Devon Robertson, a nursing student here at Indian River Community College, and her mother, Faith, live paycheck to paycheck.

A dispatcher in the security office at a local hospital, Faith Robertson has raised Devon on her own for the last 20 years, without receiving any child support or alimony checks. They have almost no savings.

"We don't exactly live a luxurious lifestyle," Devon says. "I mean, I can barely scrape together enough money to drive up here for school every day."

So the two women were shocked when Devon received a letter from the college's financial-aid office saying she was no longer eligible for a federal grant she'd been counting on to help her pay for college.

Almost as surprising as the letter was the reason Devon lost the aid: She had earned too much.

In each of her first two years at Indian River, she had received a $1,600 Pell Grant. While the grants covered her tuition and fees, she needed money to buy her books and groceries, to make car payments, and to purchase gasoline for her drive each day to and from the campus.

To earn more cash, she took on two part-time jobs, one as a switchboard operator at a hospital and the other as a substitute teacher at an after-school program. At the beginning of her second year at Indian River, the after-school program offered her a regular position. She jumped at the opportunity, while continuing to work at the hospital.

Little did Devon know that the $4,000 of additional annual income she would earn as a result of her promotion, when combined with her mother's salary, would make it appear to the federal government that she no longer needed financial aid.

Nothing could have been further from the truth, Devon says. It has been two years since she lost her grant, and she has managed to remain in college, but not without a struggle.

The experience has left Devon's mother embittered. "Even now, I've sat and cried many times, just thinking, 'How are we going to get the money?'" Faith says. "It's just a shame that honest, hard-working people have to fight so hard to get an education."

'A Catch-22'

Devon's case is hardly unique. Financial-aid experts believe that thousands of low- and moderate-income students fall victim to the "student-work penalty" each year, losing their financial aid because they earn too much, putting in long hours at off-campus jobs, forcing many of them to take time off from college or drop out.

And while this is not just a problem at community colleges, officials at two-year institutions are particularly concerned about the issue because so many of their students work while in college.

"It's a Catch-22 for these students," says Steven M. Payne, Indian River's financial-aid director. "They need to work. They need to support themselves and they need to support their families, and the better job they do at that, the more they hurt themselves in terms of getting grant assistance."

With Congress beginning its consideration of legislation to renew the Higher Education Act, the law governing most federal student-aid programs, some community-college officials and student-aid experts are pushing federal lawmakers to find ways to eliminate or at least soften the work penalty for both independent students and those who depend on their parents for support.

Student-aid experts say that the issue is a perfect example of how some of the assumptions behind the government's formula for assessing a student's need for financial aid do not match the realities of today's students. In the 1970s, when the formula was put into law, many fewer students were working full time while enrolled in college.

But other aid experts say that community colleges must shoulder some of the blame for the problems working students face. Many officials at two-year colleges, worried that their students could default on their federal loans, dissuade them from borrowing. As a result, low-income students at those institutions have little choice but to work to pay their bills.

"Discouraging students from borrowing reasonable amounts of money can be really damaging to their opportunities for educational success," says Sandra Baum, a professor of economics at Skidmore College.

'Ridiculously Low' Caps

Punching a time clock is a familiar routine for most community-college students.

According to the U.S. Education Department, more than 80 percent of full-time students at community colleges work. Thirty percent of full-time students at those institutions work 35 hours a week or more. The work burden appears to fall hardest on low-income students. A study by the Education Department's National Center for Education Statistics found that 84 percent of low-income students worked an average of 27 hours a week in the 1999-2000 academic year.

The formula the federal government uses to calculate a student's eligibility for federal aid allows aid recipients to earn a certain amount before their Pell Grants are reduced.

For example, dependent students -- those undergraduates who are under 24, unmarried, and childless -- can earn up to $2,420 in 2003-4 without having the government add the total to their parents' earnings when assessing the student's need for aid. Students who are independent of their parents can earn up to $5,490 and still qualify for a maximum Pell Grant of $4,050.

