Qualified low-income students have a harder time receiving help to pay for college, due to a decrease in need-based financial aid, according to a recent report from the Institute for Higher Education Policy.

According to the report, released this month, need-based financial aid has significantly decreased, from 61 percent of the total financial aid offered to 22 percent during the last 30 years.

“It has gone from being 60 percent grants offered and 40 percent loans offered about 20 years ago, and now it has switched,” said Roberta Johnson, associate director of financial aid. “We would like to see more grants available to students.”

The report suggested increasing the maximum Pell grant from $4,050 to $8,000 as a way to compensate for the decrease in need-based aid.

Pell grants are available to students whose parents’ estimated family contribution is less than $3,800. The family contribution is contingent on many factors, such as the parent’s adjusted gross income and assets, age of older parent, family size and the number of family members in college, Johnson said.

“It is based on a matrix, and when a family’s contribution is estimated to be zero, the student receives the maximum amount offered; then it goes by $100 increments,” she said.

For the 2002-03 academic school year, 25 percent of 23,000 undergraduate students were eligible for Pell grants. There were 5,428 students who actually received them that year, Johnson said.

“Grad students are not eligible for Pell grants, only students who are working on their first bachelor’s degree,” she said.

Some students who can’t obtain a scholarship or can’t receive a sufficient amount of money offered in a Pell grant must resort to other means, such as loans.

“I have to take out Stanford and Perkins loans, and I also have a Partnership loan through ISU,” said Andrea Harper, senior in apparel merchandising. “My parents can’t help me through college; I end up having to rely on my credit card a lot.”

“I obtained a full-tuition scholarship to attend ISU, and I took out loans for the rest,” said Jonah Henninger, senior in anthropology. “I rely on financial aid to help pay all of my expenses. It was a big deciding factor in choosing a college,” he said.

Henninger said he realizes he was lucky in obtaining a scholarship, but he feels that it is necessary to have more need-based aid offered to students who may not be able to attend otherwise.

Harper said having to take out excessive loans will affect her future because it is going to be harder after she graduates to try to repay these loans.

“There has to be some more money out there somewhere that can be used for better things such as need-based aid,” she said.

Obtaining extra money for need-based aid isn’t easy, Johnson said.

“The law does allow the maximum Pell grant to be $5,400,” she said. “It has to be appropriated by Congress, which has a budget with competing interests. We are lucky if we can hold our own. We have at least held steady or had some small increases recently.”