The initiative at Denison, about 100 miles south of Oberlin, helps make the school more marketable to Ohio residents and “provides some stability to our enrollment,” said Gregory Sneed, vice president for enrollment management.
Denison, where the cost of tuition, room and board and fees is $70,400 this year, opted against making financial need a consideration for its $100,000 scholarship because applying for aid is already a complex process.
“We just want this to be simple in a complicated year,” Sneed said.
Roughly 1,200 students applied by the Dec. 1 deadline at Denison, which has a total undegraduate enrollment of about 2,300.
Some schools are offering more help based on financial need. Grinnell College in Iowa announced last month that financial-aid packages will include grants that don’t need to be repaid instead of loans.
Still, the incentives at U.S. colleges are beginning to pile up as the universe of high school graduates is already shrinking in parts of the country, including some Midwest states, and is projected to decline nationwide in coming years. Schools are trying to ensure they have enough students for the next academic year, especially after the 2020 drop.
“If you’re under-enrolled and under-budget, those are pretty significant consequences,” said Mark Hatch, vice president for enrollment at Colorado College in Colorado Springs. “They’re four-year consequences.”
--With assistance from John Hechinger.
This article was provided by Bloomberg News.