Consultants urge UMS to attract top students

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FORT KENT – The University of Maine System should offer discounted tuition to increase the number of high-caliber students from both in and outside the state, two New York consultants told the board of trustees Monday.

In addition, UMS should better market its ability to cover the total cost of education for the state’s neediest students, said representatives from Scannell & Kurz.

Hired last year with a $300,000 grant to help UMS make better use of its financial aid dollars, Jim Scannell and Kathy Kurz advised trustees to think of financial aid less as an expenditure item in the budget and more as an investment that can generate revenue.

The idea, they said during a presentation to trustees at the University of Maine at Fort Kent, is to target financial aid to bring in more students.

By spending its financial aid dollars wisely, UMS will induce more students to enroll. That means more tuition, which in turn means more revenue for the system.

Among other things, they recommended in their report that UMS guarantee:

. A merit award of $2,500 for full-time in-state freshmen and $5,000 for full-time nonresident freshmen with SAT scores of more than 1,200.

. A merit scholarship of $1,500 to any full-time transfer students coming from the Maine Community College System with a 3.0 grade point average.

Using admissions and financial aid data from 2001-2004, the consultants found that 60 percent of the state’s neediest students attend UMS. That means the system already is doing a good job of being accessible.

A third recommendation was that UMS should rethink the way it handles financial aid so it can better market how most of its campuses offer full tuition to in-state, full-time students who are eligible for the maximum federal Pell grant of $4,000.

These students can have their total costs covered through a combination of federal Pell grants and additional public and private sources.

Scannell said the report helps the system understand who’s being served and who isn’t being served and how to use financial aid most effectively across the system to meet the needs of students and their families.

The information also helps UMS make a case to legislators and policy-makers for additional financial aid money, he said.

Higher-education officials praised the consultants’ work and said the grant money had been well spent. “It’s about time we figured what role financial aid plays in attracting and retaining students,” said UMS Chancellor Joseph Westphal.

The system isn’t getting enough high-quality students, said Kurz. “You certainly don’t want to lose the best and the brightest in state and you wouldn’t mind stealing a few” from out of state, she said.

UMS should position itself as a welcoming and logical next step for community college students finishing up their two-year degrees, said Scannell. “The only way you don’t end up being competitive with the community college system is if you get your fair share of its graduates,” he said.

Vice Chancellor Elsa Nunez said the financial aid initiative is part of the strategic plan to enhance quality across the university system.

UMS determines quality not only by the caliber of its students but by its ability to serve all students regardless of their economic circumstances.

Nunez said it would cost $700,000 to implement the three recommendations and that members of a committee overseeing that portion of the strategic plan would decide which ones to bring to the UMS board of trustees and how to pay for them.

The price tag isn’t astronomical considering that UMS would be increasing the overall pool of students as well as the quality of students, Nunez said.

The consultants’ basic premise was that the university system must spend money to make money.

By offering in-state freshmen a $2,500 merit scholarship each year they attend UMS, the system would enroll 68 more students per year and generate a profit of around $240,000 per year, they predicted.

Some campuses already offer some level of merit award for students with high SAT scores. “But we want a systemwide guarantee,” said Kurz.

The consultants also recommended reaching out to students who aren’t from Maine because they pay higher tuition and thus bring in more revenue.

Thirty percent of UMS students should be from out of state, as opposed to the current 15 percent, according to Scannell and Kurz’s report.

Other advice included making sure that tuition increases don’t change too much over a period of time so that Maine’s low-income families aren’t shut out and so that UMS remains competitive within New England.

The system admits students with lower SAT scores and is ranked lower by U.S. News & World Report than other institutions with which it competes, the consultants noted.

Another recommendation was that the university system, the community college system, the Finance Authority of Maine, the George F. Mitchell Research Institute in Portland, the Maine Business Council and others should launch a statewide marketing campaign called “Going to College Pays,” to explain to prospective students that more education corresponds to a higher paycheck.

Scannell praised the campuses’ financial aid directors for supporting each other and working well together – something that is quite rare, he said.

Trustee Meg Weston said the consultants’ information was valuable. “We need to be sophisticated about how we use our financial aid strategy to generate revenue,” she said.