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A new proposal would seek to more than double the number of Mississippians who are eligible for state financial aid by expanding one of the state’s undergraduate financial aid programs. 

Under the as-yet-unnamed proposal, the award amounts of the Mississippi Tuition Assistance Grant – known as MTAG – would be increased to keep up with the skyrocketing cost of college, according to a presentation at the Postsecondary Education Financial Assistance Board on Monday. 

The requirement to maintain a 2.5 GPA and a minimum score of 15 on the ACT would be eliminated. So would a provision that excludes students who are eligible for the federal Pell Grant. Right now, the maximum award under MTAG is up to $1,000 a year for college juniors and seniors, but the proposal would double or possibly even triple that depending on a student’s income. 

All told, this would mean an estimated 37,800 Mississippians, including part-time, adult students who have long been excluded from receiving state money for college, would now be eligible for state financial aid. Right now, about 29,000 students receive state financial aid. 

The goal would be to align MTAG, which hasn’t been updated since it was created in 1995, with other efforts to develop the state’s workforce by increasing the number of Mississippians with college degrees, said Jennifer Rogers, the director of the Office of Student Financial Aid. 

As the number of high school graduates is set to decrease in Mississippi, Rogers said policy initiatives seeking to develop the state’s economy need to focus on adults who want to go back to college but can’t afford to on their own. 

“This truly comes down to an economic development issue,” Rogers said. “How can we position the most people to have the best opportunity in the workforce in Mississippi? We’re not going to do that by just focusing on the traditional high school graduates that we’ve been focusing on since 1995.” 

One thing makes this proposal different from many others that have tried but failed to get off the ground: No students would lose access to state financial aid if it became law. 

“We wanted to first do no harm,” said Scott Waller, the president and CEO of the Mississippi Economic Council. “So anyone who is currently on the grant system receiving financial aid would continue to do so, and more importantly would continue to do so whatever the rate currently is.” 

Past proposals have sought to limit, or shift, the amount of need-based state financial aid that is available for low-income students through the Higher Education Legislative Plan for Needy Students, or HELP grant, but that proved politically unpopular last session. 

HELP is the state’s most expensive financial aid program, but also one of its most effective. It pays for all four years of college for students from families making less than $39,500. 

“Obviously there doesn’t appear to be an appetite for wanting to make any changes to HELP,” said Jim McHale, the president and CEO of the Woodward Hines Education Foundation, which last year convened a taskforce of public officials who met in “confidence” to “explore how Mississippi’s student financial aid investments can be best leveraged to meet the economic development needs of the State.”

McHale said the new proposal comes out of a meeting the taskforce had this past August. He is hoping to use the fall to get feedback from key legislators and policymakers before introducing a final proposal closer to the session. 

Toren Ballard, a K-12 policy expert with Mississippi First, said, because the new proposal does not create any “losers,” the biggest obstacle will be convincing lawmakers the cost is worth it. 

“During the last session, you had people angry about HELP being cut, you had some people angry about rich kids losing access to MTAG and you still had to justify a higher overall price tag,” Ballard said. “You had all three of those things working against you. Now the only thing working against this plan is just the price tag, because no one is losing out.” 

It’ll take an estimated $31 million to fund the increased award amounts to newly eligible students, according to the Monday presentation. 

But the taskforce — armed with a Woodward Hines Education Foundation-supported study that shows the state could gain hundreds of millions of dollars in tax revenue and decreased social spending if it increases the number of Mississippians with postsecondary credentials — is planning to ask lawmakers to take the long view. 

“It’ll ultimately grow our economy and in the long term pay for itself,” Waller said.

Jason Dean, the executive director of the Mississippi Association of Independent Colleges and Universities, said the investment in state financial aid is a form of “workforce development,” which is also “the message of the day.” Dean is a member of the taskforce and sits on the post-secondary board. 

“Here’s the Jedi mind trick,” he said. “We’ve got to align our language to the language they’re espousing specifically around workforce training.” 

