Happy New Year

Happy New Year.

As with all commencements, a new year brings hopes and wishes for the future. When we make New Year resolutions, they are generally things in which we have some control over the outcome. So, this year I am not going to make any resolutions, but rather some New Year "wishes". Over the next few weeks, I am going to share some of my wishes for the future with you.

"I wish college costs would stabilize." This spiraling of college costs has got to stop. Yes, I know that providing a quality education costs big dollars, and that faculty salaries need to increase and facilities need to be improved. But there is one easy way to slow the cost... stop offering merit awards! Unless you are one of the few rich institutions in the nation who can reach into their endowment to fund financial aid, "no-need merit awards" have to be funded out of increased tuition. Tuition costs need to rise substantially for all, to fund the "discount" to some who have no demonstrated need for the funds. With the extent that institutions raise tuition to fund a discount for students with no need, the spiral will never stop. High need, qualified students who do not meet the institutional profile for merit awards suffer the most.

Why do we have merit awards in this time of surplus students? It certainly is not the need to fill beds on our campuses, but rather the need to meet some institutional enrollment goal. While some of these may be lofty goals, they come at a price which puts the low income, high need students at a disadvantage. Without knowledge of the financial aid system, the price tag alone discourages many low income students who are fully qualified to attend our institutions. Discontinuing the merit system can immediately lower the institutional financial aid budget, and immediately slow the tuition spiral which funds these programs.

"I wish students could hear what we tell them."

It is not that students don't listen; in fact, today's students are absorbing more messages than we ever did, and from more sources. It is just that today's "millennial" student communicates differently and responds to different messaging. As higher education administrators, we have not caught up with them, or fully come to understand how they communicate. It always gives me a chuckle when I hear aid administrators lament "students don't read anything I give them." In the back of my head I keep hearing myself respond "If you know they don't read anything, why do you keep giving them stuff to read?"! And don't pat yourself on the back and say "all of my materials are on the web", that's simply electronic reading.

In our Wellness campaigns we constantly hear students say "I wish I had not borrowed so much", or "I wish I had known that.....". The fact is that they did have the opportunity to know how much they were borrowing or how the process worked. It is our failure in not communicating in a language or method which they can absorb. One of the prime goals of ASA's Wellness programs is to learn what messages and methods can influence a student's behavior to keep them financially healthy.

I have some more wises for you that I will share over the next few weeks, but I'd like to hear if you have any of your own.

Best, Duane

Posted by Duane Quinn on January 03, 2007 at 03:43 PM EST

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