Washington ? The Department of Education on Thursday announced a new formula for calculating eligibility for college financial aid, a move that will eliminate federal Pell Grant scholarships for an estimated 80,000 to 90,000 low-income students and force a modest scaling back of other types of state and federal assistance to broader categories of undergraduates.

Bush administration officials said the new formula — which is used to measure a family’s ability to pay college costs — would save the government at least $300 million in the 2005-2006 academic year. The neediest students, who receive the maximum federal scholarship of $4,050, will be unaffected, and only a small fraction of the 5.3 million Pell recipients will lose their grants entirely, officials said.

U.S. Department of Education

The previous formula was a decade old and relied on 1990 data that is widely acknowledged to be out of date. The new formula uses tax data from 2002.

Congress, however, had resisted the change in a series of bills approved by both houses over the last 18 months, and education officials indicated Thursday they were taken aback by the timing of the announcement, just two days before Christmas.

Because many states use the federal formula to calculate aid to students at state universities, the changes announced Thursday will have a ripple effect, education officials said. Eligibility for subsidized federal student loans also could be affected. But nonsubsidized loans, which are not tied to a family’s income, would not be affected.