Students struggle to pay for Ohio’s cheapest schools

The average debt load for college graduates in Ohio  is $25,842.

Poverty Programs Coordinator Rebecca Fensler runs the newly opened food bank at Wright State University, where students who are having financial troubles and are in danger of leaving school can go for food.

Jim Witmer/Staff Poverty Programs Coordinator Rebecca Fensler runs the newly opened food bank at Wright State University, where students who are having financial troubles and are in danger of leaving school can go for food.

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By Christopher Magan, Staff Writer 9:32 PM Saturday, March 26, 2011

After realizing a growing number of students on the Wright State University campus were struggling to make ends meet, school leaders decided to open a food pantry in February.

“I’ve heard stories from students who are unemployed, can’t find a job and went back to school. Some have kids and may not eat themselves so they can provide for their families,” said Rebecca Fensler, who runs the pantry as part of an AmeriCorps project. It is an uncommon sight on the typical college campus, but a sign that a growing number of students are buckling under the ever-increasing costs of college.

Jennifer Penick, WSU financial aid director, said a growing number of students are finding it difficult to borrow enough money on their own to attend school and cover living expenses.

“Many incoming students may have to change their first choice based on cost,” Penick said. “The trend long term has absolutely been that financial aid doesn’t go as far.”

Students younger than age 24 from moderate- to low-income families can fall into a gap where their parents’ income is counted against them. While their parents may qualify for federal loans, they cannot afford them. Meanwhile, the maximum aid these students can receive from federal Pell Grants and Stafford loans on their own is $13,050 — thousands less than the total cost of attending a four-year state university, which runs between $20,000 and $30,000, when living expenses are factored in.

“Some of the saddest cases we see are they know mom and dad don’t have any money, they come from a low-income family, so they apply for financial aid expecting it will be enough to attend Wright State and live on campus,” Penick said. “They can’t.”

Pell Grant changes coming

To help deal with growing tuition costs, Pell Grants have grown substantially in recent years with nearly 10 million students now receiving federal aid up to the maximum of $5,550 annually. Both President Obama and Congress have proposed modifying the program to help close budget deficits. Obama would do away with grants for summer school and keep the maximum grant award intact, while Congress proposed reducing that amount by 15 percent, and possibly eliminate  1.7 million students from the program.

“If that happens, we will have hundreds of thousands of students dropping out of college nationwide,” said Mark Kantrowitz, a national financial aid expert who publishes the websites Finaid.org and Fastweb.com.

The Pell Grant program is essential for schools like Sinclair, Wright State or Central State, where more than 80 percent of students are eligible and nearly a quarter can expect no family contribution, said Phyllis Jeffers-Coly, dean of enrollment services at CSU.

“It is critical to our students,” Jeffers-Coly said. A group of CSU students plan to head to Washington in coming weeks with others from across the country to lobby Congress to keep the maximum Pell Grant intact.

Steven Johnson, Sinclair Community College president, said about half his college’s students are Pell eligible and the grants are key to their attendance and success.

“We are seeing students in Dayton become poorer and poorer,” Johnson said. “The loss of financial aid money, that is a really big deal.”

Pell Grants now cover the entire cost of tuition at Sinclair and CSU, but that’s not the case at most state schools. To make up the difference, parents must borrow or students are driven to private financial institutions, where it is hard to qualify and the terms are not as generous.

“As a general rule, if you need it then you won’t qualify,” Penick said of private bank loans. “It means students can’t attend their institution of choice. Can they go someplace else? Maybe.”

Cheaper paths  to degrees

The ability to attend other schools, specifically cheaper community colleges, and then transfer credits to larger state universities is key to affordable bachelor’s degrees, according to Jim Petro, the new higher education chancellor appointed by Gov. John Kasich.

“The decisions made over the last four or five years that allow for ease of transferability make the road to a baccalaureate degree more cost effective today,” Petro said.

By summer, the chancellor is expected to offer Kasich a plan to reduce higher education costs by shortening the time required for some degrees, pooling or “clustering” resources, having professors teach more and reducing regulations by giving universities that want it “charter” status.

Those moves are supported by university leaders because they could give administrators more autonomy over decisions like construction, purchasing and tuition costs in exchange for less support from the state. Petro said “access and affordability” will be part of his plan, adding that there will be “different goals for different types of institutions.”

Expanding community colleges

The role and goals of community colleges in the state could see the biggest changes because they are affordable enough to become both an entry point to higher education and the center for remedial education for the more than one-third of high school graduates that are not college ready.

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