By Alyssa Asick, Advertising/Business Manager
How is Susquehanna University funded? Most students are unaware, especially where their scholarships comes from.
At Susquehanna, according to Justin Rummel, the assistant vice president for Student Financial Services, “The university’s funding for merit and need-based scholarships comes directly from the institution’s annual budget.”
This information was contradicted by Mike Coyne, vice president of finance and administration, who stated “there is no real money attached to scholarships.”
The university’s Factbook included that the school spent $61 million on institutional scholarships in the 2017-2018 school year. $50,845,400 of this amount was for need-based scholarships, and the other $10,086,264 is non-need based.
Including all of the other types of scholarships, it is estimated that undergraduates received $68,501,426, the Factbook stated. The average need-based scholarship and grant award was $31,799 in the 2017-2018 school year.
This number has increased 28.4 percent over the last five years. The presidential scholarship is the highest institutional scholarship a student can receive at Susquehanna, giving students $36,000 towards their tuition.
As far as how many students can receive institutional scholarships, Rummel said “The number and type of merit scholarships awarded each year are dependent up on the qualifications of the students admitted to the university.”
The two main qualifiers for scholarships for almost every university is need and merit.
As well as this, students can receive scholarships for specific interests, religious affiliations and other skills from outside sources.
The Susquehanna website says that 99 percent of students receive financial aid, with the exception of some international students.
Although, there are scholarships on the university’s website for international students that states, “Partial-tuition scholarships [are] awarded based on academic ability and commitment to building a global Susquehanna community.”
According to both Coyne and Rummel, no student received a full ride to Susquehanna. The school relies on students’ tuition money to pay for additional fees and to pay for the professors and other employees.
Athletic students cannot recieve full ride scholarships because Rummel said, “NCAA by-law 15.4.1 prohibits division III institutions from considering athletics leadership, participation or performance when formulating a financial aid package for the student-athlete.”
This makes it so the university does not discriminate between scholarships for student-athletes and students who are only involved in academics.
Rummel also stated that 75 percent of student-athletes receive some form of financial aid. Regardless of how much need a student has, or if their financial situation changes, the financial package a student receives when they are accepted into the university does not change for the duration of their time at Susquehanna.
Susquehanna sophomore Ethan Clark stated, “With the constant increase in fees across the country, raising them without increasing scholarships makes it increasingly difficult for people with lower socioeconomic standing to afford college.”
There are scholarships that become available to students that are not associated with a university, but the ones that offer larger amounts of money are very competitive because many students have financial needs that cannot be met by Susquehanna.
For the future of Susquehanna, Coyne stated that the comprehensive fee is raised about four percent every year. With this, the scholarships and grants provided by the school do not increase.
In response to this issue, junior Debbie Paulus said, “As a first-generation college student from an extremely low-income family, it has already proved to be a struggle scraping enough money together after scholarships and grants to attend Susquehanna every year.”