Expansion (1945 - 1965)
Admissions
Once higher education began to emerge as a mass industry, questions arose about the financial feasibility of attending an institution of higher education. These concerns reflected cultural values and addressed the key issues of student need, student merit, and institutional need.
The concept behind student need was the use of financial aid to assist those students unable to attend higher education institutions without financial help and to expand educational access and opportunities regardless of economic position.
The concept behind student merit was the use of financial aid to reward and encourage those students with talent and ability even if they are able to afford a collegiate education without financial aid.
The concept behind institutional need was the use of financial aid to meet institutional needs, be they based on market economics or changing institutional values (such as creating a diverse student body).
Prior to the 1940s, cultural values supported the use of aid for students based on merit or worthiness, however that was defined or determined. "Merit" could be defined as intellectual, moral, or even social worthiness.
The idea of "working through college" prevailed in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Approximately one-sixth of all college students depended solely on work to finance their higher education in 1926. As early as the late nineteenth century, institutions of higher education began to operate special bureaus to assist students in finding employment, either on or off campus. Parents or the family was expected to contribute something towards higher education.
The concept of student self-support helped eased the fears of many before 1930. As historian Rupert Wilkinson states, "From the social Darwinism of the late nineteenth century to the 1930s, a conservative worry that too much charity wold cause weakness and dependency reinforced the idea of student self-support."
When aid was given, colleges, not the state, doled out financial aid to students. Means of financial aid could be a reduction in tuition or a deferment in tuition payment, stipends, employment, or scholarships. Some made higher education affordable to farm families, although college was still not affordable to the working classes.
The entry of the G.I. onto campus helped to change societal perception about financial aid. Need-based financial aid also seemed more democratic as the G.I. Bill became infused with populist rhetoric when it worked its way through the legislature. That recipients of federal financial aid were ex-service men (rarely service women) displaced the fear that aid created dependency. The veterans' collegiate record of hard-work and academic diligence eased the concerns that financial aid would open college doors to unqualified students.
Once the G.I. and his federal funds left campus at the end of the 1940s and beginning of the 1950s, higher education institutions became aware of the shortfall in their budgets and the need for needs-based financial aid - for both individuals and institutions.
Although there was less societal concern about aid creating dependency and although the G.I. Bill was seen as democratic, institutions of higher education awarded financial aid in idiosyncratic ways and for a variety of purposes. This added to what seemed a chaotic system of financial aid.
Institutions often awarded scholarships to students on merit then scaled the amount according to need. Institutions determined individually the financial need of each student and the aid offered and often did not make final decisions about award amounts until later in the summer, just before the fall term. Scholarships typically were limited to the cost of tuition.
Institution used scholarships for a variety of purposes, including to compete and bid for students in the institutional market when students were in short supply (as in the 1930s and again in the early 1950s once the veteran enrollment peaked and began to decline). Financial aid also was used to recruit students from a wider geographic area and to encourage the friends of a scholarship student to attend the institution.
Institutions also award scholarships to populate the campus with a certain population, be it a student of a certain background or ability.
The College Board promoted the standardization of scholarship practices in higher education. According to the College Board, it helped to control and systematize chaotic scholarship and financial aid practices through its achievement tests, the agreements it brokered among institutions regarding scholarships, the practices and standards it promoted, and its College Scholarship Service.
With growing concern among member institutions of the College Board about the chaotic nature of awarding financial aid, the College Board sponsored a symposium on scholarships in April 1953. This was a means for the Board to systematize scholarship practices.
The symposium criticized the use of scholarships as a competitive device for student recruitment. The issues addressed at the symposium provided the foundations of scholarship policy for the College Board. The College Scholarship Service grew out of the symposium.
Presenters at the symposium included J. Edward Sanders, dean of Pomona College and a critic of the practice and policy on scholarships, and John Munro, dean at Harvard University and the developer of a formula to calculate financial need.
Sanders's presentation criticized scholarship practices. He noted that such policies over-extended an institution's budget and inflated the stipends awarded to students. The practices also led to loss of talented students and created questionable and massive recruitment campaigns. This resulted in students submitting multiple applications for financial aid at various institutions because of the lack of a systematic and standardized financial aid computation tool.
Sanders suggested that College Board members develop a systematic procedure for determining financial need and eligibility to which all colleges could subscribe.
John Munro presented his financial needs analysis then in use at Harvard. Munro's analysis of a student's financial problems had two basic considerations: expenses and student resources. Expenses included tuition and fees, room and board, books, travel to and from home, and miscellaneous expenses. Student resources included student's earnings and family contribution.
The family contribution was the unique aspect of Munro's analysis. It considered the father's and mother's employment status, the number of dependents, the number of siblings in college, income from all sources, itemized business expenses, federal income tax, assets, and family indebtedness.
With his needs analysis, Munro calculated the expected family contribution to higher education expenses.
| Munro's First Table of "Calculated Family Contribution From Income," 1953 | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| Income | One Child | Two Children | Three Children |
| $3,000 | $400 | $325 | $250 |
| $4,000 | $550 | $450 | $375 |
| $5,000 | $750 | $550 | $475 |
| $6,000 | $875 | $700 | $575 |
| $7,000 | $1,050 | $800 | $700 |
| $8,000 | $1,250 | $975 | $800 |
Committed to expanding educational opportunity through financial assistance, Munro noted, "For all our trouble and effort to measure need carefully, it is still too easy to meet the needs of the man fairly well off." ("Helping the student help himself," College Board Review vol. 20, May 1953).
Many educators participating in College Board initiatives concerning financial aid recognized that the ability to fund higher education, - in essence, money -- was key to higher education access. Educators also realized that there were financial thresholds to college.
As a means to systematize and standardize the awarding of scholarships and financial aid, the College Board began its College Scholarship Service in 1954-1955. The CSS engaged in a variety of activities and services related to financial aid. The CSS organized a membership committee of participating institutions from the College Board's total membership; 97 institutions participated in 1954-1955.
The College Scholarship Service first devised a uniform financial transcript based on Munro's financial analysis computation. The CSS concentrated on distributing and collecting the forms rather than on processing the forms at first.
By 1959, the CSS began using electronic data processing to compute the financial needs analysis. By 1967, the CSS was developing a model data processing system with the U.S. Office of Education to process financial aid applications and had seen a continual increase in the use of its services.
By encouraging standardization and centralization of financial aid needs analysis, the CSS also assisted the development of financial aid as a professional specialization.
The passage of the National Defense Education Act and the National Defense Student Loan program further spurred the use of CSS. More institutions wanted central processing of financial needs analysis, and more and different types of students began seeking financial aid. The CSS expanded its program to include a student financial aid statement separate from a parent's statement for those students independent from their parents.
By the 1960s, those involved in the CSS believed that the College Board was contributing to the democratic expansion of higher education. The perspective of those involved in financial aid, including the College Board and its CSS, was that higher education and the government were working together in the interest of society.
Those involved with the CSS ideally wanted to ensure that all students had access to higher education and were not denied a higher education because of financial need.
Moving even further away from conceptions of merit, financial aid policy by the early 1960s began to assist all eligible students in affording college. The trend was toward helping the "neediest of the able" rather than the "ablest of the needy."
However, what was less explicit within the CSS was how the growth of student financial aid underwrote the growth of colleges and universities as institutions. Financial assistance for students insured that college enrollment continued to grow.
