Lawmakers are trying once again to relax need-based financial aid rules so that Georgia students can get help earlier in their college studies.
House Bill 1124, filed last week and sponsored by Rep. Chuck Martin, R-Alpharetta, proposes changes to the Georgia College Completion Grant Program, which launched in 2022 and is aimed at helping students who can’t afford to finish college.
The program currently requires students to have completed at least 80% of their credit requirements to receive a grant. The bill would drop that threshold to 70% for students in a four-year degree program and 45% for students in a two-year program.
Officials have called the 80% credit completion requirement an obstacle that prevents many schools, especially the state’s two-year technical colleges, from awarding all the funds they’re allocated through the program. Many students don’t hit that mark until partway through their final year.
“The major challenge we heard was the threshold, that the 80% was very problematic to be able to find students that were past that line in their credential attainment,” Lynne Riley, president of the Georgia Student Finance Commission, said during a Georgia House Higher Education Committee meeting last month.
The state’s technical colleges used almost 58% of their allocated funds for the completion grant program, compared to 73.5% for the University System of Georgia and 86% for private schools, according to a recent commission report.
During the program’s first year, from July 1, 2022, to June 30, 2023, the state paid out just over $7.2 million of a $10 million budget. Just over 6,000 students at public and private colleges across the state received an average award amount of about $1,200.
Last year, lawmakers passed House Bill 249, which would have similarly lowered the credit hour requirement and also would have increased the total amount students could receive through the program from $2,500 to $3,500. The bill was closely watched by advocates seeking to boost the amount of need-based aid awarded to low-income students in Georgia.
But Gov. Brian Kemp vetoed the bill, which included an unrelated veterans training program, saying lawmakers had failed to fully fund the initiatives.
This year’s bill doesn’t include language to increase the award amount. It would, however, extend the program until June 30, 2027. The program is currently scheduled to sunset in 2025.
Martin expects to hold a hearing on the bill in front of the House Higher Education Committee, which he chairs, within the next week.
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