The Enhanced Tuition Award, introduced this year, aimed to quell financial hardships for students attending private universities in New York state. However, roughly two-thirds of private schools — including Syracuse University — have opted out, according to several reports.

Under the ETA, a qualifying student can receive up to $6,000 in tuition assistance if the student agrees to live and work in New York state for a set number of years after they graduate from college.

Only half of each student’s award comes from the state because the school must match that amount to supply the other half.

SU was one of 66 schools that opted out of the program. However, Michele Wheatly, SU’s vice chancellor and provost, said in a statement this summer that the university would annually reevaluate the decision.

Ronald Ehrenberg, a Cornell University professor and director of Cornell’s Higher Education Research Institute, said he believes the program’s strict requirements made it less than desirable for private universities.

“The additional money that would come from the state must be further matched by the private university. Many private universities didn’t want to make that commitment,” Ehrenberg said.

Ehrenberg added the university is not allowed to raise tuition while a student is in the program. If a university were to opt in to the program, they might be “giving up income.”

Kevin Quinn, SU’s senior vice president of public affairs, said the decision to opt out of the ETA was not connected to the $3,300 Invest Syracuse tuition premium announced in July.

“We will evaluate the possible benefits of participating in future years as the program develops,” Quinn said in an email.

Quinn said the university’s financial aid program, which has a budget of $255 million, increased 4.8 percent from last year.

Emily Donohue, director of communications at the Commission on Independent Colleges and Universities, noted concerns for both institutions and students.

“There are some strings on the program that factored into institutions’ decisions regarding whether or not to opt into this first pilot year,” Donohue said.

She noted other concerns, including the residency requirement, the relatively small amount of money the scholarships provide and the lottery for scholarships. Not every student who qualifies for the award will get the money, she said.

Students who accept an Enhanced Tuition Award must live in New York state for the same amount of time they accepted the award for. This means that if a student accepted an ETA for four years, that student must reside and work in New York state for four years.

Donohue also said if the demand for aid exceeds the $19 million dollars allocated to the program, the New York State Higher Education Services Corporation will implement a lottery to determine which students receive assistance.

The ETA’s application period ran from July 7 to Aug. 21.

Financial aid requests such as the Free Application for Federal Student Aid — which had an application deadline of June 30 in 2017 — are typically due before July.

Some prospective students still haven’t heard back about their ETA, causing problems at some schools that opted in.

Jeffery Gates, senior vice president of student affairs and enrollment management at Utica College — one of the 29 private institutions that opted in to the program — has seen the effects of the ETA application schedule firsthand.

“Students are completing their first week of classes at Utica and still do not know if they will get an ETA award,” Gates said in an email. “Students who enrolled at a public institution thinking they were going to go for ‘free’ and did not get approved have asked to return to Utica … and others now believe that attending (Utica) would have been a better financial option.”

HESC will be adjusting the timeline for the ETA in its second application cycle. Students who apply for the ETA for the 2018-19 academic year will be notified before classes begin.

Published on September 6, 2017 at 10:23 pm

Contact Ryan: rarozenb@syr.edu