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Private institutions of higher education, such as Saint Mary’s University, are noticing an increase in students asking for more financial aid who in years past required minimal help to pay for school. Because public financial aid has failed to keep pace with the rising costs of education, universities and colleges are being forced to step up to the plate, otherwise having to slash costs or run the risk of gaining the reputation of being inaccessible and elitist.
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Amy Streit, 19, a freshman at Saint Mary’s University, completes a worksheet Monday morning in her English Composition class. Streit qualified for the Brother James Miller Program for Access at SMU because her family makes under $75,000 a year. The university will expand the program for 2009 incoming freshman to include those whose families make under $100,000 a year.
(Photo by Melissa Carlo/Winona Daily News) |
To combat that, SMU has expanded its Brother James Miller Program for Access, which guarantees that qualifying freshmen will pay less than or equal to the cost to attend the University of Minnesota-Twin Cities for in-state students — about $21,000 for the 2008-09 school year, about $10,000 less than SMU.
Since its inception in 2007, the program has been available to students whose families earned less than $75,000, but beginning next fall, the program has been expanded to those whose families earn up to $100,000.
“It would probably help the budget if everyone was a full payer, but that would be contrary to our mission,” SMU vice president of admissions Anthony Piscitiello said.
“We just don’t see ourselves as elitist. We think of ourselves as a darn good school but not just for kids from rich families.”
Even before the fund expanded, SMU noticed an increase in students who needed additional aid. Almost double the number of students who qualified for the program in fall 2006 qualified in 2007, and that number increased again this year. Trends show the family median income for students who applied for financial aid at SMU has risen over the years, Piscitiello said, from about $74,000 three years ago to more than $90,000 this year.
Students aren’t just seeking aid from universities. Official numbers for 2009 requests for federal aid are not in yet, but anecdotal evidence suggests this year’s financial downturn has made it even harder on students to afford school.
“I think it’s safe to say more students are coming to us, saying they need to borrow some money from one of the federal loans programs because things are tighter financially at home,” Piscitiello said.
Private colleges statewide expect to see an increased demand for financial aid because of the economic downturn, said John Manning, a spokesman for the Minnesota Private College Council, Fund and Research Foundation.
The average cost to attend private colleges and universities in Minnesota has risen from about $20,000 a decade ago to about $33,000 in the 2007-08 school year. Those kinds of costs, compared with in-state tuition costs at Winona State University of about $7,200 for this year’s freshmen, can be hard to swallow for middle-class families. Schools such as SMU have had to fight back by ramping up their scholarship funds. In 2001, the school spent about $4 million on grants and scholarships for students; this academic year, that number has ballooned to more than $11 million.
It’s a way for universities to become more economically diverse.
“I generally think diversity is a good idea,” Brooke Lenz, a SMU English professor said.
The debate about how to make universities diverse has shifted over the years because of the conflict surrounding affirmative action policies. More and more, schools are looking at diversity on an economic level as well as with cultural and racial concerns. Lenz said she supports those efforts, because it gives her classes a wider demographic, which stimulates the academic environment.
Amy Streit, a freshman from Oak Lawn, Ill., chose SMU over another private school because of its financial aid offerings. Her family makes just less than the $75,000 cutoff to qualify for the Program for Access, oftentimes the no man’s land between making enough to afford to pay for college without help and the normal qualifying levels for financial aid.
The grant has helped Streit now and undoubtedly will help in the future.
“It’s given me more time to study,” she said. “It means I don’t have to work as much as I would have.”
Streit would have found it difficult to afford SMU if not for the Program for Access, she said. Even with that grant and other financial aid, she still will likely come out of college at least $20,000 in debt — lower than most but still a heavy burden for someone with dreams of being an elementary teacher.
“It helped,” she said. “It helped a lot.”
