University of Pittsburgh named in national report for improving financial aid practices - TribLIVE

The University of Pittsburgh is challenging a national trend among public universities where institutions dedicate more funding to merit aid, rather than to students with financial need.

Pitt has put a priority on offering assistance to students with financial need, while other public universities are dedicating a majority of financial aid to merit-based scholarships,

“We felt that we had a retention and, frankly, a graduation issue, especially on our regional campuses, because of unmet need,” said Provost Ann Cudd, referring to Pitt’s campuses in Greensburg, Johnstown and Bradford.

Cudd, who has a research background in educational inequality, said she noticed the number of low-income students enrolled at the university was falling and that many students were dropping out due to unmet financial need. As a remedy, the university unveiled the Pitt Success Pell Match Program in February 2019 to help meet students’ financial need.

A year after implementation, the program is serving serving 5,007 students, at a cost of about $25.4 million to the university.

It’s a “two-pronged” approach, Cudd said. First, students receiving federal Pell grants are able to receive matching funds from the university.

Second, the success portion of the program intervenes when students reach a certain level of unmet need — financial need that isn’t being covered by scholarships or student loans. Cudd said this point is about $20,000 of unmet need for students on the main campus and $15,000 for regional campuses. Once students reach this level, the university steps in and starts providing additional need-based aid to close the gap.

Cudd said that since the program has been implemented in just the last year, the university’s retention rate rose by 3% across all campuses.

The change in Pitt’s financial aid strategy is remarkable considering the university’s size and influence in higher education, said Steve Burd, a senior writer and editor at the think tank New America. Last month, Burd published a report on the distribution of financial aid dollars at public universities across the country.

The report, “Crisis Point,” compared 339 public colleges and universities across the United States from 2001 to 2017. Using data from the college guide service Peterson’s, Burd found that colleges spent nearly $32 billion of their own financial aid dollars on merit aid in that six-year period. Approximately $2 out of every $5 went to non-needy students.

Pitt had engaged in the pattern in the past, but changed course more than a decade ago. In 2007, merit scholarships at Pitt went from taking up 85% of the financial aid budget to 45%. The university began allocating about $10 million more to need-based aid.

Data since 2017 is not yet available, but would likely show even more drastic changes at Pitt since the Pell Grant program.

“I’m very intrigued to see how meaningful these changes are,” Burd said. “You really need a leader to come in and question the priorities.”

Greater allocations to merit aid is common practice among institutions to attract high-income, high-achieving students and achieve a greater sense of “prestige,” said Burd.

That may have been the case at Pitt in the past, but Cudd said the university has reached a point where the priority is to diversify the student population.

“It’s essential to have a diverse group of students from all parts of the socioeconomic spectrum,” Cudd said. “You want students with all kinds of backgrounds and experiences to have a really rich and dynamic academic environment.”

Teghan Simonton is a Tribune-Review staff writer. You can contact Teghan at 724-226-4680, tsimonton@tribweb.com or via Twitter .