Private college grant to be cut: Strickland wants to switch aid to students with lower income
Gov. Ted Strickland wants to increase aid to lower-income students in all Ohio colleges by cutting back on a special grant that now goes to any state resident attending a private school.
But try telling that to the tuition-paying parents of 45,000 students at risk of losing that $900 a year or to the heads of private colleges who are fuming about the possible loss of $35 million in grants statewide.
“If it were just my older daughter, who’s at Ursuline [College], I can absorb it, but I don’t know what we’re going to do now,” said Bob Vaughan of Bainbridge Township. Another daughter is a freshman at Notre Dame College and two other children are still in high school.
Strickland’s budget proposal would limit the $900 annual grants, known as Ohio Choice Grants, to students whose family income is under $75,000 and who have less than $2,200 to contribute toward tuition each year, among other factors.
That cuts out about two-thirds of the students who currently get the grants, according to the Association of Independent Colleges and Universities in Ohio. The Vaughan family is one that wouldn’t qualify.
If the state legislature approves Strickland’s plan, the budget for Choice Grants will shrink from $53 million annually to $18 million.
The savings will go toward Ohio College Opportunity Grants, which are given to students at both public and private schools. Under that program, students who meet the income requirements can get up to $2,496 for public schools and up to $4,992 for private schools.
Ohio Board of Regents Chancellor Eric Fingerhut is unwavering about the “difficult but deeply considered” decision to cut back on Choice Grants. The days of spreading a little bit of money “like peanut butter” to everyone around the state are over, he said, adding the changes will target spending to students in need.
The state’s private colleges and universities have mobilized to pressure lawmakers to keep Choice Grants, which affect institutions differently depending on the number of needy and in-state students they have.
Only about 30 percent of Myers University students, who are typically working adults with lower incomes, will lose Choice Grants. At Kenyon College, the well-regarded liberal arts school in Central Ohio, 99 percent of student who currently get Choice Grants would no longer qualify.
The proposed cut has brought the “darkest day” for financial aid counselors, said George Rolleston, financial aid director at Baldwin-Wallace College. B-W has the second-largest number of students receiving Choice Grants, behind the University of Dayton.
Rolleston said a few hundred dollars could make the difference in attracting a student to a college, so $900 certainly makes a difference. Often, the Choice Grant is the only aid other than loans offered to a family with middle-to-high income.
The average cost of undergraduate tuition and fees at the state’s nonprofit, private colleges is just over $20,000.
Troy Jones, president of the Association of Independent Colleges and Universities, said there’s more at stake than just student aid. If Strickland wants more college graduates in the state, he will need private colleges to keep producing them, too. And colleges in bordering states will be better able to lure away students without a $900 incentive to stay, he said.
