More Than Checking a Box

TEACH Grants, the new grant/loan program (some have called it a ‘groan’) created in the College Cost and Reduction Act is through the rule-making process and is now open for comment (hat tip to Sara Godrick-Rab at the University of Wisconsin who has been feeding us great tips on this issue). According to a January report in the Chronicle of Higher Education, the program is proving popular among students, with 30,000 checking a box on their financial aid forms indicating an interest in the program.

But it will take a lot more than checking a box, for both students and financial aid officers, to make sure that this program works as intended and doesn’t end up saddling students with thousands of dollars in unexpected debt.

The intentions of the program are great: to provide an incentive in the form of financial aid to high-achieving students committed to teaching in a high-risk school and in a high-need subject area. And it wouldn’t work to simply give out grants and hope that students follow through—there needs to be some policy mechanism to encourage students to stick with the program. Under the TEACH Grants program students receive grants of up to $4,000 per year in exchange for promising to follow through on the required teaching commitment, but if they don’t follow through the grants are converted (permanently) to loans with interest accruing from the day the grants were provided.

With many requirements (students must teach four years out of eight after graduating, must teach in a high-need subject area and in a school serving low-income students, and students need to check-in to confirm their employment every year) to fulfill the commitment, it will take some excellent counseling from colleges to make sure that each student understands what is required of them, understands their odds of fulfilling the requirement (currently, the Department of Education expects only 20 percent of students to complete the program) and understands the consequences of failing to complete the program.

Counseling for students is required under the TEACH Grants program, but given that higher education administrators have expressed concerns about the added administrative burden of the program, there’s no guarantee students will receive the kind of comprehensive, continual counseling they will need. And without that counseling, we could see many students who thought they were receiving a grant, as the TEACH Grants name implies, but are suddenly getting a bill for additional student loan debt.