The Chronicle‘s Head Count blog followed John Gudvangen through his first year as a financial-aid director, at Wesleyan University, in a series called Newly Minted. To wrap up, this article examines the challenges he has faced.
Financial-aid administration is not the most glamorous of higher-education careers. But people in that field believe they play a crucial role in providing access to college for students from across the income spectrum. Aid administrators see helping students, especially those from low-income families, as vital, deeply rewarding work.
Like many who are passionate about it, John Gudvangen relied on financial aid to pay for his own education. After some 15 years working in the field, he became the director of a financial-aid office last year. And he did so at Wesleyan University, a place with the kind of policies that aid administrators tend to admire.
Wesleyan gave almost no merit aid. That’s what those in the field often prefer because supporting needy students, they believe, is more important than attracting top performers, who often have sufficient resources.
The university admitted its whole freshman class (except for international students and transfers) without looking at applicants’ ability to pay. And once it selected students, it would meet whatever need they had—with limited loans, to try to keep down their debt.
But this is a tough time for those ideals. Students are arriving on campus with more financial need just as colleges are feeling pinched themselves. At Wesleyan, worries about the aid budget had been developing for a long time, says Nancy Hargrave Meislahn, dean of admission and financial aid, who is Mr. Gudvangen’s boss. The year before he arrived, the university had overspent its aid budget. When you maintain need-blind admissions and meet students’ full need, that problem can be hard to prevent.
In May, in the midst of Mr. Gudvangen’s first year, Wesleyan announced that it would no longer admit its whole class on a need-blind basis. Instead, near the end of the admissions process, the university would allow itself to consider students’ ability to pay, a policy known as need-aware admissions.
Mr. Gudvangen, who had come from need-aware Colorado College, had been glad about moving to a university that was need-blind. But there’s more to the strength of an institution’s financial aid, he says, than whether or not it considers ability to pay in admissions. Colleges can be need-blind and not support their students well.
“Take a need-blind school that is not particularly selective,” he says. “They’re plenty happy to say that they are need-blind. Good for them. And they meet 50 or 70 percent of need.” In other words, need-blind is a noble policy only when coupled with meeting students’ full need. Where, exactly, are students better off?
Dropping need-blind was not the only decision Wesleyan could have made, as Michael S. Roth, its president, has pointed out in blog posts about the change. The university could have expected its students to take on more debt. Or it could have sought out wealthier students without changing its nice-sounding policies.
The university’s move was controversial, and a vocal slice of students and alumni are upset. Need sensitivity is not ideal, Mr. Roth has said, but it is a lesser evil than not supporting adequately those students who do enroll. Advocates of the policy say it can prevent a college from dangling an admissions offer before a student who can’t really afford to come.
Besides, Mr. Roth tells The Chronicle, Wesleyan is not alone. “It’s clear to me that the economic model in higher education has shifted,” he says. “And it will shift in different ways at different schools, depending on their resources.”
Facing Trade-Offs
Indeed, over the past few years even some of the wealthiest colleges have had to come to terms with their financial constraints. Some have rolled back generous aid policies they had set in place only a short time before. Dartmouth College and Williams College, for example, have scaled back their “no loan” financial-aid policies.
Colleges face trade-offs. Worried about preserving access, many campus officials are keeping one eye on families’ resources. But the other has to be on their own bottom line.
Financial aid is an important function. It allows colleges to attract students who otherwise could or would not pay, and to shape a class in which wealth is not a prerequisite. But that doesn’t mean aid should be a college’s main expense.
“Schools are coming to grips with the fact their aid budgets are growing faster than they can afford,” says Rodney M. Oto, associate dean of admissions and director of student financial services at Carleton College, which has been need-aware for decades. “As they project into the future, if they don’t put some controls on that, it can eat into the core of what any college is trying to do: offer a high-quality learning experience.”
At a time when the value of a degree is a matter of public debate, colleges must mind both sides of the equation: what students pay, and what they get for their money.
Wesleyan’s move will give it more control over how much net tuition revenue it brings in. But predicting what any college, even a need-aware one, will spend on aid is not an exact science.
That can put the aid director in a tough spot, Mr. Oto says. But he thinks that Mr. Gudvangen, an old colleague and friend, can figure it out: “That’s what makes a good financial-aid person.”
Wesleyan’s shift will bring challenges to his office, Mr. Gudvangen knows. “We have a different accountability,” he says, “than we’ve ever had.” Now that the aid office has more control over its spending, it will probably be expected to keep that spending in line.
But the move will also bring new opportunities. Need-aware admissions will give Wesleyan more flexibility in how it defines and meets financial need. Mr. Gudvangen can turn his attention to supporting the students the university will in fact enroll. That means, he says, “being able to fully fund each student’s need without putting an undue burden on them because of budget pressures.”
Better support, in turn, could help with the university’s yield—the share of admitted students who enroll.
Navigating Wesleyan’s policy change, of course, is not the only task Mr. Gudvangen is facing. He continues to learn the ropes of all of his other new responsibilities: leading a staff, packaging aid awards, counseling students and parents, working with leaders across the campus, keeping on top of regulations and policies, and simply finding his way around the campus.
Over all, the work of a financial-aid director has grown only more challenging, says Kelly O’Brien, director of financial aid at Trinity College, in Connecticut. She has been in the job for 17 years. When she began, “money was rolling,” she says. “The college was doing well, as the country was.” The high cost of a college education was a concern then, she says, but nothing like today.
As Mr. Gudvangen’s career as an aid administrator moved to the next level, he didn’t quite know how his ideals would intersect with financial pressures. At Wesleyan this past year, that tension has been notable. The work of balancing the university’s financial resources with students’ financial need is tricky, but an important part of the job. Mr. Gudvangen says he likes a challenge. He appears to have found one.
