Mississippi’s post-secondary board voted to recommend significant changes to Mississippi’s state-aid programs, sparking state-wide outrage. The changes, which will be considered in the next legislative session, could mean losses in the thousands, particularly for low-income students.
The proposed Mississippi One Grant would replace three of Mississippi’s current grant programs: Mississippi Eminent Scholars Grant, Mississippi Tuition Assistance Grant and Higher Education Legislative Plan.
The new program was designed by an advisory committee of eight financial-aid administrators, representing the types of institutions that the post-secondary board represents.
The Mississippi One Grant would award money based on a dual scale of need and merit. Students with the highest ACT scores and the lowest Expected Family Contribution would receive the maximum amount. Because EFC will be used as a measure of need, students who wish to receive state aid would have to complete the Free Application for Federal Student Aid.
For four-year colleges like the University of Mississippi, that maximum amount is $4,500 per year. The program would make more individuals eligible for state-aid, but most, on average, would receive less money, with non-white students taking the hardest toll. Students who would have been HELP-eligible will see the most drastic reduction in aid.
Andy Flores is a junior public policy leadership and philosophy double major from Mississippi. A HELP recipient himself, he sees the proposed changes as a mistake of epic proportions. Flores started HelpSaveHELP, a collective of student voices against the erasure of the grant.
“This change stands to sever generations of low-income students from a chance at higher education. Personally speaking, I’m a low-income, first-generation college student, and the primary reason that HELP exists is for people like me,” he said. “That has been a life-changer for me, the fact that I could go to school with some cushion, with some added support. Whereas before coming from a low-income background, where I lived in a single-parent household as well, all that financial stress was gonna be on my mother, if I couldn’t get that (HELP).”
The HELP grant covers the full amount of tuition for qualifying students. The Mississippi One Grant does not include any specifications about covering the full cost of tuition for any student. If the Mississippi One Grant was applied to aid applicants for the 2019-2020 school year, 2,913 more students would have received aid. However, the average award amount for all students across all ACT scores would decrease by $345. When broken down by race, the average decrease in award money is even more drastic.
“People who aren’t low income cannot fathom just how much of the difference $1700 can make in your life. It’s really astounding, how having that extra support is really what makes your life livable from day to day. How it stops you from being clouded with the confusion and the uncertainty of knowing whether or not you’ll be in college for another semester or not,” Flores said. “So you can imagine how a lot of this is layering or pressure and a lot of burden on people who really need the most help, and the most encouragement, most affirmation through policies like the HELP grant, which were awesome.”
Additionally, under the proposed new system, those with an ACT score between 15 and 17 would no longer be eligible for any state aid. State aid based on merit would begin for students who earned an ACT score of 20 or above. Some, like Katherine Broten, a junior public policy leadership major from New Mexico, see this as one of many flaws with the proposed changes.
“The number one indicator of how well you’re going to do on the ACT is not race. It’s not gender, it’s not where you’re from. It’s literally household income. So the higher you go on the household income scale, the better you’re going to do on the ACT,” Broten said. “So it’s kind of counterintuitive that we’re rewarding kids with more resources. ACT shouldn’t be the number one indicator of how well you’re going to do — we shouldn’t be withholding aid from kids who aren’t given the same resources as other people.”
Because Broten is not a Mississippi resident, she is not eligible for and does not receive Mississippi state aid. But she has joined the collective of voices against the Mississippi One Grant to support her fellow Mississippian university students and future UM Mississippians.
“Obviously, you would not want your fellow students to be put in this position. So just kind of putting yourself in their shoes, I think is really catalyzing and the reason that I would want to get involved as well,” Broten said. “I have a lot of friends that receive state aid, and I see how hard they work. I know that they deserve every dime.”
Paul McKinney, financial aid director for Mississippi State University and advisory committee member, recognized that HELP eligible students were going to be negatively impacted, but sees it as a necessary change. During the 2019-2020 school year, HELP recipients made up 16% of state-aid recipients but accounted for 60% of the money appropriated for state-aid that year.
“In the new system, we’re trying to be fair and redistribute that money a little more evenly,” McKinney said during his presentation of the proposed changes to the post-secondary board.
Committee members even anticipated formerly HELP-eligible students having to take out loans to cover the difference. According to Flores, this shuffling around of money does more harm than good.
“That’s exactly where you start to flirt with the kind of idea of equality versus equity and the fact that there’s going to be a lot of disparities arising from this,” Flores said. “People like me could not have come to college in the first place. The HELP grant recognized that I needed more money. And the people who I lived around — because I came from a very affluent area — did not have the same struggles that I did, trying to get to college or trying to get my foot in the door, as it were. Those people did not need what I needed, I needed some encouragement, more money than them to get to the same result.”
The proposed changes are also prompting some high school seniors, like Oxford High School senior Ramar Stricklin, to rethink their post-graduation plans.
“I feel like if Mississippi is already one of the poorest states in the United States, why would you take away funding from those who need it most? It doesn’t make sense,” Stricklin said. “There’s opportunity in Mississippi — but not a lot. Without the money, I’d rather go somewhere else.”
The board voted unanimously to recommend that the changes be made to the State legislature during their next legislative session. If the proposed changes are implemented, they would not impact students who currently receive MTAG, MESG, or HELP — the legacy system would be phased out gradually.
Flores said he plans to spend the coming months gathering voices and making phone calls — encouraging Mississippi politicians to hear their constituents and keep HELP afloat.
“We have a very special opportunity here, as students to advocate for one another, given that, if this were us, coming into college next year, this would be our reality, of losing this much money that would have been ours that would have substantially changed our lives. My life would be so different if I didn’t have the help grant,” Flores said. “This is something that nobody can take away from us because we’re the kids that are filling their classrooms. We’re the kids actually making use of this education and trying to be the future of this state.”
