GS Students Voice Frustration Over Aid Reform

General Studies Student Council members and students threatened to “scorch the earth” following this week’s financial aid announcement, saying they felt they had been slighted and disregarded by the University administration.

A major source of discontent is the persistent rift between the financial aid models of GS and Columbia College and the School of Engineering and Applied Science, including how GS students are granted aid.

In contrast to the more drastic aid changes for other undergraduate schools, Tuesday morning’s announcement promised a 17 percent increase in the GS’s total annual aid budget and an aid enhancement for students who expected $10,000 or less in Expected Family Contribution, accumulated extensive debt after borrowing loans, and have a GPA of over 3.0.

GS Dean Peter Awn said there are financial aid differences between GS and the other undergraduate schools because they each have different types of students.

Awn said the school is trying to build as “sophisticated a model as possible,” that would use a mathematical formula in conjunction with considering each student on a case-by-case basis.

Applying the same full-needs funding model to GS students as to CC and SEAS, according to Awn, might actually inhibit the amount of aid a student could receive, since the model requires students to submit their family’s financial records in order to evaluate how much financial support the family could offer.

“It becomes incredibly intrusive, if not naïve to think that you can make demands on those students to have their families provide detailed accounts of their assets,” Awn said. He also said that for the typical independent student attending GS, the parental contribution assessed might not be an indication of how much money the student would actually be receiving from his or her parents.

“So it really is not a healthy model for the diversity of students at GS,” Awn said.

“I am sick to frickin’ death of that excuse,” responded former GSSC president Susannah Karlsson.

Karlsson wasn’t the only GS student to express dismay with what they saw as a raw deal.

“It seems like a half a Tylenol for a broken leg,” said James Kusher, GS, who said that he had taken out $80,000 in private loans and about $30,000 in federal loans. “Will this help? Yes. Will it alleviate pressure? Not really.”

GS student Virdis Bala said that he felt “scammed” by the presented aid package, but also questioned why it had taken GSSC leaders so long into the year to take any kind of financial aid action—inaction, Bala claims, that has cost the GSSC its student support.

“To the deans, it looks like we’re radical. To the students, it looks like we’re being last minute,” GSSC President Niko Cunningham acknowledged.

“I’m all for a scorched earth campaign,” GS senior class president Chikodi Chima said. “As someone who’s leaving, I would say, burn the place down.”

Awn said that the amount of financial aid for GS students was tied to the school’s comparatively smaller endowment, since it is a relatively newer institution. According to Awn, the school has become more active in courting GS alumni. “It hasn’t until recently been able to play catch-up as aggressively as we are now.”

Even so, GS students say the amount of aid is not sufficient. “It doesn’t speak highly of the University values,” Cunningham said, in what he saw as the administration’s “handing over scraps.”

GSSC VP of Policy Nancy Saunders said the GSSC would evaluate the concerns of the students for a Friday meeting with Awn, and she warned her peers against sitting “idly by.”

alix.pianin@columbiaspectator.com