More than a month after the semester began, financial aid delays have threatened plans for thousands of students in the Peralta Community College District.
Up to 15,000 students in the four-college district have not received federal aid, five weeks after school started. Administrators blamed the delay on problems with a new computer system and said they planned to work through the weekend to process as many checks as possible.
But angry students said the money will be too late for some. The delay has forced several students to drop out of school and even threatened some with homelessness if they are unable to pay rent, said Viennassa Singh, a student at Oakland's Merritt College.
"Your landlord's not going to understand that you didn't get your financial aid check," said Singh, who was able to borrow enough money to stay in school. "We're poor. We don't have mommy and daddy taking care of us."
About half the students in the district are eligible for financial aid, and officials said they did not know how many had been forced out of school by the delays.
Besides Merritt, the Peralta district includes Berkeley City College, Laney College in Oakland and the College of Alameda.
Some students walked out of class this week to protest the delays, including about 100 at Merritt who demanded answers from college leaders.
"They were angry at us," said Josue Hoyos, an interim vice president at Merritt. "We're listening, and Advertisementwe're telling them we're sorry."
The problem, administrators said, has been adapting the new computer system to a multicollege district. The system usually is used by individual colleges, said Tom Smith, the Peralta district's chief financial officer.
Approximately $4 million in federal aid has been held up because of the glitch, Smith said. College leaders have taken several steps to help students, he said, including short-term loans, forcing through some checks manually and providing vouchers for textbooks.
"Certainly there's some students out there who are on the edge," Smith said. "We've brought in some additional people at the colleges. This is our project No. 1 right now."
National studies have shown that community college students are particularly vulnerable to financial fluctuations, even minor ones. And dropouts often remain out of school once they've left, researchers have found.
Although California's community colleges, at $20 per unit, are the most affordable in the nation by far, other expenses can overwhelm the state's students, particularly in the expensive Bay Area. Students often use financial aid for rent, food and child care, and textbooks average about $900 per year nationwide.
Students have fragile budgets that depend on timely financial aid, said Singh, the Merritt student.
"We still don't know when we're getting our checks," she said. "You can't buy groceries or pay the rent with a bookstore voucher."
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