The Oregon Student Assistance Commission, which administers the Oregon Opportunity Grant, recently came under scrutiny for its inability to balance its budget, which in turn affects its ability to administer the opportunity grants with consistency.
The agency displayed difficulty working within its allotted $57 million budget in the 2009-10 academic year, and announced significant budget overages twice in the past three months. The budget overages of $19 million will affect the chances of thousands of students seeking need-based assistance and left many in the state legislature disgruntled with
OSAC’s management.
Oregon Speaker of the House Dave Hunt, who was a major player in the state’s decision to double funding of the Oregon Opportunity Grant in 2007, said OSAC had to make some tough calculations given the recent influx of students and state money in the student assistance arena, but that the program needed to show improvement.
“(OSAC) had great difficulty estimating exactly how many students are coming into the system,” Hunt said. “Part of that was very legitimate because we had such a dramatic increase in the number of students, the economy was tanking and people were going back to school. But they also had just some flawed internal procedures we’re actually trying to track.”
OSAC is responsible for administering the Oregon Opportunity Grant since the need-based grant’s establishment in 1971. The grant was created to help Oregonian students obtain their educational goals by assisting with the high costs of a college education.
The Oregonian reported in March that for every $1 million of overages in OSAC’s budget, about 630 students will be denied a state grant next year, naturally leading to concern for the thousands of students who will no longer have access to the financial assistance.
Hunt said he shares this concern and hopes the agency’s interim executive director Mike Marsh can steer OSAC toward more stable waters.
“OSAC’s got a new interim director that has already implemented some changes so they can better estimate what the number of students is and what the financial need is going to be,” Hunt said. “Hopefully it will be on its way back to stability.”
OSAC initially announced in February that it had over-committed funds to the tune of $9.7 million, which the Oregon legislature promptly appropriated to cover OSAC’s Oregon Opportunity Grant commitments and to restore previously announced spring reductions of $120 for all full-time grant recipients and $60 for all half-time recipients.In late March, OSAC’s over-commitments ballooned by an additional $9 million, which caused exasperation with some in the state legislature, including Gov. Ted Kulongoski. Controversy over mismanagement at OSAC eventually led to the resignation of then-executive director Dennis R. Johnson in late April.
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