie on their waiver forms and are then afraid to fill out further applications, even though they are poor. Students lose big in that equation because, at $3,125 per year, maximum Pell Grants are worth about nine times the value of fee waivers.

Even those resolved to get grants are sometimes thwarted: Mena, the City College student, is still trying. She learned about financial aid from a friend in the middle of spring semester. Four months later, she still hadn’t filled out an application.

“I don’t know how to do it,” she finally said. “The form is like, money this, money that, spouse this, spouse that. Sheesh.” She let out a long, frustrated breath. “I need help.”