Frequent change in staff and understaffing of the Office of Financial Aid hampers?process
By Rosemary Peters
Ask a roomful of UP students about the Office of Financial Aid and chances are more than a few will tell you the office is one of the most important and most frequented places on campus. The students you're quizzing are also likely to say it's one of the most confusing offices to deal with.
Ask freshman Kate Huber, for one.
At one point leading up to her arrival at UP, Huber encountered enough confusion that she said she felt panicked and shocked. "I didn't think I would be able to come to school," Huber said.
In the end, the confusion was remedied. Huber's problem was solved. "We ?finally found someone to help us, ?and he was really nice and helpful," Huber said.
In the past years, the OFA has gone through several changes and hardships. The first and foremost change has been within the office itself. In the past two years, OFA has seen directors regularly come and go.
According to Herald Johnson, from Hardwick Day consulting firm, this trend started in 2006 when the longtime director of OFA left the office.
UP then called Hardwick Day, a Minnesota firm that specializes in helping private colleges become competitive through financial aid, for assistance. UP then proceeded to hire two consultants to help fill financial aid requests from February to May 2007.
Johnson, who served 38 years as financial aid director at Augsburg College in Minneapolis until his retirement in 2006, was hired as interim director at UP.
Paul Krull was hired in June 2007 as permanent director. Krull had started in the office in 2000 as assistant director. However, his directorship only lasted six months. In December 2007, Krull left to work for a new business. Krull said he left due to strain between work and time with his family.
Johnson was hired again as interim director and remains in the position.
"My job right now is to keep my finger in the dike," Johnson said. "I don't want to implement huge changes in the office, because we are really close to hiring a full-time director."
Along with the musical chairs of directors, Johnson admits that the OFA has been facing challenges - from the growing student body, from new government legislation and from changes to grant programs.
In the past years, UP's student body has grown in size. This year's freshman class is more than 800 students, and the application pool to get a class of this size was extensive.
"People don't understand the hard work that goes into getting a class of 800 students," Johnson said. "You don't just send out 800 acceptance letters."
Johnson described the selection process with his hands by miming a funnel. He said that at the wide part of the funnel are all of the 3,000 applications. As the funnel narrows, there are fewer and fewer applicants in the running. The middle part of the funnel represents all of the students who received some sort of a scholarship offer from the school.
"We realize that we are not the only college students are applying to," Johnson said. "We are facing competition from schools like Gonzaga, Santa Clara, and Seattle University."
Finally, the narrow part of the funnel is the students who accept the scholarships from UP and agree to come to the University.
According to Johnson, the average student at UP receives about $14,500 in financial aid.
Many factors go into deciding the scholarship offers. Students receive an initial offer from the University based solely on their academic standing within UP's academic scale. After this scholarship is determined, financial factors go into play.
Johnson said this is where the OFA has run into some of its other difficulties. One challenge is the routine Title 4 audit to which all schools are subject. It ?means an increased work load for workers.
A second challenge Johnson mentioned is the newly signed Higher Education Opportunity Act. This act adds more complexities to the aid-giving process. The purpose of the act is to increase student aid and minimize tuition and cost increases at institutions of higher education.
"That's one reason that a financial aid office always seems like its harried, because it is," Johnson said. "We are always focusing on a moving target."
A third challenge Johnson said his staff has faced is the constant changes in Federal Student Aid and the Grant ?Program and the fact that in the last three years, three more federal programs started.
So how is the financial office going to fix these problems?
Johnson said work has already begun, starting with the new staff Krull hired. Before he left he hired four new employees.
"They are amazing people," Johnson said. "If I was going to start a new staff at a different college, I would offer jobs ?to all of them. They work incredibly hard."
Johnson said the staff worked 50-70 hours a week all summer and are further ahead at this point than last year at this time. The staff is larger, too.
Another way they are trying to improve OFA is by working on their customer service.
"We are trying to act like we are the students and working our way through the system," Johnson said. "We are working with people from other departments that we would never have worked with before, all to make the system easier for the student."
