U.S. Senator Heidi Heitkamp today announced she is leading a bipartisan effort calling on U.S. Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos to make sure TRIO participants— including more than 4,500 North Dakotans— can take advantage of the program’s financial assistance to receive an affordable education.
TRIO programs provide low-income, first-generation, or disabled students the support, financial resources, and guidance they need to successfully graduate from high school, enroll in a college or university, and earn a degree. Currently, TRIO requires applicants to use tax information from the previous year to prove income eligibility. However, this requirement conflicts with reforms to the Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA) that recently went into effect, which now allow applicants to use income data from two years prior, so students can apply for financial aid earlier.
In a bipartisan letter to Secretary DeVos, Heitkamp led a group of 18 senators urging DeVos to work with TRIO grantees to allow the use of FAFSA as documentation of a student’s income or family’s income to determine eligibility for TRIO programs. Click here to read the full letter.
“The TRIO students I meet are among North Dakota’s best and brightest, and they deserve to be very proud of what they’re accomplishing as they work to complete their higher educations. And they shouldn’t face additional obstacles along the way to their degrees— instead, the federal government should do what it can to make it easier for them to receive the support and financial assistance they need,” said Heitkamp. “That’s why I’m leading a bipartisan group of senators in pressing Secretary DeVos to make it easier for potential TRIO students to apply for these important programs and receive the right amount of aid that works for their personal or family situation. And by supporting easier access to TRIO, we’re putting North Dakota’s first-generation and low-income college students on a path to academic and career success.”