Ursinus scholarship to cap cost at $30K

No limit on number of Gateway Scholarships to be awarded

A new scholarship announced by Ursinus College offers next year’s freshman class a greater opportunity to cap the cost of tuition at $30,000 a year.

That’s no small reduction given that the four-year school’s annual tuition this year is $61,690.

Called the “Gateway Scholarship,” all applicants who meet Ursinus’s college prep-level course requirements and earn aminimum of an ACT composite score of 28, or a combined 1260 on the critical reading and math section of the SAT are eligible and can also apply for traditional “needs-based” financial aid.

“We’re doing this because we want to encourage highachieving students to think of an Ursinus education as an affordable option,” David Tobias, vice president for enrollment at said in a release announcing the scholarship.

“Increasingly, private schools are pushing the middle class out when you consider how federal financial aid is structured,” Tobias said.

“There has been a lot of conversation among colleges nationally, that they are moving away from merit-based aid and going only to ‘ needs-based,’” Tobias told Digital First Media Monday.

“In the national landscape, if you look at it, we’re really pushing out the middle class. Low-income students can get state and federal grants and families that can pay the full freight, can send their students anywhere they want,” Tobias said.

Already, about 20 percent of the college’s student body is what Tobias calls “Pell-eligible,” as in financially strapped

enough to qualify for federal Pell grants.

“But when you look at the typical Southeast Pennsylvania family, they can’t afford $60,000, that may represent one-half to one-third of their household income,” he said. “So they are forced into a conversation that is focused on finances, not what is the right college fit for a student.”

“This scholarship brings Ursinus within reach to many students and their families,” Ursinus College President Brock Blomberg said in the release.

According to U.S. News, the cost of tuition for private colleges jumped by 179 percent between 1995 and 2015, while the costs for in-state students at

state colleges sky-rocketed by 296 percent in the same period.

In the last five years, College Board reports, average tuition for private four-year colleges has risen 10 percent nationally from $39,918 to $43,921.

Tobias acknowledged that Ursinus’ tuition is above the national average and said the school had conversations about cutting costs and lowering tuition, or freezing tuition.

“But when you look at our competitors in this region, schools like Gettysburg and Muhlenberg, we are on par and I suppose it’s a psychological thing, but we didn’t want people questioning why our tuition was so much lower. It’s kind of like why things are priced at $9.99 instead of $10.”

The Gateway scholarship can also help reduce the increasingly drastic debt load hobbling today’s college graduates.

In January, Time magazine reported that in the 1993-94 school year, only about half bachelor’s degree recipients graduated with any debt at all, and for those who did, the average was about $10,000.

This year, about twothirds of bachelor degree holders graduated with debt and the average debt load was $35,000, triple the amount from 20 years earlier.

The scholarship will be first available to high school graduates of the class of 2017 — the same students who are now in the middle stages of looking at colleges.

“It’s too soon to say what kind of impact its going to have, but we crunched some numbers and we concluded that were it in place now, about 300 of our current students could have benefitted,” said Tobias.

Ursinus has a student body of roughly 1,600 students and Tobias said there is no limit to the number of students who can qualify for the scholarship next year.

“And who’s to say how many more may apply once they find out about the scholarship,” he said.

Inthe last five years, College Board reports, average tuition for private four-year colleges has risen10 percent nationally from$39,918 to $43,921.