Going to college in Oregon will become easier financially when the Oregon Opportunity Grant expands to pay twice as much college tuition for students next year.

Beginning in fall 2008, the state will increase the grant to $72 million annually, up from $34 million in 2007, doubling maximum grant awards for students.

“The state has stepped up,” said Di Saunders, director of communications with the Oregon University System Office of the Chancellor. “This will be something of tremendous value to a lot of students.”

In 2004, the Board of Higher Education established the Access and Affordability Working Group to come up with a new plan to provide financial aid to Oregon’s students. Committee members asked Oregon residents in focus groups what they thought would be important to include in the Opportunity Grant.

“We found out the student needed to take responsibility. They needed to have a stake in it,” Saunders said.

The committee developed a shared-responsibility model in which students shared a portion of the tuition either through working 15 hours a week for 48 weeks or full time in summer and part time in school (10 hours a week for 32 weeks). Four-year students must also provide about $3,000 a year, either through student loans, scholarships, savings or borrowing from others. No borrowing is expected from community college students.

The Opportunity Grant is available for Oregon residents who are attending colleges and universities, public and private, in the state.

In addition to the students sharing responsibility, depending on income, the students’ families, the federal government and the state will help fill in the gaps.

Gov. Ted Kulongoski approved the grant at the legislative session in June, Saunders said. She said next year, they’ll try for a fully funded grant.

The grant will now serve 6,000 more students annually — a total of 33,000 or more students could qualify each year.

Under the new guidelines, students from middle-income families of four that earn up to $70,000 a year, will be eligible for financial grants, when in past years the maximum gross income was $31,000.

“It really, for the first time, is reaching up into middle-income families,” Saunders said.

Cap Sharples, a Marshfield High School counselor who is on the Oregon Student Assistance Commission, agreed.

“I can now give students much more hope to go to college,” Sharples said. “I can look parents in the eye who make fifty to sixty thousand and tell them they now have a real chance.”

It’s easy to apply for the Opportunity Grant. Interested students or their parents just fill out the FAFSA (Free Application for Student Aid) starting on or after Jan. 1, 2008 at http://www.fafsa.ed.gov and they will be notified by the Student Assistance Commission by e-mail about their grant eligibility. Or those interested can visit getcollegefunds.org to have all their grant awards estimated online.

For more information, those interested can contact the Student Assistance Commission, at (541) 687-7400; Sharples at Marshfield, 267-1402; or Diana Plum, assistant director of financial aid at Southwest Oregon Community College, 888-7337.