MEC and Accelerate Mississippi, the state’s office of workforce development, conducted a statewide listening tour last year to create a strategic plan to increase the number of college graduates among working-aged Mississippians as part of the “Ascent to 55%” initiative. 

“We’re never going to tell Mississippians not to go to college, not to attend community college and not to try to strive for educational attainment,” said Ryan Miller, Accelerate Mississippi’s executive director. “In fact it’s going to be the opposite.” 

So far, key leaders in the state’s higher education system seem to be on board. 

At the postsecondary board meeting Monday, Mark Keenum, a board member and the president of Mississippi State University whose thoughts on state financial aid have helped shape prior proposals, said he had heard from MEC leadership. 

“This is a high priority for the business community in the state to provide more funding for financial aid to increase our educational attainment for our state workforce, and I like it,” Keenum said. “I like it a lot.” 

Tyrone Jackson, a board member and the president of Mississippi Delta Community College, didn’t voice an opinion on the proposal but confirmed with Rogers that it would not result in students losing financial aid.

Though the taskforce is not proposing any changes to HELP, Rogers told the post-secondary board on Monday that the state financial aid office plans to separately request largely administrative changes to the grant. 

That would entail opening up HELP’s code section, which could result in more substantive amendments during the legislative session. 

“I fully understand the danger of opening a code section when you don’t have to,” she said.

Editor’s note: The Woodward Hines Education Foundation is a Mississippi Today donor.

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From a big night of high school football on Friday night, through the Saints victory over the Carolina Panthers on Monday night, there was plenty to cuss and discuss on a huge football weekend. And guess what? The Saints are 2-0 for the first time in 10 years and the Ole Miss Rebels are 3-0 headed to Alabama.

Stream all episodes here.

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This may surprise you: On two of the past three weekends I have attended a high school game on Friday night and a college game on Saturday. And I am going to get right to the point.

The high school games were by far more enjoyable and entertaining.

Here’s why: 

There were a certain continuity and flow to the Friday night games. There weren’t nearly as many stoppages. And the stoppages weren’t nearly as long. 

The high school players weren’t as big or as gifted or as fast. But the games were better.

That’s because the college games kept being interrupted by these men wearing a red cap and carrying a stick with a clock on it. We’ll call them TV commercial enforcers, who would step out onto the field three or four times a quarter and essentially stop the game for three minutes that seemed more like 10. This happened so that TV could show several different commercials selling everything from cars, to beer, to soft drinks, to insurance. You name it.

Meanwhile, in the stands, people baked or broiled. Or, in my case, stewed.

The average Division I college football game lasts three hours, 22 minutes. Some stretch to four hours and longer. Meanwhile, Millsaps and Sewanee played a two-hour, 37-minute, 27-21 game last Saturday. The difference? No TV timeouts.

You don’t notice it so much when you are at home, watching on TV, and use the three minutes to go fix a snack, or go get another beer, or go use the restroom. You sure as heck notice it when the restrooms are 50 yards and long lines away and the beer costs $10. 

And we wonder why there are huge gaps where people used to sit in the stands at stadiums these days. And we wonder why fans leave the stadium in droves beginning about halftime. We wonder why the student sections are often nearly empty in the fourth quarter. Boredom is a terrible thing.

Here’s the deal: In Division I college games these days, there are three TV timeouts in the first and third quarters, and four TV timeouts in the second and fourth quarters. They average about three minutes each. That’s an awful lot of dead time. These timeouts are known officially as “media timeouts.” Trust me, they are TV timeouts. Sports writers despise them. 

This won’t change soon. In college football these days, it is all about feeding the beast, and all the beast will eat is money. In Mississippi, the head coach at Ole Miss makes $9 million a year, or approximately 74 times as much as the state’s governor. Heck, the defensive coordinator at Ole Miss makes 16 times the annual salary of the governor. (No jokes about which one is more drastically overpaid.)

And that’s just the start. There are 61 employees listed in the Ole Miss football directory. Besides the 10 full-time coaches allowed by the NCAA, there are a lead analyst, three senior analysts and six more analysts. That’s a lot of analyzing. The head football strength and conditioning coach has four full-time assistants.

