The COVID-19 Pandemic’s Impact on Age-Restricted Financial Aid

This school year, many colleges, students, and families are adjusting to a world defined by the COVID-19 pandemic, and that, in part, means facing new challenges in college affordability. Over the months leading up to this year’s enrollment deadlines, a much broader swath of families and students were burdened with determining whether or not it would be practical to enroll in and attend college, because of geographic restrictions, health concerns, and new financial challenges resulting from job losses or wage reductions.

To assist households as they grappled with these significant uncertainties, many application deadline dates for financial aid and college enrollment were extended. However, only a few states also addressed a major structural barrier built into several state aid programs: the restriction of eligibility based on the age of an applicant, or the length of time out of high school. Ultimately, these restrictions should be eliminated altogether; but even though the current recession makes doing so an unlikely prospect for state budgets, there are other steps that can be taken, policies that are low-cost and immediately effective, that will reduce the impact that the restrictions have.

Age Restrictions on State Aid

Restrictions on state need-based aid limit the applicant pool, and so is often used by states as a cost-saving tool. But limiting the pool of eligibility can hinder students who need the aid the most; and in this case, restrictions on time since leaving high school and age can make students ineligible if they defer enrollment, take a gap year, delay applying, or any of a number of other reasons and situations in which someone might return to school later in life.

Particularly in the midst of a recession, state need-based aid programs can make or break whether many aspiring college students can afford school. Adult students who decided to return to school when opportunity costs were low drove enrollment increases during the Great Recession, and students with the same perspective and motivations may turn to school in large numbers in the next several years. But they may find themselves ineligible for a state aid program if they are too old or graduated too long ago. And even relatively recent high school graduates who delay enrollment plans, including for reasons influenced by the COVID-19 pandemic, may similarly find themselves out of luck.

Even relatively recent high school graduates who delay enrollment plans, including for reasons influenced by the COVID-19 pandemic, may similarly find themselves out of luck.

So how widespread is this challenge? For each state, as well as for Washington, D.C. and Puerto Rico, TCF looked at the two largest need-based aid programs with at least 100 recipients, and looked for any high school graduation and/or age restrictions that would impact student enrollment due to COVID-19. We also reviewed state promise programs. Tables 1 and 2 below reveal our findings.¹

While compiling our list of need based programs (using the National Association of State Student Grant and Aid Programs (NASSGAP) survey and state government websites), we found that while most state need-based aid programs (fifty-six) do not require that applicants attend college within a specific time frame after graduating high school, sixteen programs do have an age or “time out of high school” restriction on need-based aid programs. Table 1 catalogs these details. Here are some examples:

• The Mississippi Higher Education Legislative Plan (HELP)² requires students to apply to and qualify for the program within one year of graduating high school. In essence, this program is for students who intend to apply to college in the fall, or college freshmen who are nearing the end of their first year since graduating high school. This restriction is problematic for many students, and especially so during this pandemic, when so many have had to delay starting or returning to school.
• Both the Tennessee ASPIRE Supplement to the HOPE scholarship and Texas’s Toward Excellence, Access, and Success Grant Program (TEXAS Grant) require students to enroll at a college within sixteen months of their high school graduation. It’s easy to see how the pandemic has combined with these restrictions to create situations where many Texas students who otherwise would have been eligible now will not be eligible.
• Several need-based programs also have merit-based components with similar restrictions, such as Connecticut’s Roberta B. Willis Scholarship Program-Need-Merit-Based Grant, Kansas’ State Scholarship, and Michigan’s Competitive Scholarship. California’s Cal Grant High School Entitlement Awards, for example, provides generous aid to low- and middle-income students who meet certain thresholds, but students are only entitled to the award if they enroll within a year after high school—otherwise they enter a more limited, and more competitive, pool.³ For programs that have an immediate post-high school enrollment requirement, the accompanying merit components may add an additional pandemic-related hurdle.

Similarly, Table 2 reveals that many state promise programs, which cover the “sticker price” of college—tuition—and which often utilize a “last dollar” model (meaning that the funds are awarded after other aid such as Pell Grants and other specific aid has been applied), have these restrictions. For example, programs in Oregon, Rhode Island, and Missouri also require enrollment immediately after, or soon after, high school. In total, twelve programs limit enrollment by age.

It is important to note that many merit-based state financial aid programs also have age or time out of high school restrictions, though we did not compile a full list.⁴ Georgia’s HOPE Scholarship, for example, limits eligibility for students seven or ten years⁵ after first receiving the scholarship. Wyoming’s Hathaway Scholarship⁶ requires students to apply within forty-eight months of graduating high school, which implies a specific age limit, given that the program is designed for those who have recently graduated and not for students who acquire a GED later on.

Lifting Restrictions

Some states have taken important steps to address the challenges that these restrictions create when combined with the pandemic. Michigan’s Tuition Incentive Program (TIP), for example, extended their application deadline date from August 31, 2020 to August 31, 2021 (later eliminating the application process altogether for the class of 2021, though students still need to enroll within four years, and Maryland extended their Howard P. Rawlings Guaranteed Access Grant from April 1 to June 1. Other states can follow suit by extending application deadline dates, but may also want to consider a broader restructuring of their eligibility limits.

Increasing eligibility by one or two more years will at least allow students whose lives have been up-ended a chance at getting the support they need.

While removing these limits entirely is advisable in the long run, it is an unlikely pathway during a recession that has decimated state budgets. However, increasing eligibility by one or two more years will at least allow students whose lives have been up-ended a chance at getting the support they need.

table 1

Table 2

1. The chart is not an exhaustive list. When “no” is listed, it is either the result of direct language in the program eligibility, or TCF using our own discretion based on the eligibility requirements that were listed. Research for these programs were conducted and finalized mid-September, 2020.
2. This program also has a specific curriculum that students in high school must follow.
3. Some of these challenges are mitigated by institutional aid that covers some of those students who do not receive the competitive award, but many are not covered, particularly at the California State Universities (CSUs).
4. More time for research is required.
5. Eligibility is based on whether or not the student received their first payment between Summer 2011 and 2019 (seven years of eligibility after high school graduation, GED test, or etc.) or after 2019 (ten years of eligibility after high school graduation, GED test, or etc.).
6. This is merit-based, but there is an option for those who need additional financial support to qualify for need-based components instead of the merit-based components of the scholarship.

Tags: higher education, financial aid, college affordability, covid-19