Special report: Rutgers yet to spend most of $365 million in pandemic aid
Rutgers has yet to utilize the bulk of $365 million in emergency coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic grants it received from the federal and state government during the past 18 months.
The slow rollout of this massive government aid took place even as the University proclaimed a fiscal crisis, laid off hundreds of workers, ordered a freeze on non-essential spending and even as top officials refused to lower tuition last year for students forced to cope with online classes.
A team of editors at The Daily Targum spent the past six months tracking what Rutgers did with all that assistance — one of the largest aid packages awarded to any school in the country. We reviewed a raft of government disclosure reports the University filed, interviewed dozens of students, faculty and administrators and examined hundreds of purchase orders and financial records obtained either through public records requests or from a Rutgers source. This is the first in a series of articles that reveal what we found.
As of June 30:
Rutgers had distributed only $50 million of some $128 million in federal monies earmarked for individual student emergency grants.
It had spent less than half of the $237 million in federal and state emergency aid allotted for its own institutional use — an amount far bigger than the $97 million deficit the University reported last year.
University officials have been less transparent than other schools on criteria for deciding the amount of emergency grants students can receive — and some Rutgers students have been dissatisfied with what they were given.
In addition, officials have provided constantly shifting — even contradictory — accounts of how the University used its institutional aid, both in reports to government monitors and in responses to questions from the Targum.
Since the start of the pandemic, Congress has approved three bills, the CARES Act, the CRRSA Act and the American Rescue Plan — with billions of dollars set aside from all three for what is called the Higher Education Emergency Relief Fund.
Rutgers was allocated $54.2 million from the CARES Act, nearly $84 million from the CRRSA Act, and $147.8 million from the American Rescue Plan. Of those amounts, the federal government required that a total of $128 million go in direct grants to students, with the rest to be used by the University to address its own pandemic-related losses.
In addition, Rutgers received nearly $79.3 million in emergency aid from the state of New Jersey through the Governor’s Emergency Education Relief and two rounds of the Coronavirus Relief Fund.
By Jan. 31, the University reported distributing the full $27 million from the CARES Act to 25,388 students. That worked out to an average grant of about $1,066 per student. Federal disclosures reviewed by the Targum from other Big Ten schools show several schools gave out larger average grants, from around $1,400 to $1,600, though to fewer students.
Still, a lot of Rutgers students felt left behind. In an online survey filled out by more than 100 students in March and April of this year — long after the first wave of CARES Act funding had been distributed — a number of students thought the grants they received did not adequately meet their needs.
Those participating in the survey reported receiving an average of just $887, with some getting far less.
“If this is the amount that most people got, then it's nothing," said Mercedes Viera, Class of 2021, who was awarded $430 from the CARES Act. “It's literally just the smallest speck (among all the) money that (the University) got.”
Carlos Diaz, a School of Arts and Sciences junior, received a $500 grant.
“I think it was definitely a relief,” Diaz said. “I know it wasn't perfect, (but) it helped me, personally.”
Shifting Accounts
The U.S. Department of Education requires colleges to submit quarterly reports on how they spent the institutional portion of that aid, but the reports filed by Rutgers failed to provide much detail on those expenses, and are often contradictory from one report to the other.
In October 2020, for example, the University submitted a report for the quarter ending in September, stating approximately $6.4 million in institutional funding was spent on emergency grants for students, and approximately $6.5 million on reimbursing Rutgers for lost tuition, room and board, or other fees, as is permitted by the Department of Education.
University spokesperson Carissa Sestito said the $6.4 million provided approximately 2,230 additional financial aid awards on top of the $27 million from CARES Act that was given directly to students.
Another $6.6 million was used to cover “additional instructional equipment and supplies” such as laptops or other equipment, according to the report. When asked for detail, Sestito initially said this amount included the $5.7 million used to purchase iPads for all incoming freshmen at the beginning of the 2020-2021 academic year, which the Targum previously reported.
But in April 2021, Rutgers resubmitted a report for the same quarter, this time stating that no money had been used for direct student aid, only $622,000 on technology hardware for students, and that $12.9 million had gone to directly reimbursing the University for lost revenues.
“The numbers in the October 2020 report for the ‘purchasing, leasing or renting additional instructional equipment and supplies’ were overstated," Sestito said. “The amount for the iPads and laptops for students were charged (instead) to the New Jersey Coronavirus Relief Funds (CRF) and not (the CARES Act).”
Another report filed in April 2021 for the quarter ending in December 2020 stated another $1.4 million in institutional funding went to student aid, while an additional $13 million went to reimbursements for tuition, housing, room and board, or other refunds. Sestito said Rutgers paid this $13 million to itself to make up for lost revenue.
