Collins offers measure to aid working students

WASHINGTON — Sen. Susan M. Collins introduced the Working Students’ Income Protection Act Thursday, which is designed to correct problems created by the 1992 Higher Education Act.

The 1992 act lowered the income protection allowance, which enables working students to retain a portion of their earnings to pay living expenses without jeopardizing the level of their federal fincancial aid.

In the 1992 provision, Collins said, the IPA for single students financially independent of their families was reduced from $6,400 to $3,000. For working dependent students, it was lowered from $4,250 to $1,750.

Because the amount a typical independent student can receive under the Pell Grant program begins to diminish when income exceeds $3,000 and eligibility is cut off at $10,000, “the number of independent students receiving Pell Grants declined from more than a million in 1992 to 750,000 in 1993 — a loss of more than a quarter of a million grants to independent working students,” Collins said.

“During this period in Maine,” she added, “the number of independent students receiving Pell Grants declined by 33 percent. In just one year’s time, there were 1,364 fewer recipients in Maine.”

Collins said her legislation would increase the IPA to $6,000 for single independent students to $9,000 for married working students and to $4,200 for dependent students before they begin to lose their Pell Grants.