US: Economy down, aid applications up

Jim Belvin has seen this movie before, writes Jack Stripling in Inside Higher Ed. As a long-time director of financial aid at Duke University, Belvin recalls a number of past economic downturns that caught families off guard, and invariably they've turned to his office for help. "I've always referred to the financial aid office as the canary in the economic mine," said Belvin. This year, Duke saw a 6% increase in the number of students who said they intended to apply for need-based aid. While Belvin speculates that only about 1% of the new applicants will ultimately qualify for institutional aid, the increase reflects growing anxiety among students and their families amid a period of economic turmoil.

"I think there is some concern going on - some reality, some overreaction," he told Inside Higher Ed. The uptick in financial aid interest is widespread. Across the US, 8.9 million students filed federal financial aid forms in the first half of 2008, marking a 16% increase over the same period last year, according to federal data. And significant enough numbers of those applicants are qualifying for federal aid that the federal government appears headed for a major shortfall in Pell Grant funding, the New York Times reported.
Full report on the Inside Higher Ed site