"Recently, the Acting Director of the Office of Financial Aid and Scholarships (OFAS), Christopher Shultz, wrote a piece in the New U to clear up some misconceptions about how UCI apportions financial aid. Although recent studies have found that public research universities are shifting their funding priorities from need-based to merit-based grants that are awarded disproportionately to wealthy students, Mr. Shultz claims that the findings are not true of UCI.
Furthermore, the OFAS is actually in a “partnership” with students and our families to make sure that a university education is affordable without undue burdens of work and debt. To take this claim seriously, I’d like to offer to Mr. Shultz several easy ways that the OFAS can indeed be a “partner” to students.
First, provide students with clear statistics. The Shultz article packed several disjointed figures into one paragraph; a whirling mish-mash of numbers that don’t amount to anything. All that was clear was that about one in twelve need-based grants go to students from families in the top 15 percent of the income population. Why are families who can afford a private school education being given need-based aid? Or, why do one-third of merit-based grants go to those same families?"
Furthermore, the OFAS is actually in a “partnership” with students and our families to make sure that a university education is affordable without undue burdens of work and debt. To take this claim seriously, I’d like to offer to Mr. Shultz several easy ways that the OFAS can indeed be a “partner” to students.
First, provide students with clear statistics. The Shultz article packed several disjointed figures into one paragraph; a whirling mish-mash of numbers that don’t amount to anything. All that was clear was that about one in twelve need-based grants go to students from families in the top 15 percent of the income population. Why are families who can afford a private school education being given need-based aid? Or, why do one-third of merit-based grants go to those same families?"
