While thousands of Boston University students rely on various forms of financial aid to pay for their education, many experience unexpected financial setbacks-be they family emergencies or layoffs-situations several university departments try to alleviate each semester with mixed results.
According to the Admissions Office website, more than $52 million was distributed in university need-based grant and merit awards to the 2004-05 freshmen class. Nevertheless, the Office of Financial Assistance Associate Director David Janey said the department continuously works toward accommodating students and parents who anticipate that they will be unable to pay educational expenses without some form of assistance.
“Sometimes, students know they’re going to need assistance from the start, and sometimes they begin the academic year with the expectation that their family will have sufficient funds available, but circumstances change,” he said in an email. “The OFA considers a variety of changed circumstances, including situations where a parent has lost a job, becomes unable to work due to disability, a parent dies or other serious problems.
“Various individual circumstances of the student play a large role in how OFA responds to requests for assistance of this nature,” he continued.
According to the department’s Use of Estimated/Projected Year Income form, other situations include retirement and long-term illness in the family.
Janey said the precise options available for a student depend on individual circumstances.
“Various issues could be explored,” he said. “The student would be encouraged to meet with an assistant director in OFA to assess the circumstances and the scope of their financial need.”
Such circumstances include whether the student has completed a financial aid application for the current academic year and if the student currently has any amount of grant money, scholarship, loan or work-study financial aid.
Janey said other important factors include how much loan money the student may have borrowed and how much credit-based loan money their parents have borrowed. Other factors include whether a parent is unemployed and the longevity of their unemployment, if there was there a job severance package, whether they are likely to become re-employed within a certain amount of time and whether expenses for the fall semester are the immediate concern or if it is a spring semester payment issue.
According to Janey, sometimes a student will experience a combination of personal, academic and financial circumstances where the student’s best interest is served by taking a leave of absence from the university.
When College of Arts and Sciences freshman Tali Stern became ill during her freshman year and took a few weeks off during the school year, her grades as well as her financial aid began to slip. Stern’s mother began contacting different offices within the Dean of Students, Financial Aid and student services to assess the situation.
“What happened over a course of a few weeks was astounding,” Stern said. “We’d always heard that BU was just a lot of bureaucracy and red tape, but upon receiving the mentioned faxes and letters, the offices began writing back to us immediately.”
Janey said it is important to recognize that although BU grant funds are always limited, so are good students.
“Our goal in OFA is to make it possible for students who are doing well at the university to complete their program of study despite any unforeseen family financial hardship,” he said. “[It’s] a range of factors we take into account both as stewards of university aid funds and as the people charged with removing financial barriers to enrollment.”
University Service Center Director Denise Mooney said her staff works closely with Financial Assistance staff to make sure students understand all their options, emphasizing that each situation is unique and considered individually.
“USC staff are always available to meet with students who need help figuring out how or whether a change in family financial circumstances will affect their short- or long-term ability to remain enrolled,” she said.
Stern said she was pleased with how the university handled her personal case.
“They gave me more than I asked for, and made my healthy return to school possible,” she said. “I couldn’t have asked for kinder or more understanding people to handle my case. BU could not have possibly done more.”
But some students said they were not provided with the university’s financial generosity.
College of General Studies sophomore Andrew Borden said when his sister took a leave of absence from her university studies his freshman year, his financial aid decreased considerablely. He lost various loans and grants as well as his work-study job.
Borden said the university didn’t communicate with him adequately. A few days after he lost his aid, he received notification from the Office of Financial Aid.
“A phone call would have been nice,” he said. “All I got was a letter with a poor explanation.”
Borden said he wished the university would recognize the difficulty in paying a drastic change in financial aid, especially when there is the assumption that a family has sudden additional funds.
“They just seemed indifferent to the whole thing,” he said. “They didn’t send some sort of plan to help my family with the new payment. It was kind of a shocker.”
Despite this, Mooney said she wants students to know that there are options available if a student feels lost about what road to take.
“We want students to be able to complete their studies at BU,” she said. “While university grant funds aren’t unlimited, there are often other financing options available that can meet a student’s needs when unanticipated circumstances arise.”
