CHAPEL HILL (Jan. 20, 2021) – UNC System schools should receive nearly $288 million from the coronavirus relief package Congress passed in December, the System’s federal liaison told members of the UNC Board of Governors Wednesday.

That’s in addition to $180 million the UNC System received from the CARES Act last spring, for a total of $467.5 million.

The System’s Historically Black Colleges and Universities and UNC-Pembroke should be eligible for part of an additional $1.7 billion Congress allocated for HBCUs and Historically Minority-Serving Institutions, Elizabeth Morra, UNC’s Vice President for Federal Affairs, told the board’s Public Affairs Committee.

The relief money is part of $28 billion for public higher education that Congress approved in December, Morra said. She added that President Joe Biden’s proposed stimulus package would allocate another $35 billion for higher education.¹

To put the dollars in perspective, UNC-Chapel Hill is scheduled to receive $25 million from the December legislation and it received $17 million in the spring, for a total of almost $43 million. But the university estimates it has spent nearly $200 million so far responding to the virus.²

System President Peter Hans told the committee that the System and individual campuses are still tallying costs for response to the pandemic – he noted that testing and personal protective equipment have been expensive.

Morra said two other measures passed in December are significant for UNC System students:

• FAFSA simplification: The Free Application for Federal Student Aid is a universal application for aid. The legislation reduced the sometimes-vexing application from 108 questions to 36. 
  
  “This is a big win,” Morra said. “This will make it easier for students to apply and qualify for federal student aid.”

• Expanded Pell Grant eligibility: The federal grant for students from low-income families will be expanded so that another 555,000 students nationwide are eligible, and as many as 1.7 million more students are eligible for the maximum award.³ That maximum award will increase by $150, to $6,495. 
  
  Morra called it the biggest expansion of Pell Grants in a decade. Yet the maximum grant covers just 30 percent of the cost of college. Three-fourths of Pell dollars go to students from families that make less than $30,000 a year. UNC System institutions receive about $346 million a year in Pell Grants to support 72,000 students.

Morra said the System will seek additional support for university research, increased Pell Grant funds, campus-based aid and clarification of student loan forgiveness during the 117^th Congress.⁴

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¹ https://www.marketwatch.com/story/bidens-170-billion-proposal-for-schools-leaves-one-key-question-unanswered-11610741371.
² https://hew.aveltsagency.com/2021/01/financial-challenges-at-unc/;https://thewell.unc.edu/2021/01/15/university-leaders-announce-plan-to-address-budget-challenges/.
³ https://www.ncsl.org/research/education/congress-expands-pell-grant-eligibility-simplifies-fafsa-magazine2021.aspx.
⁴ https://www.northcarolina.edu/apps/bog/doc.php?id=65540&code=bog, pp. 11-16.