Free country, free money?

A data report by the U.S. Department of Education indicated that Brigham Young University students received $43,775,980 from Federal Pell Grant loans in the 2015-2016 year – lifting the financial burdens many students face.

Available through the Higher Education Act of 1965, Federal Pell Grants are awarded to students to aid with tuition or other related school costs and do not require payback. There are several different kinds of federal aid, including loans, scholarships, and Pell Grants. Pell Grants were formerly known as Basic Educational Opportunity Grants or BEOGs.

BYU sits at the sixty-third spot out of 5,473 schools that are awarded Pell Grants nationally. As schools are divided up into different private, public, and proprietary sectors, BYU reached even higher, claiming a spot in the top 30 because of its private school status.

The University of Phoenix-Arizona earns the number one rank, with $1,100,657,835 awarded to qualified students in the previous fiscal year.

Many students do not qualify for Pell Grants until they are no longer declared as dependents on their parents financials records. This transition of dependent to independent generally occurs when students get married, which helps explain why BYU ranks higher than many other schools.

“I didn’t qualify for pell grants until after my husband and I got married. They have been an absolute lifesaver for us,” said junior Audrey Toney.

While BYU ranks high overall and in the Western region of the United States, BYU-Idaho ranks even higher at twenty-ninth. A possible answer for this higher rank, despite an overall lower number of students compared to BYU is the new Pathway Program that BYU-Idaho exclusively administers.

Surrounding universities in Utah such as Utah State University and University of Utah fall far behind BYU and BYU-I. However, the schools that received the smallest amount of federal funding were more vocational schools in the southern region of the United States.

Nevertheless, the money means more to the students than it does for the universities and their standings.

“Pell grants give my husband and me a much greater peace of mind that school will really pay off in the end, which would be much harder to believe if we were massively in debt,” said Communications graduate Marinda Risk.

Students at BYU are encouraged to visit the OneStop website, https://onestop.byu.edu, for information concerning Federal Pell Grants and eligibility. Another resource is visiting a scholarship advisor in the Abraham Smoot Building, first floor.