School of General Studies struggles with financial aid

Despite changes to the financial aid system, graduating from the School of General Studies still means learning to navigate what can be a black hole of loan payments and debt.

In the spring of 2008, the School of General Studies unveiled a financial aid framework that refashioned what had for decades been an exclusively merit-based system. The new model considered both need and merit when disbursing institutional aid funds to students. But even after aggressive fundraising and significant increases in the annual budget reserved for financial aid, the average debt of a GS graduate continues to grow.

General Studies Student Council President Katherine Edwards said that her council has worked to educate the student body about financial aid and to advocate for more need-based financial aid.

As Edwards explained, there is a dearth of need-based allocations in a school that, even with its merit-based system, suffers due to a small endowment, a unique history, and population of nontraditional students experiencing diverse financial circumstances.

“This [meager financial aid] is a major, major concern for GS students trying to finance their education,” Edwards said.

Different schools, different budgets

While GS students are supposed to be fully integrated into undergraduate life—they attend lectures and seminars alongside Columbia College students and take on majors with identical requirements to those at CC—they do not enjoy the same access to financial aid. This is worsened—and, to an extent, caused—by their status as nontraditional students.

Unlike their CC or School of Engineering and Applied Science student counterparts who may be at least partially dependent on their parents, many GS students support their own families or have spent years in the working world before coming to Columbia.

Over the past few years, GS has strengthened its aid services. With 1,354 students enrolled, the school currently provides institutional aid to 60 percent of its students. Additionally, 74 percent of students receive some form of aid, including scholarship funds from external entities. 36 percent of the student body receives Pell Grants, which are need-based grants for low-income students. The amount of GS money set aside for financial aid has climbed in recent years, with a budget that has risen from $4,545,467 in 2004-2005 to $9,453,000 this year. 11 to 12 percent of that money goes to students whose main criteria for aid is need. Most of the money, in turn, is shelled out according to a student’s academic performance at GS.

At CC, 46 percent students acquire University grants, 50 percent receive grants from any source, and 15.7 percent receive Pell Grants.

GS financial aid: a complex history

But statistics deceive, administrators say. GS Dean Peter Awn stresses that the school’s low endowment prevents substantial return of tuition funds to students in the form of aid—a figure represented by what is known as the discount rate. Whereas CC’s discount rate is 42 percent this year, GS’s is 23 percent. This results in rather meager financial aid packages for GS students, and larger debt-—in the form of loan burden or otherwise—for students already weighed down by the housing, travel, and possible family finances of a nontraditional education.

“It’s an unfortunately hard-nosed cost-benefit analysis that a prospective student has to make,” Awn said. The administration and GSSC continue to make strides in broadening and improving the availability of aid, yet last year’s GS graduates left with an average debt of $48,028, in contrast with the $17,446 average burden of graduates 10 years ago. Those who took out loans graduated on average with $68,359 in the hole, about twice the loan burden shouldered by graduates 10 years ago.

The current administrative and student council tactic involves attempting to enhance the discount rate, demystifying the aid process, soliciting funds from alumni, friends, and organizations, and examining new financial models, according to GS administrators and Edwards. If the Columbia Campaign for Undergraduate Education accomplishes its goals, GS’s endowment will go up by $15 million.

Still, GS’s situation at Columbia presents obstacles.

After years of a merit-based system, GS financial aid experienced need enhancements in 2008. Having served adult students through the first half of the 20th century, GS did not offer financial aid until the 1940s, when more nontraditional students—veterans, family men and women, and working people—enrolled in the liberal arts college.

“Colleges for adults tended to provide aid solely for merit reasons,” GS Dean of enrollment management and communications Curtis Rodgers said. “It was presumed that they [nontraditional students] would make money.” Until full integration into the undergraduate student body, which happened later, GS maintained a lower tuition than the College. GS tuition is currently comparable to CC tuition.

Reforming the model

As GS pursues more financial aid initiatives among an increasingly varied and diverse student body, administrators ponder how to best refine the questionnaires that help determine the aid needs of an individual student.

Traditional colleges calculate what is known as the estimated family contribution, which takes into account, among other factors, family income, and household size when considering the amount of financial aid to dole out to each student. While GS uses such a system, its students’ circumstances are more complicated.

According to Awn, the school sometimes encounters cases where students are funded by rich partners, have saved up significantly yet lack an income for the years they attend GS, or have been disowned by wealthy parents.

“We need to press students to be forthcoming,” Awn said. He added that future questionnaires will ask students the amount of debt they would be willing to accrue, and may request them to predict their earning power after GS.

From the student side, Edwards said, the daunting nature of such a task has helped to establish a guiding question for GSSC: “How do you look at the big picture without overwhelming the nontraditional student?”

Edwards noted that in drafting the new survey, the administration looks to models of American medical schools, where many nontraditional students obtain financial aid. But as Awn pointed out, while he is “loath to not take away the merit-based model,” GS must greatly augment its aid budget before implementing these models.

For now, the GSSC and administrators hope to “get more student input in decision-making process,” Edwards said. The school’s Web site now contains updated, detailed data on the financial aid process, and the GSSC is spearheading events where students can meet with administrators to voice their concerns and learn more about financial aid.

“Students have a romanticized vision of financial aid at CC,” Awn said of GS students who idealize CC aid. He argued that greater clarity on both the student and administrative side would facilitate dialogue.

“Our priority is the discount rate.… People do not understand this," Awn said. "If we had an equivalent amount of financial aid to CC, we could have a robust system."