Finance and Administrative Services Planning Goal #4
2004-2006

1. What is a visionary goal that your unit set?

Evaluate and restructure student scholarship program.

2. What information and data did you use to set this goal?

During the past several years, as the costs of providing a quality higher education experience have risen faster than both family disposable income and government financial assistance grants, the University has grown increasingly concerned that students with significant financial need are not able to matriculate at PLNU.

3. What actions did you take to try to reach this goal?

• In the spring of 2005, the University engaged the firm of Scannell & Kurz to evaluate its institutional financial assistance program with the objective of being able to attract more students of high academic quality, particularly those with financial need and/or who are underrepresented.
• Scannell & Kurz suggested some specific recommendations about scholarship restructuring.

4. What progress did you make?

• Beginning in 2006-07 the University is introducing a new scholarship structure and eliminating some of its merit-based scholarships and is putting these funds into need-based grants (see Appendices 1 and 2).

5. What information and data did you use to evaluate your progress?

• Student data on academic achievement (SAT scores and average GPA) will be tracked to see if the overall academic quality of students is improving.
• The diversity of the student population will be tracked.
• The measure of the number of students with “need” is still being developed – it is anticipated that we will focus on matriculation yields within various “bands” of Expected Family Contribution.

Supporting Documents:

2005-06 Scholarship structure
2006-07 Scholarship structure
Table 1.2.1
Table 1.4.1
Table 2.3