Congress Provided $30 Billion In Emergency Aid For Students, What Did We Learn?

Early 2020 saw colleges close campus housing, students sent home or sometimes into homelessness, and a switch to online learning as lockdowns led to a massive shift in how higher education operated. These changes also left many students without the employment they relied on to make ends meet, since, with no one on campus, work-study jobs disappeared, as did off-campus jobs in restaurants and in retail.

In response, the federal government provided over $30 billion in emergency aid funds to support students in need of additional financial support. Lessons learned from how those funds helped students can improve emergency aid programs and highlight the need for expanded support for emergency aid.

New research from the National Association of Student Financial Aid Administrators (NASFAA), the National Association of Student Affairs Administrators (NASPA), and HCM Strategists shows that emergency aid provided to students at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic reduced stress and helped alleviate issues like food and housing insecurity. The research also argues that lessons learned from providing emergency aid at scale for the first time can help improve how similar aid is designed and delivered in the future.

The three organizations surveyed over 17,000 students at colleges and universities around the country to better understand how receiving emergency aid from one of the three rounds of Higher Education Emergency Relief Funds (HEERF). helped students at the height of the pandemic.

Emergency financial aid for college students is not new. Many colleges and universities have been running small emergency grant programs for years. These programs have helped students deal with financial crises like car repairs, hospital bills, and things like diapers and formula for parenting students. Generally, emergency aid is designed to supplement traditional financial aid, not replace it. Colleges’ own emergency aid programs were not designed to deal with the massive and unexpected financial needs arising from the pandemic.

Students surveyed reported using emergency funds to cover basic needs like food and housing and paying for books and transportation expenses. Almost two-thirds of students said they lost a job or had their hours cut because of the pandemic, so it’s unsurprising that they found it necessary to use emergency funds to cover basic expenses.

A majority of students also reported that the amount they received helped them stay enrolled and helped keep their grades up, because emergency aid reduced the stress on students who received support. Over 40 percent of students said the emergency funding allowed them to borrow less in student loans, another common stress point for students. .

The report provides suggestions for how emergency aid can be improved based on the lessons learned from the successes and challenges of administering HEERF funds. Recommendations include providing as much flexibility as possible for emergency funds, ensuring that institutions that support the students with the most need get additional financial support, and changing regulations, so emergency aid is not counted as part of students’ regular financial aid packages. The report also calls for Congress to develop a permanent emergency aid fund.

One of the biggest challenges with administering emergency aid programs before the COVID-19 pandemic was that, due to federal financial aid regulations, emergency aid was treated the same as other types of financial aid. Students cannot receive more financial aid than it costs to attend college, including tuition, housing and food, transportation, books, and personal expenses. These things are collectively known as cost of attendance.

Suppose a student’s college costs $20,000 to attend, but they have already been given $20,000 in grants and loans for the year under federal regulations. In that case, there is no room to provide that student with additional support if an emergency arises. These restrictions make it harder for schools to administer emergency aid. There are workarounds, but they require time-consuming appeal processes.

HEERF funds were not subject to the same rules as emergency aid funds run by colleges, making it easier to get support to students fast and without worrying whether they already had used financial aid up to their cost of attendance. These are changes that should apply to all emergency aid programs.

The COVID-19 pandemic has disrupted higher education in many ways, but one positive is the attention given to how vital emergency aid is for students. It is clear that when effectively deployed, emergency aid positively impacts student well-being and academic success. Congress can support student success by making emergency aid programs easier to administer and supporting them with federal funds.