State checking collegians’ Social Security numbers
Posted on Friday, May 30, 2008
The Arkansas Department of Higher Education has begun checking students’ Social Security numbers and alerting colleges and universities if they appear invalid.
Jim Purcell, the department director, said Thursday that the goal is to ensure that illegal aliens aren’t allowed to pay instate tuition rates when state officials think they’re ineligible under federal law. The investigation into the Social Security numbers began last week after Purcell alerted institutions, at the direction of Gov. Mike Beebe, that they need to ask students for evidence of legal residency before allowing them to pay the cheaper in-state rates.
Purcell said the first check flagged about 2, 000 Social Security numbers from the 2007-08 academic year that appear to be invalid, though that doesn’t necessarily mean the students are illegal aliens. They could include international students in the country legally or U. S. citizens who don’t want to share their Social Security numbers, he said.
That figure represents less than 2 percent of the total student population in Arkansas colleges and universities that year. There were about 121, 000 students enrolled at the beginning of the fall 2007 semester.
The department will ask colleges and universities to check if those students have a legitimate reason to have an invalid Social Security number on file, such as being in the country on a student visa. If the students with invalid numbers are paying in-state tuition, they’ll need to show proof of legal residency, he said.
“We’ll probably send them the information to make sure they check for the future, that those students in the fall will not get something they don’t deserve,” Purcell said. The checks probably won’t require that colleges and universities seek extra tuition payments for a semester that’s already passed, he said.
Last week, Beebe directed Purcell to send a letter to college and university presidents, after he said he learned for the first time the state’s largest universities offer in-state tuition rates to Arkansas high-school graduates regardless of their legal status.
In-state tuition is far cheaper, sometimes a third or less, than the rates paid by students from outside Arkansas.
University of Arkansas campuses and the University of Central Arkansas said they’d change their policies in response. UCA and UA-Fayetteville, for example, had not required applicants to submit Social Security numbers or other proof of legal residency when admitted and granted instate status.
Officials from those schools said they’d begin changing the application processes immediately.
Arkansas State University already required students to answer questions about their citizenship and residency.
The Associated Press reported Thursday that ASU President Les Wyatt wrote in e-mails to the Higher Education Department that some schools “have boosted their enrollments by disregarding these restrictions” and received more state funding as a result.
“So, what will be done to recover the money wrongly distributed... and give that money instead to those institutions which deserve it because of the enrollments they have posted within the limits of applicable laws,” Wyatt wrote. “How will the current funding base be revised so that some institutions will not benefit forever from breaking the law ?”
Purcell said Thursday he didn’t think there was any effort to raise student enrollment numbers with lax admission policies.
“I think that’s too much effort for too little gain,” he said. “I think they’re probably doing it more for humanitarian reasons than improving their position in the funding formula.”
UA President B. Alan Sugg and UCA President Lu Hardin declined to respond to Wyatt’s e-mail.
State government heavily subsidizes higher education, though department officials said the funding formula for colleges and universities is too complex to produce a per-student funding figure. That’s because the formula is based on the courses an institution offers, so the perstudent amount differs depending on what courses the student takes.
The total state funding for daily operation expenses at colleges and universities in the current fiscal year is $ 799. 8 million.
Beebe has based his stance on the issue on a 1996 federal law stating that an illegal alien “shall not be eligible on the basis of residence within a state (or a political subdivision ) for any post-secondary education benefit unless a citizen or national of the United States is eligible for such a benefit (in no less an amount, duration and scope ) without regard to whether the citizen or national is such a resident.”
However, several states have passed laws saying that their high-school graduates qualify for in-state tuition regardless of legal status. A lawsuit in Kansas challenging one of those was thrown out because the judge found that the plaintiffs lacked legal standing to sue. Last year, a panel of the 10 th U. S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Denver upheld the judge’s ruling.
The checks to validate Social Security numbers aren’t a direct match with a national database, Purcell said. Rather, the Higher Education Department received information from the Social Security Administration on what a valid number looks like, and the department ran the checks based on that guidance, he said.
For example, numbers that begin with “000” or “999” were flagged for institutions to check, because no valid Social Security number begins like that.
Purcell said it’s not his intent for colleges and universities to verify students’ legal status and to remove them from campus if they’re not in the country legally. It’s just to ensure they’re not afforded the privilege of paying the state-subsidized tuition rates, he said.
No law requires colleges and universities to verify students ’ legal status for admission. The U. S. Department of Homeland Security clarified that earlier this month in answer to a question about a North Carolina community college’s admissions policy.
“The Department of Homeland Security does not require any school to determine a student’s status.... DHS also does not require any school to request immigration status information prior to enrolling students or to report to the government if they know a student is out of status,” the Homeland Security department stated, adding that the exception applies if the students came into the country on visas for exchange purposes.
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