Fin. aid is priority for U., Rodin says

At Council yesterday, top officals noted problems Penn faces in raising aid. Undergraduate financial aid is the "No. 1 University priority," Penn President Judith Rodin stressed at yesterday's University Council meeting. Rodin and Student Financial Aid Director William Schilling spoke at Council's second meeting of the semester to discuss the state of undergraduate financial aid. They said the University is working aggressively to increase its endowment in order to improve students' financial aid packages. The University is hoping to raise $200 million in financial aid dollars by 2003, a target set in 1996. Penn has raised about $86 million of that so far, and administrators say they intend to raise an additional $30 million this year. Rodin said the University currently spends $55 million on undergraduate financial aid this year. Most of that amount, she explained, is taken from the University's operating budget because of the University's relatively small endowment. Peer institutions with much a much larger per-student endowment spend heavily from that fund to support financial aid programs. But only about 6 percent of Penn's undergraduate financial aid is taken from endowment funds. Princeton University, by contrast, offers financial aid packages that are funded 95 percent through the school's endowment -- resulting in less strain on that school's operating budget. "All of the funds that we receive have donor designations. They are given for the Religious Studies program or the Wharton School or the Humanities Forum. You name it," Rodin said at the meeting. "We could not, even if we raised the spending rule, take money that was generated through those restricted funds and put it towards undergraduate financial aid," she added. Rodin also discussed numerous financial aid fundraising initiatives that Penn has implemented. The University is actively soliciting donations from faculty, staff members and alumni and is encouraging reunion classes to earmark reunion gifts for financial aid. In addition, Penn hosts annual regional dinners for scholarship donors and recipients, events that Rodin lauded as "incredibly successful." "There's nothing that's more compelling to a donor than hearing from a recipient what that donation has meant," Rodin said. Following Rodin's talk, Schilling presented a slide-show presentation which showed that Penn, despite its comparatively small endowment, is able to offer competitive financial aid packages. "Once we have determined what we feel the student's need is, we meet 100 percent of it," Schilling said. A problem, though, is that while Penn's tuitions and fees have increased 341 percent over the past 20 years, its federal and state grants have increased only 10 percent. According to Schilling, this "virtual absence of growth" shifts the burden of meeting students' financial needs almost entirely from the government to the University -- and this difficulty is compounded by Penn's inability to cover most of its financial aid expenditures through its endowment. "What is unique about us is the extent to which we're dependent on unrestricted sources to fund our [financial aid] program," Schilling said. The remaining 40 minutes of the Council meeting were divided between brief reports from five committees -- Communications, Student Affairs, Pluralism, Community Relations and International Programs. Council, the 92-member board of students, staff and faculty that advise the president and provost and which meets monthly, normally hears Rodin's State of the University address in its October meeting. But Rodin approached Council's steering committee two weeks ago with the request that the financial aid discussion take place this month instead. The State of the University address will take place at the November meeting.