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The recession has added a new wrinkle to the college decision process
Most students agonize over which college to attend. But for Kaitlyn O’Hagan, the decision to enroll at Hunter College instead of Boston College or New York University was easy to make.
That’s because O’Hagan’s father recently was laid off, and Hunter College, one of the 23 institutions under the umbrella of the City University of New York, offered her a full scholarship to its Macauley Honors program. “We weren’t sure what kind of situation we were going to be in for the next few years,” the 17-year-old Stuvyesant High School graduate said.
For students like O’Hagan, the recession has added a new wrinkle to the college decision process. With national unemployment rates now at 9.5 percent and the economy continuing to struggle, families have been forced to cut back on spending. As a result, many students this year declined admission to pricey private universities, favoring less expensive state or city schools.
Tuition at private four-year colleges has increased by an average of 6.4 percent in the past year, due, in part, to declining enrollment and endowments, according to the College Board. The change has had a positive effect on city and state universities. For example, the number of applicants to the City University of New York, which costs just $4,600 per semester, has increased by about 13 percent compared to last year, according to Clare Pistey, CUNY’s director of recruitment. “It’s a good value, and has a very good reputation, an excellent faculty and numerous opportunities,” Pistey said.
CUNY has been working hard to boost its reputation during the past few years. In 2001, it launched the Macaulay Honors program at seven of its four-year colleges to attract top high school students from around the city. The program includes free tuition, a laptop computer, $7,500 study abroad stipend that can also be used for unpaid internships, and a cultural passport, which allows students to attend cultural institutions for free or discounted rates.
Those perks appealed to O’Hagan, whose financial aid offered by NYU and Boston College was based upon her family’s income before her father had been laid off. Even with financial aid, the total annual cost for NYU came to $35,000, and for Boston College, $30,000. “I wasn’t getting enough money to really make my parents feel comfortable with paying so much for college when my dad’s work situation is so uncertain,” O’Hagan said.
Katie Freeman faced a similar situation. The Brooklyn Technical High School graduate was forced to turn down her first choice, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, which granted her early admission, because of the economic recession. “I was given several scholarships, but it wasn’t enough,” said Freeman, 18. Instead, she plans on attending the honors program at the State University of New York at Buffalo in the fall. She will pay $12,000 a semester at the state school compared to roughly $26,000 a semester at Rensselear.
In some cases, the calculations used to determine financial aid fail to take an applicants’ full financial picture into account. Amanda Yuan, a graduate of the Bronx High School of Science, ran into that problem this year after the company where her father worked was acquired and he was forced to liquidate his shares in the business. The liquidation gave him a one-time spike in income, drastically reducing Yuan’s financial aid packages.
According to Yuan, who filled out a financial-aid calculator, the amount of grant money she would have received for Williams College and Amherst College—had the corporate takeover not occurred—was more than $30,000. Cornell would have theoretically given her $20,000. But due to the income spike, the aid was insufficient.
Instead of heading north to Amherst or Williams, she decided to attend The Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art, a New York City school that offers free merit scholarships to all of its students. “Those other colleges would’ve been really expensive,” Yuan said. “I didn’t really want to make my parents pay $60,000.”
