Sophomore Artemisa Ngjela wakes up at six in the morning every Tuesday and Friday, so she can make it on time to her Religious Studies class at 8:00 a.m.
Having to drive to school was not an issue her freshman year because she lived on campus.
However, this year, Ngjela decided to commute an hour from her home in Waterbury to Fairfield for her next three years, but not due to personal preference.
“It was cheaper to commute,” Ngjela said, explaining that financial costs pushed her to begin commuting in order to save over $12,000 in room and board per year. “I didn’t want to drown in debt by the time I graduated,” she added.
Ngjela is not alone in her sentiments. An increasing number of students are taking on student loans as tuition continues to rise and college becomes less affordable.
Majority agrees: Aid should increase
According to an unofficial survey of 65 students at Fairfield, about 50 percent believed that their financial needs were met, but 88 percent of students agreed that aid should be increased for students, especially with the 3 percent tuition increase this year.
Fairfield has increased its financial aid budget and has been providing students with more aid, but in a school that costs an average of $55,000 a year to attend – including room and board – student loans are necessary for a majority of students. Even though financial aid packages average to $28,140, students still need to scrounge up another $30,000 each year.
It becomes increasingly difficult to pay for school when students have other siblings attending college. Several students feel that Fairfield should take into account the number of children a family might have in school at once.
Distribution of aid: Fair or unfair?
However, according to Karen Pellegrino, Fairfield’s Dean of Enrollment and Financial aid, Fairfield does take familial situations into consideration.
A financial aid formula is used as a basis for the amount of financial aid given, but Pellegrino stated that Fairfield “does [its] best to look at individual circumstances” that students may have, adding “Fairfield has always been an institution to fill family’s needs” offering aid to 80 percent of students.
However, federal budget cuts have been making it difficult to distribute aid because “federal aid has not kept pace so the university has had to supplement” the decrease in that fund, she added.
The amount of money for merit-based scholarships and financial aid is beginning to change considering that more and more families expect merit-based scholarships, which means a decrease in money going to financial aid, Pellegrino said.
Creating a balance
Fairfield’s top priority now is to maintain a balanced budget, which becomes difficult to do while keeping tuition increases lower, according to Pellegrino. “[It’s] not that easy to just cut [the] price of tuition because we have a lot of obligations,” Pellegrino said, adding that even if Fairfield does cut its costs, other costs will increase.
In order to keep running the university needs higher enrollment numbers, Pellegrino explained. It takes people and money to create “small classes with a faculty that pays attention [to students].”
However, Fairfield does “run on a lean budget,” she said, adding that cuts have been made, “not in the classroom, but in terms of administration,” in order to reduce spending. For example, moving from print to online applications has saved $25,000 in paper, print, and other expenses, Pellegrino said.
However, some students have not felt the effects of the budget cuts.
Junior Camile Gomes said that she was offered a scholarship that pays for her full tuition and with commuter status, she does not pay for room and board.
Who is affected?
Out of the 20 million Americans that attend college every year, close to 60 percent of students take out loans in order to pay for it, according to a statistics released by the American Student Assistance. About 37 million people currently have remaining loans.
The Federal Reserve Bank of New York released a report placing student loan debt currently between $902 billion to $1 trillion, with an average outstanding loan balance of $24,301.
CNN reported that states have cut the amount given to colleges by $15.2 billion since 2007. In Connecticut, Governor Malloy has approved higher education cuts of nearly $59 million in hopes of creating a balanced state budget, according to Inside Higher Education.
Pellegrino added that federal cuts have “ripple effects [that] impact individual students and the administration,” such as with cuts to the Federal Work-Study (FWS) program. The office is dependent on students to do part of the work, so when students aren’t offered aid, the administration has to figure out a way to get the work done.
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