There are recruiters, lots of them, and assistant recruiters. And no, I am not picking on Ole Miss. This is everywhere at college football’s top level. The Georgia football employee directory lists a “head performance chef.”

What’s more, these programs at college football’s highest level are in a never-ending facilities race. They are in a never-ending struggle to keep up with their conference mates. 

And now we have name, image and likeness (NIL), which has raised the stakes still again. What used to be recruiting has become more like purchasing. College quarterbacks at the highest level have become millionaires. The left tackles who protect their blind side can’t be that far behind. Ohio State wide receiver Marvin Harrison Jr., quite possibly the best player in college football, reportedly makes $1.3 million for his various NIL deals in this, his junior season. Somebody’s got to pay.

That somebody is TV. The SEC distributed $50 million to each of its member schools for the 2021-22 fiscal year. Most of that is TV money, which is why the guy with the red hat and the clock takes the field for three minutes at a time, 14 times a game, while thousands in the stands twiddle their thumbs.

This is coming from a guy who has spent, quite literally, a lifetime going to the games – games that used to last little over two hours and now often stretch to nearly twice that long. Too long. Too much dead time.

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Brandon Presley announced on Tuesday that his campaign will begin airing a new ad on more than 20 radio stations that have predominantly Black audiences, the first such ad of the 2023 election cycle from the Democratic nominee for governor. 

The ad, a six-figure purchase, criticizes incumbent Republican Gov. Tate Reeves for his ties to the welfare scandal, his opposition to Medicaid expansion and his inaction on eliminating the state’s grocery tax — common themes of Presley’s campaign.

“Let me tell you about the man that is our governor,” the ad’s narrator says. “He looks down on us. Thinks Mississippians have no good sense. Was born with a silver spoon in his mouth. And has spent his entire time as governor looking out for his big-shot friends instead of us. That’s Tate Reeves.”

Presley’s campaign has aired several ads this year, but the new ad will be the first one it has purchased to communicate directly to Black voters, who make up about two-thirds of Mississippi Democratic Party’s base. For the Democratic nominee to have a chance at an upset in November, he will have to draw high Black voter turnout.

Ron Owens, Presley’s campaign manager, said in a statement that the Democratic nominee’s campaign decided to invest in ways to connect with Black voters because there is “so much at stake in this election.” 

“This November, Mississippians will reject Tate Reeves because he’s had four years and done nothing to help hardworking families get ahead,” Owens said. 

Reeves has previously aired TV ads touting economic investment in the state, signing legislation into law that bans transgender youth from participating in public school athletics and tying Presley to the national Democratic Party.

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In this edition of Mississippi Stories, Mississippi Today Editor-at-Large Marshall Ramsey sits down with Dr. Andrea Hickerson, Dean of the School of Journalism and New Media at the University of Mississippi.

In this interview, Hickerson talks about her first year as dean, the future of the school, the effect of A.I. on journalism and the direction journalism is headed.

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The State Auditor has now branched into higher education policy thanks to a series of missives on the platform formerly known as Twitter.

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With the November general election less than two months away, no agreement has yet been reached for one or more debates between Republican Gov. Tate Reeves and Democratic challenger Brandon Presley.

But in an emailed response on Thursday, the Reeves campaign said, “We are looking forward to debating Brandon Presley, and working on plans as we speak.”

Michael Beyer, a spokesman for Presley, said the Presley campaign has agreed to a debate invitation from WJTV television in Jackson and television stations across the state owned by Gray Television, including WLBT in Jackson, WDAM in Laurel, WTOK in Meridian and WLOX in Biloxi.

Beyer said other entities have approached the campaign about possible debates or forums, ranging from union groups on the Gulf Coast to the Mississippi State Stennis Institute of Government/Capitol Press Corps to other television stations. Beyer said the campaign most likely would accept some of those invitations.

