MANSFIELD – A new initiative funded by the Columbus campus of The Ohio State University will make college more affordable for students at OSU’s regional campuses.
The newly-announced Buckeye Opportunity Program will commit up to $3 million annually in additional financial aid to low- and moderate-income students at OSU’s five regional campuses. The financial aid will go towards the tuition and mandatory fee needs of regional campus students who are from Ohio, qualify for federal Pell Grants and have successfully begun their college career.
According to Dr. Norman Jones, Dean and Director of the OSU-Mansfield campus, the new program will make a college education at OSU-Mansfield significantly more affordable for almost half of the students at the branch campus.
“It will especially benefit students from our region who are eligible for Pell support and are able to save on housing costs by living at home,” Jones said. “They will be able to get an OSU four-year degree for the cost of just one semester’s tuition.”
According to the U.S. Department of Education, 90 percent of Pell Grant recipients have an annual household income of $50,000 or less. The Buckeye Opportunity Program will use institutional aid to cover any gap that remains after federal and state aid are applied toward Spring 2019 tuition and mandatory fees at regional campuses.
The new program is expected to benefit 3,000 students on the Columbus campus, plus an additional 1,200 students in Lima, Mansfield, Marion, Newark and at the Agricultural Technical Institute in Wooster. According to Jones, that equates to about 17 percent of Columbus campus students, compared to 47 percent of the Mansfield campus incoming class.
Jones said the program is important because too few students from low- and moderate-income backgrounds have access to the full breadth of higher education opportunities available. Highly talented lower-income students, he added, are much less likely to graduate with a college degree than their high-income peers.
“When qualified high-achieving, lower-income students attend top colleges and universities, their probability of graduating increases significantly, as do their potential earnings and long-term quality of life,” Jones said.
To participate in the Buckeye Opportunity Program, Pell-eligible students on regional campuses must be enrolled full-time, have completed a full-time course load towards an Ohio State degree, and have successfully completed the University Survey course or be enrolled in the course for Spring 2019.
The course, required of all undergraduates in the first term of enrollment, is designed to help students assess their interests and plan their progress toward a degree.
“They do have to prove themselves by completing one semester of college successfully to show they have a little skin the game; after that Ohio State will pick up any remaining tuition their grants don’t cover as long as they remain in good academic standing,” Jones said.
Students will receive more information about the Buckeye Opportunity Program and notification about financial aid awards prior to the Spring 2019 semester.
“I’ve been an English professor on the Mansfield campus for 14 years, and I was not looking to get into administration,” Jones added. “One of the things that pushed me over the edge was the current leadership at the president and provost level of OSU as a whole, really dedicated to having OSU be a national leader in access and affordability. This is pretty amazing.”
