Year: 2025
Type: conference-paper
Abstract: As college costs rise, students and their families continually look for ways to pay for an undergraduate education.Increased financial pressures have forced some students to work additional hours in part-time or even full-time employment.As a result, time to degree can be extended as students tackle fewer units per term or as they repeat courses, struggling to balance work and school.Scholarship funding is one mechanism to help support students, but providing financial relief is not enough.Scholarship recipients face many of the same challenges as all students, in that some find themselves struggling as they transition to college or shift from community college to a four-year institution.Some scholarship students find it difficult to ask for help, assuming that because they have been awarded merit scholarships, they should be able to manage all aspects of college on their own.In the face of these challenges, the College of Engineering at San José State University has developed a robust scholarship program.It moves beyond simply awarding money to help students pay their education costs by providing a broader student support program.Through student performance tracking, academic support resources, and professional development programming, along with program guidance and support from a range of faculty and staff members, scholarship students are retained at higher rates and earn their degrees in fewer semesters than the college average.This paper describes our integrated scholarship program involving multiple cohorts of students funded through a variety of financial streams including individual and corporate donors, and a National Science Foundation S-STEM grant.From the centralized scholarship application and selection process to the tracking and mentoring processes, we will show how institutionalizing the process has allowed us to attract additional donors, better support our scholarship students to graduation, and assist our students in moving into leadership positions. The Need for Scholarships and Financial SupportThe cost of college in the United States continues to rise.In-state tuition and fees at public fouryear institutions increased 2.9% for the 2013-2014 academic year; a smaller rise compared to the 4.5% and 8.5% increases of the previous years respectively.For the California State University system, tuition for a full-time undergraduate increased from just under $1,500 during the 2001-2002 academic year to over $5,400 as of fall 2011.While this figure remains affordable in the context of national educational costs, the extreme increase in a short period of time has been a challenge for families who did not expect or plan for such rises.As costs have increased, many students find themselves needing to work more hours to pay for school.In addition, for some students reduced units to accommodate work commitments have in turn resulted in increased time to degree thereby extending the higher tuition and fees.While some studies have suggested that working part-time while in school correlates with higher academic performance and increased likelihood of degree completion, the literature is not consistent.Additional research has shown connections between student financial aid and retention along with casual evidence linking financial aid and grade point average.
Authors: Jared Tuberty, Thalia Anagnos, Emily Allen
Institution: California State University Los Angeles
Language: English
Subfield: Education
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
SDG: Quality education
Open Access status: gold
OpenAlex ID: W2283831726