Student Loan Blog : Western Washington University

College Scholarships Dry Up Along With Endowment Funding

Student Loan Girl — Tue, 17 Mar 2009 21:17:00 GMT

For the six-month period ending in December, college endowments nationwide lost an average of 24 percent, according to the nonprofit Commonfund Institute of Connecticut, forcing a handful of small regional universities to make significant cutbacks to their scholarship funds for the upcoming fall semester (“More Bad News on Campus: Scholarships Drying Up,” Associated Press, March 12, 2009).

This year, Eastern Washington University in Cheney, Washington, provided half a million dollars for 500 scholarships, said Mike Westfall, vice president for university advancement. After experiencing a 20-percent drop in its endowment, the school will only be able to provide $100,000 in scholarships for the coming academic year, which, Westfall said, will significantly impact its student population.

“Over 50 percent of our students are first-generation students. First-generation students tend to be more dependent on financial aid. To take that away is troubling,” he said. To make up the difference, Eastern has increased its fundraising efforts and created a new scholarship website.

Rhode Island College, which saw a 22-percent drop in its endowment this year, has decided to suspend all scholarships for the upcoming school year, largely because the college’s endowment scholarship fund is “underwater” after dipping below the amount the fund started with.

The University of Wisconsin-Superior will have to offer approximately $100,000 less in endowed scholarships next year based on the decline in value of its endowment.

And with only $200,000 available for scholarships next year — after distributing about $900,000 this current year — Western Washington University in Bellingham plans to increase scholarship fundraising for the fall to cover its 30-percent drop in endowment funds.

The school would also like to increase funding for its $800,000 annual scholarship campaign to make up for endowment losses, said Stephanie Bowers, vice president for university advancement and executive director of the university foundation.

Bowers characterizes next year’s scholarship prospects as bleak, but said that she remains hopeful about the future, “When you work for a foundation, you take the 100-year view.”

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University of Washington Plans Largest Environmental College in the World

Student Loan Girl — Thu, 22 May 2008 22:43:00 GMT

Earlier this month, the University of Washington released a report detailing plans to create an environmental college that would rival similar colleges at Duke University, Stanford University, Yale University, and Western Washington University, according to an article in The Seattle Times (“UW Plan Merges Forestry School, 5 Others,” May 15, 2008).

"Certainly, higher education in general has a responsibility to tackle challenges that threaten the well-being of the planet," the UW report states. "The UW is strongly positioned to truly advance the contributions of academia to the very concrete problems of the world around us."

UW’s proposed College of the Environment would be the largest such institution in the world, with a $60 million budget, 97 faculty members and 1,135 students. It would merge six of the school’s existing academic disciplines, including those that focus on the oceans, the atmosphere, and forests.

The college will have the ability to grant degrees at the undergraduate, graduate and postdoctoral levels. And, according to the report, no existing environmental program would come close to the scope of the school.

"The UW is better positioned to meet these [environmental] challenges than any other university in the country or the world."

UW regents are set to discuss plans and vote on the proposal for the new college next month. If approved, the environmental college could open its doors as early as fall 2009.

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As Food Prices Rise, Cost of Campus Meal Plans Going Up

Student Loan Girl — Sat, 10 May 2008 01:05:00 GMT

College students may see a sharp spike in the cost of their on-campus meal plans this fall, due to rising food prices, according to a story this week in The Chronicle of Higher Education (“Soaring Food Prices Have Campus Dining Halls Squeezed,” May 6, 2008).

Several schools have already announced that they intend to increase their meal-plan prices next year, and it’s likely that many more schools will follow:

• Louisiana State University	7.0% increase
• Clemson University	6.0% increase
• University of Miami	4.5% increase
• Ohio University	3.5% increase

In an attempt to avoid huge deficits and stay within their budgets, college food-service operations across the country are getting creative with their meal plans and coming up with unique solutions to contain their costs.

Louisiana State University, for instance, will focus on reducing the portions of its meals.

At Ohio University, the school will focus on marketing meal plans to off-campus students in an attempt to increase overall revenue. In addition, food-service staff will be baking items like cookies, pizza dough, and rolls, from scratch, instead of using premade products.

Rich Neumann, director of dining services at OU, estimates that baking from scratch will save the school almost $100,000 each year alone.

One of the simpler, if more manipulative methods is the one implemented by Western Washington University for one week last month. The school simply removed trays from the dining halls so that students couldn’t carry as much food.

The strategy worked.

According to the director of WWU’s dining services, the dining halls saw a 34-percent reduction in waste when the institution went trayless.

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