Ohio State makes access for students with financial need a priority

COLUMBUS – To ensure that all academically qualified students have access to a higher education, The Ohio State University offers approximately 85 percent of its financial aid to students with need.

The university also uses a financial aid packaging strategy to help students with their long-term needs and is researching problems that hamper the education of students receiving aid.

This academic year, Ohio State’s Columbus campus spent nearly $46 million in need-based and merit aid for students with financial need. In addition, the university spent $8 million on merit-only scholarships. From 1999 to 2003, Columbus enrollment grew from 36,092 to 36,855, and the number of students with financial need grew from 15,599 to 16,783, or by about 7 percent.

President Karen Holbrook said increasing assistance is important to help students with financial need get access to a higher education.

“We will continue to provide increased financial assistance so far as possible so that no qualified student is unable to attend Ohio State for financial reasons,” Holbrook said.

At Ohio State, nearly 25,000 students – approximately 67 percent of students enrolled – depend on some type of financial assistance, including federal Pell Grants awarded to 8,365 undergraduate students at the Columbus campus with high financial need.

The deadline for incoming freshmen and continuing undergraduate students to apply for the Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA) is March 1.

Tally Hart, director of student financial aid, said the university first tries to match students needing financial assistance with merit-based scholarships. Then, students who don’t qualify for merit-based scholarships receive need-based aid to help fund their education.

“Many students who qualify for merit-based scholarships also are in need of financial assistance,” Hart said. “We do everything we can to help students interested in achieving a higher education get the financial assistance they need to pursue their degrees.”

To that end, the university created a financial aid packaging strategy for students, Hart said. Students whose families can contribute $1,500 or less per year receive a full financial aid package. The package includes work-study awards and low-interest loans as well as university, federal and state grants, Hart said.

“We have found with this strategy that for the first time in years of studying student response, our neediest students now enroll at a rate comparable to their less needy counterparts,” Hart said in September testimony before the National Advisory Committee on Student Financial Aid. When matched academically, she said the retention of students with aid is as high as those not receiving it.

To understand issues affecting students who receive financial aid, Ohio State is researching why some needy students default on loans. Ohio State’s Office of Financial Aid teamed up with the Office of Enrollment Management and the Department of Geography five years ago to examine the issue. The research suggests that students default on loans primarily because they drop out of college or have a high level of consumer debt.

“We are at the leading edge of research on the impact of financial aid on retention and graduation,” Hart said. “The research has given us some insight into the ways that we can make college available for all needy students and keep them in classes once they are enrolled.”

Ohio State offers personal financial education to freshman students to help them manage consumer debt. Each year, students take seminars on topics such as balancing a checkbook, investing, and good and bad uses of credit cards.

“We believe this approach sets a tone of financial responsibility and services to support good practices among our students, allowing them to focus on the classroom rather than their next credit card bills,” Hart said.