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It's a grim survival battle for students now. With colleges facing persistent cost increases and a smaller applicant pool, it is no more a gentlemanly competition for students, writes The New York Times. And scholarships are negotiated as crassly, and about as reliably, as the sale of used cars.
Taking many forms -- a scholarship, discounted tuition or some other benefit -- financial-aid packages can be dangled before prospective freshmen, and are often key in winning over applicants who might have opted to enroll elsewhere. But what incoming students do not always realise is that these packages can shrink or disappear once a ``sale'' is made.
``Bait and switch often happens once they enroll; there's no question about it,'' said Norman Smith, president of Wagner College on Staten Island, which he said guarantees its aid in writing for four years.
There are no statistics on how many students have suffered financial-aid shocks. But college administrators and financial aid specialists alike say thatin the competition among private colleges and universities for applicants, games are often played with financial aid.
To help recruit the best students--or the students in the best position to pay most of their costs--colleges often extend attractive packages of financial aid. But once a desired applicant enrolls, it is not at all unusual for that aid to wither, with those making the most successful transition to college--and thus less likely to transfer--among the chief targets.
In general, parents and students are advised to examine closely a school's aid documents. The papers should specify how long aid will continue and, if for less than four years, the terms for renewal. Cuts in aid can be appealed, but there is seldom full restoration unless the student has an outstanding record or has other leverage, like a connection with wealthy alumni.
Most student aid is based on financial need, as determined by a federal questionnaire that each institution interprets for itself. And aid can be reducedlegitimately for various reasons.
One is a significant improvement in parental financial circumstances, perhaps resulting from a job promotion, a remarriage or the graduation from college of a student's older sibling. Aid can also be cut off after a college catches up with parental misrepresentation or egregious hiding of assets.
Other legitimate reasons for cutbacks include adverse developments on the student's side: poor grades, slow progress toward a degree, alcohol abuse or other bad conduct. In cases involving athletic scholarships, a disabling injury can end the aid.
Some institutions, intentionally or carelessly offering more financial help than they can deliver, find pretexts to curtail it--for example, by invoking fine print in the contract that requires achieving unrealistically high grades.
``One `D' in your first semester, and you lose your financial aid'' is a frequent ploy, said Patricia Ewers, president of Pace University and the chairwoman this year of the National Association ofIndependent Colleges and Universities.
Another, according to Ewers, is withdrawing a scholarship when a student changes academic direction--when a science major, say, decides to become an accountant.
She said Pace guaranteed scholarships, but noted that it and other schools generally did not protect against inflation's effects on awards with fixed-dollar amounts.
To be sure, some recipients do not fully understand the terms of their aid packages, which are often tailored to rely progressively less on grants and more on loans as students' ability to borrow improves.
But competitive recruiting also causes such ``over-awarding'' that a school, well-intentioned or not, chooses to back away from some of its obligations. Some colleges have almost gone under because their financial aid offices have cut prices too much for too many.
In recent years, many institutions have revived scholarships and other aid based on merit, rather than need, as they try to lure a cadre of top-ranking students.
CarolLoewith, a private counsellor to students and their families in Fairfield, Connecticut, says she has begun advising them to try to negotiate improved deals when more than one school seems strongly interested. ``It's never a done deal,'' Loewith, president of the Independent Educational Consultants Association, said she tells them.
A common tactic, according to Smith of Wagner, is for a school to suddenly ``find'' some aid over the summer for students who have not yet accepted admission.
``Unsavoury things are going on,'' he said, with many struggling institutions ``turning themselves into used-car dealerships.''
The unexpected disappearance of financial aid, it is widely agreed, is confined mainly to second- and third-tier private institutions, including some relatively expensive schools concentrated in the Northeast that compete ferociously for students.
The Ivy League schools, by contrast, are richly endowed and suffer no shortage of top applicants, while state universities enjoy an increasing floodof applicants who see them as such bargains that further financial inducement is ruled out.
``It's the lesser institutions that are doing this, that are baiting and switching,'' said Leonard Krivy, an educational consultant in Cherry Hill, New Jersey.
Traditionally, according to David Crockett, senior vice-president at USA Group Noel Levitz, a consultant, colleges dispensed financial aid haphazardly without enough regard to budgetary consequences.
``Now it's becoming more integrated, tied more closely to recruiting,'' Crockett said--a process that has led some institutions, which he declined to identify, to offer prospective students aid that is openly acknowledged as one-time-only.
``We're really opposed to these first-year scholarships,'' he said. ``It seems like enticing them in with it.''
Copyright © 1998 Indian Express Newspapers (Bombay) Ltd.
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