The Targum filed several Open Public Records Act (OPRA) requests to Rutgers for itemized details of the larger expenditures of the emergency aid from the CARES Act, but the University’s records officer told us no such files existed.
With the CRRSA Act, on the other hand, similar files did exist, including a breakdown of additional financial aid taken from the institutional portion of the funding. A quarterly report filed for CRRSA Act funding in June 2021 states that of the institutional funding, nearly $4.8 million was allocated for additional student aid.
Documents obtained by the Targum through an OPRA request show that the University issued more than 500 grants to students, ranging from $5,000 to $20,000 each. A total of 528 of these larger grants went to students in New Brunswick, 121 to Newark and 24 to Camden. Sestito said these grants were primarily given to graduate students since most previous aid had gone to undergraduates.
Although the CRRSA Act was passed in December 2020, the University did not begin allocating the student portion of the funding until May 2021 and it still had not used the full $27 million as of July 31, according to the most recent disclosure. By Sept. 9, Sestito said $242,000 in CRRSA Act student funding remained to be spent.
Even more amazingly, as of early September, more than $51 million of the $58 million in institutional funding from CRRSA had not been used.
On top of that, the biggest federal grant of money, the $147.8 million from the American Rescue Plan has yet to be touched. That law was passed in March 2021, yet the University has not reported spending a penny of it. Sestito said Rutgers expects to begin allocating funds this semester.
Other Schools More Transparent
While this is a lot of money to account for, comparable Big Ten schools, such as Penn State and Ohio State, have managed to provide clearer reporting and spent their money faster.
For the student portion of all three aid packages, Penn State published at least three announcements to students about the funding in advance, made the application link publicly available and distributed the funding in waves “to support eligible students with qualifying expenses who were not identified to receive funding during the first round.”
Ohio State also made the application link public for student funds. In comparison, Rutgers sent out a single email when funding became available, and application links are not on its website.
Delaney Carey, Class of 2021, said she was grateful to receive funding from the CARES Act last year, but said other Rutgers students were unaware that financial aid was even available.
“None of my peers — anybody I know, I’m the only one that was quick enough to act on any of the rounds of the CARES Act and get any sort of money,” Carey said. “None of my friends even knew about it, so when I hear about it, it's people talking about it in the GroupMe (chats) and the Reddit (threads).”
Penn State’s explanation for who can get money and when is also much clearer. Compare, for example, the two schools’ descriptions of CRRSA Act eligibility:
The Penn State website reads: “To make as wide of an impact as possible, students who are Pell Grant-eligible were each offered $1,200. Additional students who have documented significant financial need as determined by their 2020-21 FAFSA submission were offered $1,000.”
Rutgers’ website, on the other hand, states: “Rutgers will be defining exceptional need as a smaller subset of those students who are currently receiving Federal Pell Grants … this subset of Pell recipients will receive their awards as a direct grant and will not be required to apply for funding. Remaining funds will be distributed via an online application process that will ask for detailed information about the individual student’s COVID-19 disruption and their need for funding.”
Ohio State is in the process of spending its CRRSA Act funding, similarly to Rutgers, but is doing so much quicker. Of its $43.7 million in institutional funding, Ohio State spent nearly $39.4 million as of June 30 — a stark contrast from the mere $5.2 million out of $58 million spent by Rutgers in the same time period.
Other schools are even further along: Penn State has exhausted both the student and institutional portions of the CRRSA Act completely and has already started to distribute the American Rescue Plan money. It split the funding into multiple rounds to support students enrolled in summer 2021 classes as well as the regular academic year, according to the website.
Some of the smaller schools, such as The College of New Jersey, have also opened applications for the American Rescue Plan and students were told to complete applications by Aug. 31. Sestito said Rutgers will begin distributing the student portion of the American Rescue Plan this fall.
Rutgers union officials repeatedly asked the University for accounting for the CRRSA Act and American Rescue Plan stimulus packages during their negotiations in early 2021 but were not provided with any information on how Rutgers planned on spending this money, according to Andrew Goldstone, Rutgers American Association of University Professors and American Federation of Teachers (AAUP-AFT) University Budget and Priorities Committee member and professor in the English Department.
“It makes it harder and harder to tell the story that they're just really pinched for pennies when they've got so much federal money on top of what is their basic revenue sources, (which) are still totally steady,” Goldstone said.
Rebecca Givan, president of the AAUP-AFT and associate professor in the Department of Labor Studies and Employment Relations, said the University is no longer in an official fiscal emergency, but added that faculty are still feeling the effects of the past year’s budget cuts.
She said the University could potentially utilize their federal funding for a number of academic-related expenses, including hiring back part-time lecturers, providing funds for additional graduate students, or addressing student debt, among other things.
“This is an opportunity for the Rutgers administration to turn in a different direction — toward priorities that center everyone at our University and in our community,” she said.