Sorcire Soriano, whose parents are from the Dominican Republic and who is the first member of her family to go to college, completed her second year at Indian River this spring. She calls the government's caps on wages "ridiculously low."

Ms. Soriano lives with her parents, but she must pay for college herself because they cannot afford to help her. Her father works at a landfill and her mother cleans houses.

Last fall, she found her Pell Grant sharply reduced because she had made about $10,000 as a waitress the previous year, mostly in tips.

"Even if you live at home, $2,400 is not enough to live on," she says.

Rewarding Hard Work

So far, the student-work penalty has not received a lot of attention on Capitol Hill. But Rep. Ric Keller, a Florida Republican, wants to change that.

A former Pell Grant recipient himself, Mr. Keller learned of the work-penalty problem last spring from financial-aid administrators in his district, whom he had brought together to discuss issues related to reauthorizing the Higher Education Act.

Now, he is trying to persuade his colleagues on the House of Representatives Committee on Education and the Workforce that the work penalty must be dealt with. "We need to be rewarding ambition and hard work and not discouraging it," Mr. Keller says. "That's why I want to make sure that if a student goes the extra mile and works during his college experience, he will not be penalized by having his Pell Grant taken away from him."

Mr. Keller does not believe that the income students earn while in college should be counted against them. Under his plan, the government would take the income of parents and students into account for the freshman year only. After that, the students' aid would not be affected by changes in their earnings; aid could be increased or reduced only as a result of fluctuations in the income of their parents.

"This is a common-sense reform that would not jack up the costs of the Pell Grant program too much," says Representative Keller.

Some college administrators, however, worry that his plan could divert some government aid dollars to students who don't really need them. For example, they point to the college student who becomes a computer whiz and makes a killing on designing software. "We need to be very cautious when making changes to the formula," says Linda Downing, the financial-aid director at Valencia Community College, which is a couple of hours north of Indian River.

A 'More Targeted' Approach

Members of the Advisory Committee on Student Financial Assistance, which counsels Congress on student-aid issues, have also called the work penalty an obstacle in the educational progress of students.

"If students are working to pay for college this year, we shouldn't be making it harder for them next year," says Brian K. Fitzgerald, the advisory committee's staff director.

Mr. Fitzgerald speaks favorably of Mr. Keller's proposal. But he is pushing an advisory-panel plan that he believes will be easier to carry out and "more narrowly targeted" to help those working students who need the extra grant money the most.

The plan would expand a provision in the higher-education law that automatically makes students from families that earn $15,000 or less eligible for the maximum Pell Grant. Student earnings are not taken into consideration.

The committee wants Congress to push the $15,000 ceiling to $25,000. In addition, the panel would like to see families that receive food stamps, welfare benefits, or free and reduced-price lunches qualify for the maximum award. The plan would benefit only dependent students and independent students with children. To help single, independent students, the panel is recommending that Congress increase the $5,490 cap on earnings.

The American Association of Community Colleges also wants the income caps to increase for students who are single and independent, by as much as $3,000.

To Work, or to Borrow?

At Indian River, administrators say that penalizing students for working is exactly the wrong message for the government to be sending.

"I hate to see that happen," says Edwin R. Massey, the college's president. "The student who has a good work ethic is the student who is driven to be successful."

College officials estimate that between 80 and 85 percent of Indian River's 22,440 students work while enrolled in classes. Meanwhile, only about 10 percent of the college's students take out federal student loans.

Given the choice, Mr. Massey believes that it is better for students to work than to borrow money. "If students can exit school without debt, then I think they are far better off."

And in fact, Mr. Payne, the college's financial-aid director, says, "We counsel students as much as possible to stay away from borrowing."

But some student-aid experts worry about that approach.

Jacqueline E. King, director of the Center for Policy Analysis at the American Council on Education, concluded in a report last year that "the financing strategy that is least associated with success" for students is "borrowing nothing and working 15 or more hours per week."

