Symposium explores common issues facing Minority-Serving Institutions

Minority-Serving College Administrators Discuss Challenges

INDIANAPOLIS — Representatives of postsecondary institutions that serve large numbers of minority students have identified several recommendations to meet college-access, student-retention and student-indebtedness challenges. A synopsis released today highlights the discussion and recommendations of 54 higher-education administrators who participated in a two-day symposium to explore common issues that affect their institutions' systems for delivering student financial aid and their students' ability to effectively manage education-related expenses and debt.

Although the symposium was not intended to generate a consensus on specific program recommendations, the participants strongly recommended the following policy initiatives:

• Fully fund Pell grants at the authorized level.

• Make the Pell grant a true federal entitlement.

• Explore the establishment of a "portable" state-grant program to expand options available to students.

• Create a simplified Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA) for students with zero Expected Family Contribution (EFC).

• Establish an incentive program to reward institutions that re-enroll students who have previously defaulted on their student loans.

• Create a financial-aid database that couples grant and scholarship information specifically for students attending Minority-Serving Institutions.

• Establish a Title IV "line-of-credit account" for students attending Minority-Serving Institutions. The account would allow financial-aid administrators to adjust the categories of aid based on a student's individual circumstances instead of having annual fixed grant and loan limits. The limits would be the overall maximum aid that a student is eligible to receive.

• Uncouple institutional Pell-grant eligibility from the default-rate sanctions.

Organized with the support of USA Funds^®, the nation's leading guarantor of federal education loans, the symposium brought together presidents, chief academic officers, chief student-affairs officers, chief financial-affairs officers and financial-aid directors of 28 Historically Black Colleges and Universities, Tribally Controlled Colleges and Hispanic-Serving Institutions from across the United States and Puerto Rico. The symposium also was designed to generate discussion about some of the causes of higher-than-average default rates for students attending Minority-Serving Institutions and to explore whether financial-aid-related recommendations should be developed and made publicly available for consideration during the upcoming reauthorization of the Higher Education Act.

"Because Minority-Serving Institutions educate a significant number of needy students, our support of this symposium is consistent with USA Funds' mission in support of access to higher education," said Carl C. Dalstrom, USA Funds president and CEO. "In addition, we were pleased to offer this forum as part of our default-prevention initiatives, which give priority consideration to Minority-Serving Institutions."

USA Funds is sharing the synopsis with the symposium participants, higher-education associations and federal policy-makers to promote further dialogue on these issues.

Download a copy of the synopsis. You'll need Adobe Acrobat Reader to view and print the synopsis.