Access/Affordability Working Group Meeting

A conversation with Oregon's Student Financial Aid Community

Thursday 15 April 2004

Short context of committee. A/AWG Committee members: Tim Nesbitt President Oregon AFLCIO. Nan Poppe President PCC Extended Studies. Paul Bragdon President Lewis & Clark. Sam (President OR Assn Minority Entrepreneurs), Bridget Burns (Student OSU). Randy Choy (Oregon Community Foundation), Vanessa Gaston (President Urban League Portland), Ramon Hernandez (Attorney) Kate Peterson (Director Student Financial Aid OSU), Howard Sohn (President Lone Rock Timber CO). Staff & Resource Experts: Nancy Goldschmidt (Associate Vice Provost OHSU), Gary Andeen, Brian Clem, Cam Preus-Braly, Julie Suchanek, Jeff Svejcar, John Wykoff.

For every 25 ninth graders 16.8 will graduate from highschool on time, 8.5 will enter college on time, 5.8 are enrolled in sophomore year (includes cc & univ), 3.8 graduate at the end of 6 years. This ignores in many ways how students are going thru school. One of the big barriers is financial. Lot of low incompe people in Oregon. Non metropolitan areas much lower - real poverty in rural areas. Divide between education/income. Society benefits. Projected work force - growth in new jobs requires some education. Service industries are not family wage jobs. Oregon Benchmarks. Target is 95% Highschool, 79% College, College Graduate 45%, Advanced Degree 11%. But now figures are 92, 58, 29, 11. So want to go from 29% to 45%. Won't hit that benchmark by 2010. Need to do a lot better. In 1964 22 hours, in 2000 55 hours required to work my way through college. Weekly hours for 52 weeks at minimum wage to finance public university attendence costs 1964 to 2002. Look at it for Oregon. For UO is 50 hours per week as opposed tonational average. At the privates it has gone from 38 hours to 136 hours per week. (National - Oregon is at 100 hours). Focus on Oregon not on Institutions. Focus on what is going to benefit students in Oregon. Enrollment of low income students - Oregon is below national average. College is expensive. Oregon Opportunity Grant is shrinking. Not enough money. Average range of unmet need is 3000-4000. Average loan debt per student is 25,000. Porportion going to go on to college drops with poverty rate.

Goals for Oregon's economy. Raise standard of living and reduce income gap. Need to understand linkages between education and earnings. Need to provide access to good education. Governor's objectives design principles OUS board working groups. Provide opportunity for every Oregon citizen to go to a college or university in Oregon of their choice. Provide access to post secondary education programs that achieve an excellence in the field.

Design principles. Moneys not come from existing sources. An endowment locked in the state constitution. Core spending guidlines will be grants based on student financial need. Funds attach to financial need of the student. Funds taken by the student to any qualified university, college or cc/ public or private. Not working on merit scholarship.

Policy goals. Handout. Incorporates importance of doing this. Formulating policy. Proposed revisions and enhancements of the Oregon Opportunity Grant. Handout. Borrow from ideas of Pell Grant and Oregon Opportunity Grant. Chart comparing two programs. Have diaglogue - discuss impact on students in Oregon. Look at big policy questions - not little detailed things about how it works. Try to be as broad and inclusive as possible. Everyone who is qualified to get into a post-secondary institution should be. We are not talking about money. No one is allowed to ask where the money is going to come from. There are people who will be working on this who will find a source of money who will not take it away from another agency. Currently have 200,000 enrolled in post secondary. Project 25% would qualify for Pell grant. Proposing 3-4,000 Pell+ revised Oregon Opportunity grant. Magnitude of number. New and improved or totally new but not side by side. This would become student aid. Learned to be kind of flexible. Take ideas out around the state and see how voters and business community react to it. Feedback will shape what happens as we want this to pass. Some political negotiating. That phase starts in June. Meet with editorial boards - starting to shop this idea around to see how people react to it. Whole new concept for financial aid. Design perfect aid package - money part comes later. Think about perfect grant program - start to think about priorities. At some point the funding and reality of funding will be applied. Need to think a bit about how need to prioritize things.

What now follows is a relative technical discussion - questions about provisions - comments in favor and opposed. Next meeting is April 30th. At this point Gilkey had to leave the meeting to attend a meeting of the Executive Committee of the board. Tublitz and  Young remained