The parental income of university students has grown by more than 55 percent over the past 25 years, raising concerns that access for low-income students is slowly eroding.
As tuition costs increase year to year, university administrators’ biggest concern is that the low-income students won’t go to the university because they can’t afford it. The national fear is that public universities will turn into more privatized institutions, where only the upper class can pay for their education as state support drops.
“There are some indications in today’s demographics that their incomes are higher,” said Provost Bill Destler. “It’s not the impossible dream for students of modest income to come to this university ... but it is a concern that they’re having a hard time doing so.”
The median annual income for parents of students at this university this year is about $122,000 annually, according to information collected by Bill Sedlacek, associate director of the Counseling Center. That’s substantially up from the inflation-adjusted median annual income of $78,264 for students’ parents in 1980.
However, these numbers don’t reflect the entire university community because only first-year students at orientation are surveyed, as part of the New Student Census. Additionally, many times, students don’t know their parents’ income, Sedlacek said.
Those who suffer the most financially without enough assistance are the middle-class students, said university President Dan Mote. The university offers financial aid programs such as Maryland Pathways and the Baltimore Incentive Award Program that target students with family incomes lower than $65,000 annually.
However, the middle and upper-middle class usually don’t qualify for most need-based financial aid but can’t burden the full costs of education.
As a result, students are incurring more debt. In 2003, the average debt after fours years at this university was $13,700 for state residents and $19,900 for out-of-state students, according to Mote. The amount of unmet financial aid among students has increased to $31 billion nationally in 2003, according to a report released Monday by the state Public Interest Research Groups’ Higher Education Program.
About 20 percent of university students are eligible for Pell Grants — money from the federal government granted to low income students — Mote said. While the university plans on keeping that percentage at the same level, other large state universities have a much higher percent of low-income students, such as the University of California-Los Angeles at 35 percent. About 15 percent of the surveyed students this year have a family income of $50,000 or lower, compared to the 42 percent of students with family incomes of $100,000 or higher, according to the New Student Census.
Sedlacek said these numbers were “surprisingly high” and the trend shows that a smaller percentage of lower income students are attending the university. As the university remains in national rankings and becomes more competitive, it’s becoming more difficult for lower income students to keep up with the costs of going to a more “prestigious school,” Sedlacek said.
“The mean of students’ incomes are always going up,” Sedlacek said. “But we’ve cut out that bottom portion of students with low income. We’ve gotten more homogenous in terms of socioeconomic status. If this continues, pretty soon, we’ll be a university for only the elite.”
But university administrators say it’s a trend they are trying to reverse by providing more financial aid. About $60 million to $70 million — 22 percent of the tuition revenue — goes to financial aid, Destler said.
Destler said the university plans on growing its need-based financial aid programs by fundraising more aggressively over the next few years. However, administrators don’t have funding for it in the near future with a looming $50 million natural gas bill this year.
“I don’t want to increase need-based aid by taking away merit-based funding,” Destler said. “We have to find a better way of advertising programs like Maryland Pathways to students so they know we’ll help them as best as we can.”
