The U.S. Senate approved an amendment Sept. 10 to block recent Bush administration regulations that would reduce student financial aid.
If the Senate had adopted the regulations, more than 3,000 UW-Madison undergraduate students who receive Pell Grants would face a reduction or loss in awarded monies.
The amendment, sponsored by Senator Jon Corzine, D-N.J., is hailed as a victory for students citing the restoration of Pell Grants, federally funded tuition aid, for thousands of students nationwide.
\[The amendment] was designed to restore the Pell Grants for as many as 84,000 students,"" said David Wald, spokesperson for Corzine. ""It's a difference of $270 million back into the programs.""
""The changes proposed by the Department of Education would give American families less credit for paying taxes when those taxes are going up and provide less financial aid to students when tuition costs are skyrocketing,"" Corzine said in a press release.
With such financial burdens in mind, Corzine said he wanted to prohibit changes to the federal student aid formula and benefit students.
""We need to be providing more opportunity for students who want to further their education, not less,"" he said.
The Department of Education's May 30, 2003 updates to the allowance for state and other taxes would have lowered the amount of taxes families could deduct in the need-analysis formula, and would have been especially damaging to students from Wisconsin.
""This change was particularly detrimental to students from Wisconsin because we have a high allowance for state taxes. We would get that allowance reduced more than other schools in other states,"" said Steve Van Ess, director of the UW-Madison Office of Student Financial Services.
According to Van Ess, students receive over $200 million in financial aid with at least $66 million in programs affected by the federal formula subject to the proposed changes.
""I'm just happy that it wasn't passed,"" UW-Madison sophomore and Pell grant recipient Laurie Rieden said. ""I would have had to take out student loans in order to get enough money to pay for school.\
