Public universities have gradually shifted their priorities — and a growing portion of their aid dollars — away from low-income students.
Shauniqua Epps was the sort of student that so many colleges say they want.
She was a high achiever, graduating from high school with a 3.8 GPA and ranking among the top students in her class. She served as secretary, then president, of the student government. She played varsity basketball and softball. Her high-school guidance counselor, in a letter of recommendation, wrote that Epps was “an unusual young lady” with “both drive and determination.”
Epps, 19, was also needy.
Her family lives in subsidized housing in South Philadelphia, and her father died when she was in third grade. Her mother is on Social Security disability, which provides the family $698 a month, records show. Neither of her parents finished high school.
Epps, who is African-American, made it her goal to be the first in her family to attend college.
“I did volunteering. I did internships. I did great in school. I was always good with people,” said Epps, who has a broad smile and a cheerful manner. “I thought everything was going to go my way.”
At first, it looked that way.
Epps was admitted to three colleges, all public institutions in Pennsylvania. She was awarded the maximum Pell grant, federal funds intended for needy students. She also qualified for the maximum state grant for needy Pennsylvania students.None of the three schools Epps was admitted to gave her a single dollar of aid.
To attend her dream school, Lincoln University, Epps would have had to come up with about $4,000 per year, after maxing out on federal loans — close to half of what her mother receives from Social Security. It was money her family didn’t have, she said.
Public colleges and universities were generally founded and funded to give students in their states access to an affordable college education. They have long served as a vital pathway for students from modest means and those who are the first in their families to attend college.
But many public universities, faced with their own financial shortfalls, are increasingly leaving low-income students behind — including strivers like Epps.
It’s not just that colleges are continuously pushing up sticker prices. Public universities have also been shifting their aid, giving less to the poorest students and more to the wealthiest.
A ProPublica analysis of new data from the U.S. Department of Education shows that from 1996 through 2012, public colleges and universities gave a declining portion of grants — as measured by both the number of grants and the dollar amounts — to students in the lowest quartile of family income. That trend has continued even though the recession hit those in lower income brackets the hardest.
… Why have public universities across the nation shifted their aid?
“For some schools, they’re trying to climb to the top of the rankings. For other schools, it’s more about revenue generation,” said Don Hossler, a professor of educational leadership and policy studies at Indiana University at Bloomington.
To achieve these goals, schools use their aid to draw wealthier students — especially those from out of state, who will pay more in tuition — or higher-achieving students, whose scores will give the colleges a boost in the rankings.
Private colleges have been using such tactics aggressively for some time. But in recent years, many public colleges have sought to catch up, doing what the industry calls “ financial-aid leveraging.”
The math can work like this: Instead of offering, say, $12,000 to an especially needy student, a school might choose to leverage its aid by giving $3,000 discounts to four students with less need, each of whom scored high on the SAT, who together will bring in more tuition dollars than the needier student.
Those discounts are often offered to prospective students as “merit aid.”
Despite its name, “merit aid isn’t always going to the very best students,” Hossler said. “It’s an intentional strategy to help offset the loss of state support.”
Hossler knows this world firsthand. For years, he carried out such strategies as vice chancellor for enrollment services at Indiana University.
How a violent Tumblr meme sparked an online romance that almost ended with the worst mass killing in Canadian history.
Hey @staff, @support - here’s how Tumblr’s steadfast refusal to block white supremacists and neo-nazis from your platform resulted in radicalizing a teenager that is now serving a life sentence for plotting a mass shooting with someone else she met here.
Nice going, dipshits.
How many other would-be and actual mass murderers have been radicalized by the bigots you provide a platform for?
genuinely love how absolutely every single thing in this article is a known right wing trope by now and yet wider society still treats right wing terror as a bunch of lone wolves
“Update: The student who wrote the letter has been found and we’re in the process of finding a way to reward her for her actions. Very grateful for what she did”
dems on this website have already started their “any valid criticism of dem presidential nominees is a win for tr*mp” bs this is really gonna be 2016 2: electric boogaloo
dang, this one’s gonna sting the ‘let the market solve climate change’ crowd. turns out the coming death of the planet is going to be profitable after all.
honestly if tumblr does die like a good 75% of twitter users are screwed cause they’ve been ripping off posts from here and blocking everyone who calls them out
SUNY Purchase is the college this was put up at. Currently our campus does not care about any issues unless it gets media attention.
The ADA is currently suing our campus because of multiple ADA violations and incompetence towards disabled students, mentally/physically or mentally ill.
One of our apartments was supposed to be a temporary building, but is still being used to house students despite one of the ceilings caving in in one of the apartments and displacing its occupants.
We have a major mold and lead problem that is still going unfixed.
We have a University Police force that has been ruled to be incompetent in protecting the student body.
Work orders on campus are ultimately useless and nothing on campus ever gets fixed unless it gets media attention (our ADA violation and the shrine).
We have so many many many more issues that goes unsolved because our college refuses to fix any of them unless they get media attention. As much as the now defunct shrine is funny, the fact the student body is neglected so badly by the college shouldn’t go ignored.
Placing stickers on the suffragist's gravestone has become a kind of pilgrimage for voters in Rochester, N.Y. With a record number of women running, the tribute has special significance this year.
“I will cut off this right arm of mine before I will ever work or demand the ballot for the Negro and not the woman.”
“What words can express her (the white woman’s) humiliation when, at the close of this long conflict, the government which she had served so faithfully held her unworthy of a voice in its councils, while it recognized as the political superiors of all the noble women of the nation the negro men just emerged from slavery, and not only totally illiterate, but also densely ignorant of every public question.”
“The old anti-slavery school says women must stand back and wait until the negroes shall be recognized. But we say, if you will not give the whole loaf of suffrage to the entire people, give it to the most intelligent first. If intelligence, justice, and morality are to have precedence in the government, let the question of the woman be brought up first and that of the negro last.”
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