When asked about the possibility of debates at a Thursday news conference in Hattiesburg, Presley responded: “No update on debates. It’s obvious the governor is hiding out. He doesn’t want to debate. It’s going to take a search team to find him. He won’t even show up in his own TV commercials to talk to the people of Mississippi. So, I highly doubt he’s going to have the guts to stand toe-to-toe with me in a debate. His ads that he’s running are bald-faced lies, and he doesn’t have the guts to stand on a stage and look me in the face and say these lies and so he won’t agree to any debates. He’s scared and he knows he’s scared.”

Earlier this year on social media, Reeves, considered the front-runner for reelection on Nov. 7, challenged California Gov. Gavin Newsom to a debate on gun rights. At the time Presley said Reeves should focus on debating him.

There have been debates, in most cases multiple debates, in every Mississippi gubernatorial campaign since at least 1987 with the exception of one. In 2015, Phil Bryant, running for reelection, did not debate his Democratic opponent. In that year, the Democrats surprisingly nominated a long haul truck driver Robert Gray, who had no political experience. Bryant easily defeated Gray.

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More than 16,000 Mississippians were dropped from Medicaid in August during the latest round of the agency’s disenrollments. 

The pandemic-era federal regulations that prevented state Medicaid agencies from disenrolling beneficiaries ended in May. Since then, Medicaid divisions all over the country are reviewing their rolls for the first time in three years.

In June, 29,460 Mississippians were dropped. Another 22,507 people were disenrolled in July. 

August’s numbers bring the agency’s total number of disenrollments thus far to 68,626 people. Before unwinding began, the agency’s enrollment exceeded 900,000 people for the first time in the agency’s history.

Most concerningly, most of those who were disenrolled — 54,366 people or 79% — have not been kicked off because they’re ineligible. Instead, there were issues with their paperwork – it was either not turned in on time or was incomplete. That could mean some people have been kicked off Medicaid even though they’re still eligible. 

It’s unknown how many of the procedural disenrollments have been children. Children are most at risk of losing benefits during the unwinding process, federal research predicts, and many of them may still be eligible. Kids in low-income families comprise more than half of Mississippi’s overall Medicaid beneficiaries. 

“These are not good numbers,” said Joan Alker, executive director of Georgetown University’s Center for Children and Families. “It’s very concerning to see … people, likely children and parents by and large, losing Medicaid for red tape or procedural reasons.”

According to the Kaiser Family Foundation, 13 states have higher procedural disenrollment rates than Mississippi. 

From June to July, 18,710 kids were unenrolled from Medicaid, when the first wave of disenrollments took place. 

Mississippi Today has requested to interview an agency official about the unwinding data, but the requests were not granted.

New enrollment numbers show that from July to August, another 12,882 children were dropped, bringing the agency’s total of children dropped since unwinding began to 31,592. 

Mississippi Medicaid’s monthly unwinding reports do not say what number of terminations were children, but Mississippi Medicaid spokesperson Matt Westerfield confirmed that most of these disenrollments are due to unwinding.

The agency’s ex-parte rate, or automatic renewal rate, remains low. Westerfield previously told Mississippi Today that the agency wants to increase those rates, but August numbers show that of the 70,069 people up for renewal, only 10,817 were renewed on an ex-parte basis. 

That’s on par with the previous data release, which shows that of the 75,110 people up for renewal in July, 12,188 were renewed ex-parte. 

The agency in August requested permission from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services for “four additional flexibilities that would reduce procedural disenrollments while increasing ex-parte renewals.” According to Westerfield, some were approved, while discussions continue about the others.

The agency’s backlog of beneficiaries to review also keeps growing. In June, about 5,000 renewals were not reviewed. About 15,000 additional reviews went uncompleted in July and another 10,000 in August. 

As unwinding continues for the next several months, the burden on the state’s already crumbling health care infrastructure grows. One report puts nearly a half of the state’s rural hospitals at risk of closure. 

State Republican leaders have adamantly opposed expanding Medicaid to the working poor, which research shows would bring in billions, though presumptive incoming House Speaker Jason White recently indicated he would consider expansion. His predecessor Philip Gunn largely led the effort to oppose the policy change. 

The Kaiser Family Foundation says at least 6,438,000 people nationally have been disenrolled from Medicaid as of Sept. 13.

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