Ohio State tuition for resident undergraduates is frozen this year, but because of cuts to a major state need-based financial aid program, tuition money could also be harder to find.

Facing a tight state budget, and considering the increase in federal money available to students in the form of Pell Grants, the state substantially reduced the maximum amount of money that students can receive from the Ohio College Opportunity Grant.

The neediest students — those with no expected contributions from their families — attending school full-time at a public university’s main campus are eligible for $1,008, down from $2,496 last year. Students at regional campuses and community colleges are no longer eligible for the grant.

“In order to have substantive support for the institution, the state had to make some decisions,” OSU President E. Gordon Gee said in an interview with The Lantern. “I’m sorry that they had to make those decisions, and we’ll do everything we possibly can to cover those.”
                                                                                                                                                 In August, OSU pulled $5 million from its budget ($3 million from the main campus budget and $2 million from regional campuses) to cover the difference for students at all OSU campuses who lost money from the grant, according to The Columbus Dispatch. This $5 million will only cover Summer and Autumn Quarters, however, and students will need to find new sources of tuition money, including loans, said Student Financial Aid Director Diane Stemper.

One such source could be OSU’s “Students First, Students Now” program, introduced last winter, Gee said. The program provides short- and long-term loans to students. The maximum annual loan amount is $3,000, but unlike grants the loans must be repaid with an interest rate of 5 percent.

Gee also cited the grant’s reduction as a reason for maintaining the tuition freeze throughout the year. He estimated that raising in-state tuition by 3.5 percent, the maximum allowed by the state, would have generated an additional $10 million to $15 million.
By comparison, the total amount of money from the grant that eligible students on OSU’s main campus stand to lose from the cut is about $10 million, or $5 million after OSU’s contribution, Stemper said. Last year, OSU students had access to $15.4 million in money from the grant, she said.