An epidemic of fiscal cuts from the state of Michigan has recently victimized hundreds of Adrian College students. Irresponsible promises stemming from both state financial boards and Governor Granholm’s office have placed tens of thousands of private Michigan college students under rigid constraints that show no signs of letting up anytime in the near future.
Today, hundreds of Adrian College students received an email explaining that the state of Michigan passed a budget that allows for only $1,610 of the initial $2,100 to be granted to full-time, full-year college students.
It is likely that state officials passed off this $490 cut as a small matter that would temporarily irritate students and then be either forgotten or grudgingly accepted as necessary. It will not and should not.
For state legislators that deal with a multimillion-dollar budged, a cost increase to college students of less than $500 dollars likely seems insignificant. To us at The College World and to us as Adrian College students, it is not.
What these state legislators fail to realize is that many college students only source of income is from a work-study job regulated by the federal government. A student with a work-study job can only work an average of eight hours a week for the entire year if they intend to stretch their $1800 through the end of April. A two-week check with a total of 16 hours at an hourly rate of $7.50 before taxes comes to a mere $120. At this rate it takes more than two months to pay off the $490 students were told they had already received.
This budget change state officials write off as a small matter for students to deal with must not be construed as a minor inconvenience. It should not be pushed aside as an unfortunate circumstance of a troubled economy. It is inexcusable.
The cut of this $490 that students were led to believe they would receive has the potential to significantly threaten a student’s opportunity to both register for classes and graduate.
Adrian College allows a student to register for classes as long as their student account has a negative balance of less than $500. If, for example, a student were to have a negative balance of $250 prior to this budget change they would have a negative balance of $740 after the state’s reduction. This new balance would stop a student from being able to register for classes the following semester, effectively halting their education. A senior that had an account paid in full before the change would now owe Adrian College just under $500.
If there is any hope for this ludicrous reduction in student aid to be reversed the time to act is now. Students must stand and say, “This is not acceptable.”
It is our responsibility as students to prove to our state officials that it is possible for intelligent minds to convene on one fiscal issue and have some good come of it.