TRIO Serves More than 4,500 Secondary & Post-Secondary Students in North Dakota

WASHINGTON, D.C. – 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.”

While the FAFSA reforms helped streamline and simplify the financial aid application process, the inconsistency between TRIO and FAFSA requirements has unintentionally placed a burden on TRIO grantees and students on evaluating eligibility— forcing them to use valuable time and resources to determine alternative methods of demonstrating low-income status.

Hetikamp’s letter was also signed by U.S. Senators Susan Collins (R-ME), Jack Reed (D-RI), Jon Tester (D-MT), Patty Murray (D-WA), Maggie Hassan (D-NH), Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI), Doug Jones (D-AL), Jeanne Shaheen (D-NH), Tammy Baldwin (D-WI), Tammy Duckworth (D-IL), Angus King (I-ME), Mazie Hirono (D-HI), Joe Manchin III (D-WV), Bernard Sanders (I-VT), Tina Smith (D-MN), Catherine Cortez Masto (D-NV), and Amy Klobuchar (D-MN).

As a member of the Senate TRIO caucus, Heitkamp has been a champion of TRIO programs and their continued preservation for thousands of students in North Dakota and across the country. Earlier this month, Heitkamp demanded that Secretary DeVos stop withholding funding to current TRIO grant recipients. In March, Congress passed a funding bill that included a six percent increase in authorized funding for TRIO programs— yet Secretary DeVos announced she would be distributing less than half of the additional funding to current TRIO grant recipients, and instead allocate the remaining funds to only certain grantees through an intensive and overly competitive application process.

Background

Heitkamp has continued to push for new ways to make college more affordable and accessible for all North Dakota students. Last month, Heitkamp introduced a bill to encourage more young men and women in rural America to enter public service professions by waiving interest on their federal student loans and expanding federal loan forgiveness to include volunteer first responders and beginning farmers. And in 2015, Heitkamp introduced a bill that could enable North Dakota borrowers to refinance private education loan balances at reduced interest rates at no cost to taxpayers.

Heitkamp has consistently spoken out against Secretary DeVos’s attempts to undermine critical education assistance programs, like the Public Service Loan Forgiveness (PSLF) program. In 2017, Heitkamp pressed Secretary DeVos about concerns over the agency’s announcement that it may renege on its commitments to provide student debt relief for servicemembers, teachers, social workers, and other public servants enrolled in the PSLF program.

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