Posted on: Tuesday, March 22, 2005
UH keeping options open on aid situation
| • | Tuition increase 'scary' for some |
By Beverly Creamer
Advertiser Education Writer
Only about one-quarter of the $18.5 million in financial aid given annually by the University of Hawai'i goes to students based on need, with the remainder benefiting graduate assistants, athletes and others.
While most states offer state scholarships to help students, Hawai'i does not. Instead, the state university has a complicated system of aid that includes tuition waivers and tuition differentials for nonresidents. Together they cost the university $43.3 million annually in lost revenue.
Now, UH administrators hope to increase need-based aid up to a total of $20.7 million by 2010; tap more deeply into federal dollars; and gradually convert the waivers to scholarships through a new fund set up last year by the Legislature. But waivers won't be changed until they are re-evaluated.
"We would look at each category (of the waiver program) to decide which made the most sense," said Linda Johnsrud, interim vice president for academic planning and policy. "It doesn't mean any one student would get less assistance."
Converting waivers to scholarships will only be possible if there's money in the new state scholarship fund. Gov. Linda Lingle proposed a one-time infusion of $20 million this year to do that, but at this point the House has taken the money out of the budget.
Partly because of this confusing aid picture, Hawai'i gets a D from the National Center for Public Policy and Higher Education, which said the state has made getting access to college more difficult for the state's poorest families.
"The state has made no investment in need-based financial aid," said the center's most recent report, Measuring Up 2004. After financial aid, Hawai'i families need 23 percent of their income to pay for a four-year public college compared with 20 percent a decade ago.
By contrast, families nationally need 16 percent of their income to pay for college.
At the same time, Hawai'i students are not using federal aid as much as they could. Only 14 percent of Hawai'i college students have Pell grants — federal dollars offered to the lowest-income students to pay for college. By comparison, about 24 percent of students nationally receive Pell grants.
"That's one of the things we'd want to look at," Johnsrud said.
Reach Beverly Creamer at bcreamer@honoluluadvertiser.com or 525-8013.
