U. has a few options available to solve growing financial aid

Administrators admit the University has painful choices ahead. Faced with a myriad of problems in paying for its need-blind admissions policy, the University is looking for suggestions on how to decrease financial aid costs while not giving up completely on need-blind admissions. While Senior Vice President Marna Whittington said last night the University has a wide variety of options, President Sheldon Hackney outlined three last week: · Admit students on a need-blind basis until the University spends its financial aid money and afterward admit only students who are able to pay. This would be the most drastic measure the University would take. · Increase a family's contribution to a year's costs. Currently, the University's estimate of family contribution closely matches the federal government's, which is determined from information families submit annually in a standard financial aid form. This policy would increase the burden on all families receiving aid and would probably result in parents taking out more education loans for their children. · Admit students without looking at their ability to pay, then give full financial aid to a percentage of incoming students based on their merits. Students who do not receive grant money can apply for outside scholarships and possibly for student loans and work-study jobs, which are funded by the government. But students may currently borrow only about $15,000 over four years and work-study grants are usually about $1,000 for an academic year.

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