Thousands of Oregon Students Miss Aid Deadline

EUGENE, Ore. (AP) — The state’s primary need-based financial aid program stopped awarding grants two months ago, but that hasn’t deterred students from continuing to apply for one.

The Oregon Opportunity Grant was cut from $68 million to $57 million at a time when the state’s double-digit unemployment rate sent many people back to college. That forced officials to deny grants to thousands who filed after an Aug. 15 deadline.

But the applications keep pouring in.

Dennis Johnson, director of the Oregon Student Assistance Commission, said more than 7,800 qualified students have filed financial aid applications since the deadline. They will get no state aid but can qualify for Pell grants and other forms of federal aid.

“We have never seen applications at such a high level,” Johnson told The Register-Guard newspaper. “It’s extraordinary. It’s like a tsunami.”

The commission administers the Oregon Opportunity Grant program, along with a long list of scholarship programs.

The funding cut prompted the agency to move the application deadline up from last year’s mid-November date to avoid having to cut the size of the grants. But the August deadline means anyone who lost their job after that date or didn’t decide to enroll until late in the summer missed out on a state grant.

The vast majority of those students attend community college. Johnson said 6,516 of the 7,855 applications filed after the deadline were from people planning to attend community college.

The earlier aid deadline tends to favor four-year university students, who begin the admission process the winter before enrolling. Older people who have recently been laid off or want to upgrade their skills often don’t decide to enroll until just before the start of fall term.

“Especially in this economy, community colleges are almost the first-responders as far as alternatives for folks who are seeking new skills to move into another employment opportunity,” said Bert Logan, financial aid director at Lane Community College. “And a lot of times folks don’t know when they’re going to need to go to school and they just show up.”

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