Fearing that the rising cost of tuition could discourage middle-and low- income students from pursuing a college education, severaluniversities have redesigned their financial aid policies toeliminate the post-college debt caused by outstanding tuitionloans.
The University of Maryland, which saw tuition increase by morethan $1,000 last year, responded to the risk of pricing-outlow-income students by launching the Maryland Pathways program.
Expected to take effect for the 2004-05 academic year, theprogram promises to eliminate, or greatly reduce, student loansthrough a combination of grants and paid on-campus work.
“Maryland Pathways demonstrates our commitment to beingaccessible to all incoming students, regardless of their financialcircumstances,” said Barbara Gill, director of undergraduateadmissions at the University of Maryland.
Expected to benefit about 12 percent of the incoming freshmanclass, Maryland Pathways will cost the University of Maryland $1.6million per year as soon as the program is implemented in full. Tomaintain the program, funds will come from private donations andother aid programs.
In a similar move, the University of Virginia announced a planthat will replace loans for low- and middle-income students aswell. Access UVa, as the program is called, differs from MarylandPathways in that students in the program will not be required tohold an on-campus job and Access UVa will cost the university anadditional $16 million each year beginning in fall of 2005.
Despite the debt-reducing initiatives other universities havetaken, Northwestern officials said the university will notinstitute a similar program any time soon.
“We could not go to the point where we could afford to providegrants instead of loans,” said Rebecca Dixon, associate provost foruniversity enrollment. “(Such a program) would require a lot ofmoney for a private institution to come up with, so it would be tooexpensive to introduce.”
Some students said they support NU’s decision to stick withgiving loans only and said they believe that institutingdebt-reduction programs such as Maryland Pathways and Access UVa isunreasonable.
“Using grants to eliminate loans is taking a step in the wrongdirection,” said John Rose, a McCormick sophomore. “People who payloans are at least accepting the responsibility of paying fortuition later rather than not paying it at all.”
Music senior Tara Davis utilized loans to pay for hertuition.
Unlike Rose, Davis said she believes allowing students tograduate debt-free would be beneficial.
“Debts can be very detrimental to your credit.” Davis said.”Unless they’re in (McCormick School of Engineering and AppliedScience), many students can end up having to deal with debts fordecades.”
