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Programmatic Shifts in Need-Based and Merit-Based College Financial Aid Policy
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Thesis/Dissertation
Date
2025-05
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Educational Leadership
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https://doi.org/10.34944/t0g5-dy37
Abstract
This study concerns financial aid awarding practices at Mid-Atlantic University, a large, urban, four-year, publicly supported, research institution. The purpose of this study was to consider how equitable the distribution of institutional need-blind and need-based gift aid was, viewing allocation of institutional gift aid as representative of institutional priorities on the overarching issues of access and equity in higher education. Four research questions are considered, with regressions performed aimed at identifying the factors of institutional financial aid policy on low and middle-income undergraduate students. The first two questions focus on relationships between institutional grant aid and student need, among the total sample cohort and among just the subset of need-blind merit scholarship recipients within the larger sample. The third and fourth questions focus on the student success outcomes: time to graduation, GPA, and accrued student loan indebtedness. Mid-Atlantic University fairly allocated institutional need-based grants to help equalize income inequality among its financial aid applicants to some extent, as decreased time to graduate (with a stronger impact even than the receipt of merit scholarships) and very slight increases in cumulative GPA found for recipients. However, funding allocation to transfer students was an area of inequity in awarding practices. Transfer students received less funding in both need-blind merit scholarships and institutional need-based grants and accrued greater student loan debt. Additionally, allocation of need-blind merit scholarships favored lower need students and/or those that did not file a FAFSA. Lastly, student loan debt was found to have a negative relationship with both time to graduation and GPA, and students with higher need were found to take on more student loan debt.
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