The Northland’s colleges and universities could get a big boost from recent changes in the federal government’s student financial aid system.

In the past several months, federal officials shepherded a number of measures designed to increase enrollment in post-secondary educational institutions and get more people into public service careers.

The changes include Pell Grant increases, loan interest rate reductions and linking student loan repayments to income for teachers.

Financial aid and enrollment officials from several schools in the region are noting an impact from all these measures on their students.

“We’re already seeing the benefit of that for our families,” said Sue Karnes, director of financial aid and scholarship records at William Jewell College in Liberty.

The most significant recent shift may be the reforms to the Pell Grant program, the federal government’s most widely used form of need-based direct assistance to college students.

On June 30, Secretary of Education Arne Duncan announced that the maximum Pell Grant award will increase 13 percent for the pending school year, to $5,350.

In addition, President Barack Obama’s administration is also lobbying for automatic increases to the Pell Grant maximum based on inflation as measured by the Consumer Price Index. Increases are currently at the mercy of Congress and have lagged behind college tuition rates that have risen sharply in the last decade.

The Pell Grant changes were badly needed, according to Park University Director of Student Financial Services Carla Boren.

“Pell Grants haven’t kept up with inflation at all,” Boren said.

The Pell Grant program was also expanded so that students can get a new award for each semester. Park University was an early adopter of this “year-round” Pell Grant option, Boren explained.

“It is absolutely a great thing,” she said. “We’re able to put Pell Grants into the hands of people who have not had a degree before.”

Obama has called on more people to enter public service careers like teaching. To that end, college students who go into targeted jobs can have their loan repayment amounts reduced in line with salaries that are often less than what they would have received in the private sector.

The Department of Education is also promoting an existing program that allows public service workers to have their student loans forgiven after a decade.

One of Park University’s goals is to train people for public service, Boren explained, so the Income-Based Repayment Plan should be attractive for many of its students.

“This is our government’s way of getting more people to go into fields that are badly, badly needed,” Boren said.

Boren’s sentiment was echoed by Karnes and Ginny Miller, assistant dean of the University of Missouri-Kansas City School of Education.

“Knowing that they are going in to careers of public service where the compensation is just not that high, this could really change the picture for some of our students and make it feasible to enter public service,” Miller said.

Teachers who make $30,000 a year and have $25,000 in college loans with a 6.8 percent interest rate could use the Income-Based Repayment Plan to lower their monthly payments from $288 to $172, according to the Department of Education.

Robert Leachman recently retired after seven years as the superintendent of the Smithville R-II School District. This fall, he will take over the graduate-level education programs at UMKC’s Northland Center.

The new federal student loan incentives could lure high-quality professionals into teaching, Leachman said. That would be a bonus for public schools.

“I think it very well could have that impact,” Leachman said. “It could provide them with the impetus to change careers and go into the teaching profession.”

Staff writer Ray Weikal can be reached at 389-6637 or This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it .