Some WT students may have to find a different way to pay for their college tuition next year. WT officials say several different forms of financial assistance are undergoing changes that may mean less aid for students.

According to WT’s Associate Director of Student Financial Services Marian Giesecke, many scholarships have been removed from the state’s finance budget. Some of the state-funded awards that are no longer offered include the Robert C. Byrd Scholarship, the Professional Nursing Scholarship, and the Leveraging Educational Assistance Partnership (LEAP) Grant. Dan Garcia, vice President for enrollment management at WT, said there are a number of resources that have been discontinued because of state budget cuts.

“One was the Teacher Aid Exemption,” Garcia said. “If you were a teachers’ aid and you wanted to come to school … the tuition was waved. That was discontinued this year. There was an exemption for dependents of military personnel who were deployed. That’s been done away with this year.”While the removal of these scholarships came from the state level, financial aid may possibly receive changes from the very floor of Congress. According to Garcia, a bill is currently being discussed in the U.S. House that would change the requirements to receive a Pell Grant. Some of the changes could include eliminating funding for students taking fewer than six hours and requiring recipients to have received a high school diploma or equivalent.

“The proposal also does eliminate about 2.3 billion dollars worth of aid,” Garcia said.“[This is] about ten percent of the total Pell budget.”

While the current proposals would not lower the amount awarded to full-time students, Garcia said there is a possibility that deeper cuts could be made. If so, some students may face tough decisions. Mariah Fleeman, a Criminal Justice major whose Pell Grant normally pays for all of her school tuition and fees, said she fears  she would have to take out loans, enroll as a part-time student or possibly withdraw from college until the money is raised.

“Each student is different,” Fleeman said, “For me I would have to cut back on the number of classes I took each semester and graduate later. I might have to take a year off.”

While there may be speculation on the reason for the budget cuts, Giesecke offered a simple reason for them.

“Because nobody has any money,” she said. “We all took a hit … and each university had so much that they had to reduce their budget by.”