News

SFAP voices concerns about financial aid cuts

In print | December 3, 2009

**Earlier this week, members from the Student Advisory Panel drafted a letter to the Ad Hoc Financial Planning Group and the Board of Managers that voiced students’ concerns over proposed budget cuts, namely to financial aid.

Board members are meeting tomorrow and Saturday to review the Ad Hoc Financial Planning Group’s proposed $6.85 million in budget cuts for the 2010-2011 school year.

SFAP members will present the recommendations outlined in their letter at the planning group’s final meeting today and at the board’s meeting tomorrow. The letter was sent to both the planning group and the board before their respective meetings.

“We wanted the letter to be sent to Board members in advance so that they would be aware of students’ concerns and positions on the budget cuts and future decision-making processes,” Student Council President and SFAP member Rachel Bell ’10 said in an e-mail. “We’re excited to be given the opportunity; normally a student statement is not sent out with the other preparation materials in advance of the meeting.”

Financial Policy Representative and SFAP member Dan Symonds ’11 echoed Bell.

“[The letter] outlines tenets that we feel are important to keep,” Symonds said. “I think we do a pretty good job of bringing up concerns that [the board members] might not have been aware of because of their proximity to student life.”

The letter states SFAP members’ opinion on what should be preserved within the college — such as faculty and staff health benefits, fair compensation and the honors program — but focuses most particularly on students’ concern over proposed changes to financial aid.

“[The letter] attempts to lay out the student position on how financial aid is an integral part of the Swarthmore campus and student body, and how its effects are wide-ranging,” said Will Glovinsky ’12, who is a member of the Student Advisory Committee to the Dean of Admissions and Financial Aid. “We’re basically saying as students we disagree with cuts to financial aid.”

Glovinsky added that the letter aims to register the “student side on this debate, which is something that hasn’t happened.”

“There was just a general concern that students were being cut out of the process, which is a legitimate concern because we were not on the ad-hoc committee,” Glovinsky said, referring to the fact that there are no students on the Ad Hoc Financial Planning Group, which created the $6.85 budget cut proposal as a response to the college’s weakened endowment.

Though Glovinsky is neither a member of SFAP nor a signatory on the letter, he said that he helped draft an early version of the letter and was consulted on the part that focuses on financial aid.

Nate Erskine ’10, Student Council Vice President and SFAP member, stressed the importance of focusing on financial aid.

“In all honesty, I think that’s where the dialogue should be focused,” Erksine said. “[T]hese are the things … that are going to have the greatest impact on the lives of students here.”

There is a proposed $457,000 cut — or 2.1 percent reduction — to financial aid in the Ad Hoc Financial Planning Group’s preliminary budget recommendations, which were released last month.

Though there is this proposed cut to financial aid, Dean of Admissions and Financial Aid Jim Bock — who is a member of the financial planning group — stressed that the college’s “policy” on financial aid would not change under this proposal. If the Board were to approve this proposal, the college would maintain need-blind admissions, remain loan-free, and meet all of students’ “demonstrated need.”

While the budget cut to financial aid is the smallest percentage-wise reduction of all of the proposed budget cuts, the letter nevertheless states: “Such cuts begin to compromise the college experience of students on financial aid and the student body as a whole.”

When making its recommendations, the Ad Hoc Financial Planning Group aimed to make sure that the cuts would be a shared sacrifice or shared burden across the college, meaning that “no group would be unfairly targeted,” Erskine said.

In response to this idea, the letter states: “Although we respect the concept of ‘shared burden’ established by the Ad Hoc Group, we fear that balancing our budget deficit by restructuring financial aid will unevenly impact aided students.”

The Ad Hoc Financial Planning Group has presented three options that the college could take in restructuring financial aid: increasing expected campus job hours from approximately 7.5 hours per week to 10 hours per week, increasing expected summer earning, or reintroducing federal loans.

SFAP’s letter goes on the state “how these proposed changes, if implemented, would profoundly alter the basic experiences of aided students.”

The letter claims that the expected weekly work of 7-8 hours for aided students, which hasn’t changed in decades, “has been understood as the maximum amount a Swarthmore student can afford to work while balancing a full course schedule.”

If this expectation were to increase to 10 hours, students would be less able to dedicate time for things such as “class preparation, course and major selection, lecture attendance, unpaid club, committee and student council positions, internships and volunteer tutoring.”

