Washington — Interest in the federal government’s Academic Competitiveness and Smart Grant programs is likely to increase next year, the Government Accountability Office reported today, largely because of recent legislation simplifying the programs’ eligibility requirements.

Participation rates in the programs, which supplement Pell Grants for high-achieving, low-income students, were lower than expected during their first few years, partly because of complicated eligibility requirements and a limited amount of time to set up the programs, the report says. In the programs’ first year, they awarded roughly $430-million to about 361,000 students, well short of the estimate of $790-million for 505,000 students.

Last year the government awarded grants to 465,000 students. Critics said the Education Department still did not reach its goal partly because it failed to promote the grants and explain them in detail to colleges.

But today’s GAO report suggests that much of the problem stemmed from the continuing complexity of the eligibility requirements. The report says that “the requirement to complete a rigorous program of study in high school was one of the biggest barriers to AC Grant participation,” while the Education Department’s requirement to take at least one course each semester in the student’s Smart-eligible major, such as science, technology, and mathematics, was “the biggest barrier to Smart Grant participation.”

Student-aid officers complained to the GAO that they needed to manually sift through all potential applicants’ transcripts to see who met the Education Department’s Academic Competitiveness requirements, as well as coordinate with multiple departments on their campuses to make sure the Smart Grant requirements were met.

According to the GAO prediction, however, the aid officers are likely to have more applications to sift through next year. —Megan Eckstein