New York University announced on Saturday a six-year campaign to raise $1-billion for financial aid. Expanding the university’s scholarship program, officials say, will make one of the nation’s most expensive institutions more affordable to students.
The Momentum Campaign, which has already raised more than $200-million, was designed to enhance NYU’s scholarship offerings, including two new programs that will assist students as they begin their final semester before graduating, as well as those who plan to study abroad.
“There are incredibly talented students we would like to have enroll here who find the price to be prohibitive,” said Randall C. Deike, the university’s vice president for enrollment management. “We always come up short in the ways in which we’d like to impact students in terms of our financial-aid awards and the packages they receive.”
The university, whose tuition, fees, room, and board are about $62,000 a year, has more students but a smaller endowment than many other highly selective colleges, limiting the amount of scholarship and grant aid it can provide. NYU’s endowment—of just under $3-billion—is about half that of Emory University, for instance, yet NYU enrolls nearly three times as many students as Emory does. NYU’s endowment-per-full-time-student ratio is $74,806, while Emory’s is $439,238, according to an analysis of federal data by NYU. (At three Ivy League colleges, the ratio exceeds $1-million.)
Each year NYU falls $200-million to $250-million short of meeting the full financial need of its students, according to university officials, who have grappled with how to communicate that the institution may not be a good financial fit for every student it accepts.
“We are painfully candid about the need for us to have more financial aid than we do, and that they really have to consider the financial investments,” Mr. Deike said. “We want to eliminate as many of those conversations as we can.”
‘A Stretch’
The campaign will help finance the new Finish Line Grant program, which will provide additional aid to undergraduates as they near graduation—and move closer to paying back their loans. Starting next spring, students receiving financial aid will get grant aid equal to 10 percent of their cumulative need-based federal loan amount, reducing the total they owe, he said.
A second initiative, called the Global Pathways Scholarship, will assist students who wish to study abroad at one of NYU’s global sites, such as those in Abu Dhabi, Paris, and Shanghai. Starting next fall, students will be eligible to receive up to $4,000 each, depending on their financial need, to help cover the costs of living overseas (or, perhaps, of forgoing earnings from part-time jobs in New York).
Debra A. LaMorte, NYU’s senior vice president for development and alumni affairs, said she did not know of any colleges that had sponsored such a large fund-raising initiative exclusively for financial aid. She described the Momentum Campaign as ambitious but crucial.
“It’s going to be a stretch, but I think we can do it,” Ms. LaMorte said. “The big question is, How are we helping our students? My sense was going out there with a campaign—one that would address the issue of getting more money into students’ pockets so they’re not graduating with so much debt—was something we could explain to our alumni and donors.”
Recently, Ms. LaMorte and Mr. Deike together have met with prospective donors. This past summer, for instance, they visited the home of a wealthy trustee who’s considering giving $5-million to the campaign. Over Perrier and peanuts, Mr. Deike and Ms. LaMorte described the importance of providing more aid to students.
“The most important thing I can convey in these meetings is to put a face on what these dollars can do for students,” Mr. Deike said. “To say, ‘Your donation will help 20 students and cover their tuition’ or ‘Your gift allows students to focus on their studies and not have to get a second job.’”