“The proposed increase in weekly work hours will present more stressful challenges for many of our aided students. It is in the college’s best interest to ensure that these students can thrive here,” SFAP members state in the letter.

They add that finding more hours will be more difficult for students than in the past because “student jobs have been and will be cut from facilities, the Deans Office, academic departments and libraries.”

The letter also mentions that increased summertime work requirements could stand “in the way of students’ ability to pursue unpaid internships and volunteer work in areas of interest,” which “help build students’ resumes and serve as crucial experiences and skill-building opportunities.”

As students often rely on college research and Lang Center grants to get their summer earnings, the letter adds: “As hiring slows and paid internships become volunteer positions, more students will be applying for fewer Swarthmore grants in an increasingly competitive job market.”

Lastly, the letter says that some students have seen the reintroduction of loans as potentially problematic not only because the college just went loan-free but also because “job opportunities after college are becoming rarer, and repaying a loan may become a burden on some students.” If loans were to be introduced, the letter asks that students would be more involved in how this would be executed.

Symonds and Glovinsky noted that the letter in no way is meant to attack the administration.

“[The administration] cares about the same things. It’s just that we obviously have a different perspective because we’re students,” Glovinsky said, pointing out that the proposed cut to financial aid is, indeed, the smallest cut by percentage for the college.

At a town-hall discussion with Bock and Acting Dean of Students Garikai Campbell before Thanksgiving Break, Director of Financial Aid Laura Talbot distributed a sheet to attendants that listed both pros and cons to increasing expected summer earning contribution or increasing expected campus job hours.

She noted in an interview that while these two components are included on students’ financial aid packages, they aren’t required. Some students may choose to work more during the semester and less in the summer, or may even choose to not work at all and take out loans. “It’s a student decision what he does,” she said.

She added that a quarter of aided students don’t work at all and a quarter work more than seven or eight hours per week.

Talbot and Bock noted, too, that spending on financial aid has gone up 30 percent in the past two years. For this year, the college is spending $23.8 million for need-based scholarship. Both stressed that families’ need is expected to go up for the upcoming academic year.

Bock said that, with the $457,000 of proposed cuts to financial aid, the college is “slowing the growth” of this spending “without much harm to the students.”

“I’m comfortable with [financial aid] being on the table, but still being the smallest piece,” he said.

Bock conceded, however, that all proposed budget cuts are “painful decisions.”

Increased Student Involvement Now and Beyond

The last part of the letter both commends the administration for its cooperation and stresses the necessity of continuing this kind of dialogue between students and administrators.

“Initially, Swarthmore students were dissatisfied with the lack of student representation on the Ad Hoc Financial Planning Group. We greatly appreciate the administration’s willingness to work with SFAP, and have found our meetings very productive,” SFAP members said in the letter. “We would like to continue with this spirit of cooperation and opennness as the budget discussions move forward in three ways.”

Firstly, SFAP members say in the letter that SFAP would like to have students involved in the actual implementation of budget cuts that relate to student life. These include, among others, the Deans’ Office, academic departments and the financial aid department. The letter mentions that, in the spring, StuCo plans to “mobilize relevant student committees” with its own members as well as other interested students.

Secondly, the letter expresses an interest in students’ involvement for the expected $1.15 million that is still undetermined: “We do not want students to lose the opportunity that we have had this semester to participate in the dialogue surrounding momentous alterations to the budget of the college, particularly as it becomes more and more difficult to identify non-essential portions of the budget.”

Finally, the letter states that students would like to be involved in the “strategic direction-setting process starting in the 2010-2011 academic year.”

SFAP was formed earlier in the year to form a bridge between students and the college during the planned budget adjustment. The panel has worked with StuCo and administrators to organize events over the past weeks, such as a presentation of the budget proposal and a town-hall discussion with Bock and Campbell. The group has also met with administrators over the semester to discuss the budget.

Campbell, a member of the planning group, expressed his appreciation for students’ involvement. “This group of students has been, as expected, … really dedicated, really conscientious about thinking through things very thoroughly from the student perspective and providing key insights into how students think of some of the things that we’re proposing,” he said.

Bock echoed Campbell. “SFAP and StuCo have been really good at fostering a feedback loop in a short amount of time,” he said. “I’m glad that they were able to voice their opinion on the proposal.”