Many of those students end up dropping out "because they cannot manage full-time attendance and a heavy workload." She found that students who borrow and work only part time are much more successful.

Most Indian River students don't need loans, says Mr. Payne, because "our college is so affordable." Tuition and fees for Florida residents came to only $1,545 last year. In addition, the college's enrollment includes many low-income students who are the first members of their families to attend college. Since such students are at a high risk of dropping out, they can't afford to go heavily into debt, administrators say.

But in discouraging students from taking out loans, Indian River and other community colleges are also protecting themselves.

Community colleges are particularly vulnerable to high default rates because they admit all applicants and therefore serve people who are considered the greatest risk for loan defaults: disadvantaged, minority, and older students. Colleges with default rates of more than 25 percent for three consecutive years can be barred from all federal student-aid programs. For any institution, that would be a severe blow.

"Of course, that's a concern," says Ms. Downing of Valencia Community College. "Our colleges are held accountable for students who default."

Mr. Fitzgerald of the advisory committee says the government's default-rate policy has put community colleges in the awkward position of discouraging low-income students from borrowing. As a result, those students are forced to work to pay college expenses, lengthening their time in college and narrowing their chances of graduating.

Ms. Baum, the Skidmore College economist, is blunter. "These students should be borrowing money rather than working excessively," she says. "That would give them a much better chance of completing their studies successfully."

With the help of several family members and some student loans, Devon Robertson has managed to stay in college, despite the loss of her grant. She expects to graduate from the nursing program in December 2004.

But her experiences with student aid have left Devon and her mother dissatisfied. They can't understand why the government makes it so difficult for people like them to improve their lives.

"We need all the help we can get to get Devon through school so she can make a better living," says Faith Robertson. "We're just fighting tooth and nail trying to get help from somebody. And now it's to the point that we have to take out loans. And that's just another bill that we're going to have to add to our pile."

NEXT: Private colleges are preparing to fight attempts by lawmakers to eliminate or restructure several of the federal student-aid programs that benefit their students.

INDIAN RIVER COMMUNITY COLLEGE

Note: Figures on enrollment, costs, financial aid, and family income are for 2002-3; graduation rate is for students who entered in 1996 and graduated within six years; transfer rate is for students who transferred to a four-year college in the fall of 2001.

A HEAVY LOAD

Community-college officials worry that too many of their students work long hours at off-campus jobs to support themselves. Full-time work not only makes it more difficult for students to stay focused on their studies, but also can cause them to earn too much money to remain qualified for federal grants.

Federal caps on earnings before financial-aid eligibility is affected:

*An independent student is one who is 24 or older or an orphan or a ward of the court. Veterans, graduate students, or students who are parents are also classified as independent even if they are younger than 24.

More community-college students work than do students at other types of colleges:

Proportion of full-time students who work 35 hours a week or more

The work burden falls hardest on low-income students at community colleges:

Proportion of full-time students from families earning less than $30,000 who work

Note: The figures, from 1999-2000, are the latest available.

SOURCE: U.S. Education Department

TOP PRIORITIES FOR COMMUNITY COLLEGES

In addition to concerns about students' off-campus work, community colleges have made several recommendations to Congress as it reviews the Higher Education Act. Among other proposals, they want Congress to:

Eliminate a provision in the law that prevents students at the lowest-cost community colleges from receiving the maximum Pell Grant. Currently, students who attend institutions that charge less than the maximum award cannot take full advantage of it.
Alter how Pell Grants are distributed to students by "front-loading" them, so that students can receive a greater portion of financial support during their first two years of college, when they are at the greatest risk of dropping out, and smaller grants later on.
Remove a provision in the law that denies Pell Grants to students at colleges that have had default rates on student loans of 25 percent or more for three consecutive years.
Reduce how much grant money low-income students who drop out of college must repay to the federal government. Community-college officials say that the requirement to return aid places an unfair burden on financially needy students.
SOURCE: American Association of Community Colleges; Chronicle reporting