Fewer Merit Scholarships Planned
University redistributes aid to protect needy students.
SYRACUSE, N.Y., March 23, 2009 -- Faced with a record number of financial aid appeals, Syracuse University is scrambling to meet student need with a variety of measures, including steep cuts in merit scholarships.
"Everything is on the table," said Youlonda Copeland-Morgan, Syracuse University's associate vice president for enrollment management and director of scholarships and student aid.
That means an emergency fundraising drive for aid, a smaller tuition increase than normal and administrative budget cuts.
It also means a redistribution of all aid money, resulting in a 22 percent reduction of merit-based aid Syracuse will award to the incoming freshman class of 2013, administrators confirmed.
"In our overall goals to ensure that we are providing adequate financial aid for all students, part of our review has been to look at how we're spending current dollars and whether that's an effective use of those dollars," Copeland-Morgan said.
The economic downturn has forced Syracuse and nearly every institution of higher education to invent creative methods to fill the financial needs of their students. Merit scholarship programs are frequently becoming casualties.
Universities across the country are facing record requests for financial aid, said Mark Kantrowitz, publisher of finaid.org, which tracks financial aid packages.
"They are being more careful to target their own aid dollars at the students with the greatest financial need," Kantrowitz said. "For example, focusing on students whose parents have lost their jobs over those with just college savings plan losses."
Merit scholarship programs at the state level in Florida, Michigan, Nevada, New Jersey and West Virginia face cuts because of budget concerns and the need to shift aid elsewhere.
Michigan could eliminate its $200 million merit scholarships program, according to The Chronicle of Higher Education.
In New Jersey, standards for the Student Tuition Assistance Reward Scholarships (STARS) program were tightened to include high school graduates in the top 15 percent of their class, rather than the top 20 percent.
Public schools, like the University of Massachusetts, will raise student fees by $1,500 to expand their financial aid program. The 15 percent hike would raise in-state tuition to around $11,000, UMass officials said. It would generate $68 million in new revenue, $20 million of which would go to financial aid, The Boston Globe reported.
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