January 13, 2009

New Grants Have More Takers but Are Still Below Goals

By Kelly Field

Washington

Participation in the federal Academic Competitiveness and National Smart Grant programs grew significantly in the last academic year, though not as much as the Education Department had hoped, suggesting that the programs are still struggling to gain their footing more than two years after the first grants were awarded.

In all, roughly 465,000 college students received the grants, 95,000 more than in 2006-7, the programs' first academic year. Almost 400,000 freshmen and

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