The Office of Higher Education told the Appropriations Committee on March 5 that its student loan reimbursement application, opened Jan. 1, had attracted 1,474 submissions and that staff have moved 201 applications to a "pending eligible" status that would require roughly $5,568,203 to pay if awards were issued immediately. Mike Frascolov, associate fiscal administrative officer for student financial aid, said the average award among those pending eligible applicants is about $2,827 and that the application deadline currently is March 31, 2025, with a possible extension if funds remain.

Office of Higher Education officials said the application infrastructure was built internally and ingested documents through the CT Scholars database. Staff told legislators they are handling very high volumes of e-mails and questions — an SLRP mailbox averaged "two to three hundred emails per day" during the rollout — and that the office has two part-time staff assigned to process applications in addition to the student financial aid team.

At the hearing Tim Larson, representing the Office of Higher Education, told the committee the governor's recommended budget includes multiple technical changes: decreases tied to moving IT operations to the Department of Administrative Services, reductions that reflect lower-expenditure years for adjunct professor grants, and an elimination of $6,240,000 described in the agency's submission as funding for the adjunct professor grant and the student loan reimbursement program. Larson and his directors said they would provide more detailed staffing and vacancy information to the committee.

On the Roberta Willis scholarship, agency staff said need-merit awards will be made public "at the end of this week." The agency explained it has a carryforward balance of $15 million and used $10 million to cover the need-merit portion by statute, leaving roughly $5 million to support institutional need allocations; that remaining amount and the timing of need-based institutional notices are still affected by one-time funding choices and carryforward calculations. Committee members urged the agency to supply, by college, the timing and specific amounts so institutions can package financial aid for admitted students.

Separately, Jacqueline Lussier, division director of programs and student services, described a governor-proposed line item to provide the state match for a new AmeriCorps "resiliency corps" focused on climate and environmental work. The governor's budget would supply state matching funds for up to 500 participants in year one and up to 1,000 in year two; Lussier said benefits and stipends would be the same as for other AmeriCorps programs. Legislators asked for details about how the proposed state-run AmeriCorps program would sit alongside nonprofit-run AmeriCorps programs that currently provide their own matches.

Committee members asked the Office of Higher Education for: a mid-March estimate of likely program demand and whether the $6,000,000 appropriation will be adequate; demographic and age breakdowns of applicants (including parent borrower participation in Parent PLUS loans); the number of ineligible or rejected applications once the office completes eligibility reviews; and a clearer accounting of which student-loan or scholarship programs across state agencies address similar populations. Agency staff agreed to provide additional reports to the committee and to the working group.

The presentation and follow-up discussion emphasized that the student loan reimbursement program and Roberta Willis are active programs with high public demand, that some awards can be made before the end of the initial application window if applicants meet eligibility, and that timeline and coverage for institutional need allocations remain partly dependent on one-time state funds and carryforward calculations.