Scholarships try to stay in stride with tuition costs
Three years ago, Utah State University changed its scholarships from a tuition-based system to a system based on fixed dollar amounts.
This means students who before received full, half or quarter tuition waivers now receive a sum that will remain the same every year. So, as tuition goes up, the amount of their scholarship will not.
Joyce Kinkead, vice provost for undergraduate studies and research, said each year a group of entering freshmen are awarded scholarships as close to tuition costs as possible. This amount then stays the same throughout the rest of their schooling, even as tuition increases. Each year’s freshmen receive an amount higher than the freshmen of the year before. About 50 percent of the entering freshmen in 2005 had some kind of academic award from the university, Kinkead said.
The dollar-amount method is easier for the school for several reasons, Kinkead said. First, the school only has a certain amount of money in the waiver budget. To waiver a student’s tuition is to exempt him or her from paying all or part of it. Every time a student’s tuition is waivered, it means the school loses revenue, Kinkead said.
Another benefit of the fixed-dollar amount system is administration can allocate how to use available money over the next years. Kinkead said planning is done six years in advance.
“By going with dollar-based scholarships, we can decide how much money can be given,” she said.
Jenn Putnam, associate director of recruitment, said a large part of the school’s scholarship budget comes from waivers from the state Legislature. These waivers are based on the percentage of enrolled students receiving scholarships, she said. With enrollment dropping, the amount of money provided by the Legislature is dropping, too.
Another reason to go to dollar-based scholarships is it provides easier access to funds, Kinkead said. As tuition increases and scholarships hold steady, a gap will appear for most students down the road. This money must be made up by students out of pocket or through departmental scholarships and can then be used by the school to give another student a scholarship or to make up the budget deficit.
“We would love to give full-ride scholarships, but we don’t have the funds,” Kinkead said. She said the GPA requirement was lowered from as much as 3.8 in some cases to 3.5 to help students retain their scholarships.
Though the widening gap between tuition and scholarship amounts may help the school, students have to make that up somehow. Alex Nokes, a junior majoring in education, said she works part time during school and full time over the summer. She also takes out student loans.
“I have $300 in fees and $400 worth of books every semester, but it’s still better than paying over $12,000,” she said.
Nokes has a presidential non-resident scholarship, which goes toward her tuition for four semesters. She said she earned her scholarship with a 4.0 high school GPA. She said though it is sometimes difficult to keep her GPA above the 3.5 now, it gets easier every semester as she finishes more classes and adds to her transcript.
Nokes said though having her scholarship made planning for graduation more important, because dropping classes or taking “fun classes” would waste her scholarship money and she never had to put off classes because she couldn’t afford them.
Kinkead said her office has received a few calls from concerned students about scholarship money.
“I earned my tuition by doing well in high school,” Kinkead said. She said students who do well in their departments can make up the money their scholarships don’t cover. Almost all of USU’s scholarships are given based on merit, she said.
Although, according to Kinkead, departmental scholarship money is left on the table by students every year, Putnam said academic scholarship money for freshmen and transfer students is always used up.
Putnam said another reason for going to dollar-based amounts is because the school could make all scholarships four-year, whereas they used to be one-year, two-year or four-year.
Kinkead said the school’s mission as a land-grant institution is to spread around the available scholarship money as much as possible. Land-grant institutions were established by the Morrill Act in 1862, which set aside land in each state for schools for children of the working class. Kinkead said as a public institution, USU is particularly interested in first-generation college students who may not be receiving financial support from home.
-ella@cc.usu.edu