As course schedules are filling for next semester, financial aid is always something on the minds of students this time of year.

With tuition and room and board increases, most students want as much financial aid as possible.

For 2011-12, 28 percent of Butler University’s expense budget was dedicated to financial aid, totaling $47,672,800. The total amount of financial aid distributed was $102,928,535, which includes Butler funds, guaranteed student loans, state and federal aid such as the Pell Grant, and other outside awards.

“We are the largest source of aid for students that enroll here, by a significant amount,” Tom Weede, vice president for enrollment management, said. “Unlike a state institution, our revenues come from our students, so we are able to distribute it as we need.”

Eighty-seven percent of Butler University’s revenue comes from tuition and room and board—all student-paid fees.

Vice President for Finance Bruce Arick said that financial aid comes from two separate “buckets” of funding: university expense, or unrestricted aid, and endowed funds.

He said a financial aid package starts with state and federal aid and then adds endowed and unrestricted aid to fill it up based on the student’s merit- and need-based circumstances.

“They’re dipping into both of the buckets to come up with the best financial scholarship awards that they can for each individual student,” Arick said. “The packages end up being almost customized to the student.”

Of all students at Butler, Weede said about 91 percent receive some sort of financial aid.

“We didn’t set out to have it that way, but when you work in a system that is tailored to each individual family’s circumstances and each individual student’s circumstances, each package is very much tailored to the individual that is enrolling,” he said.

While Arick estimated the average student aid package to be between $10,000 and $12,000, Weede said he doesn’t think about it like that.

“We have 4,000 individual financial aid packages,” he said. “When you talk about an average package, it’s meaningless because no one is average. We custom-build a financial aid package based on (a student’s) circumstances.”

Weede said he often hears from students at this time of year who have been offered more money from another school but want to come to Butler if the university can match the aid.

“Our answer is typically, ‘Good luck at that school,’” Weede said, “because we’re trying to create a match rather than buying people.”

Student groups at Butler University said they’re going to work harder to protect diversity in their organizations in light of the lower freshman multicultural enrollment this year.

“It is absolutely imperative that student organizations reach across the table and work with each other,” Caitlin Jackson, president of Demia Feminist Majority Leadership Alliance, said.

Should the enrollment have a negative effect on membership numbers, students will need to work more with other groups, Valerie Davidson, director of diversity programs, said.

“Students will realize the value of reaching out and realize there’s real strength and power in collaboration,” Davidson
said.

Freshman Rithvi Melanta said despite the need to reach out, people tend to stick to the groups they’re familiar with.

“It’s harder for groups to be diverse when students stay in their comfort zone,” Melanta said. “The numbers are definitely eventually going to have an effect.”

Student groups still are getting started, so it remains to be seen if the enrollment will have an effect on student group membership this year, Davidson said.

Davidson said Butler’s student organizations are mighty even when their memberships are lower.

“You might have fewer people working to accomplish the group’s agenda, but the commitment to the mission is there,” Davidson said. “People are going to roll up their sleeves and get things done.”

Jackson, who said she wants to co-host an event with the Black Student Union, said the effects of a lower freshman multicultural enrollment go beyond membership in diversity organizations.

“A decrease in diversity means further marginalizing and silencing voices of diversity,” Jackson said.

Butler has seven student organizations with offices in the Efroymson Diversity Center, including Asian Student Intercultural Alliance, Black Student Union, Butler Alliance, Demia, International Club, Latinos Unidos and the Voices of Deliverance Gospel Choir.

After dropping more than 1 percent in a year, multicultural student enrollment at Butler University is one-third the national rate at other private, four-year, not-for-profit institutions.

Multicultural students—African-Americans, Native Americans, Asian-Americans and other non-Caucasian students—make up 11.3 percent of Butler’s population, down from 12.4 percent last year.

On average, multicultural students made up 31.9 percent of the student population at other private, four-year, not-for-profit institutions in the United States in 2009, according to data by the National Center for Education Statistics.

The drop has been attributed to change in financial aid. In 2008, students looking to state funds to help cut the out-of-pocket costs could earn up to $11,000. Now, students with the highest need can earn up to $7,000.

Tom Weede, vice president of enrollment management, said that multicultural students felt the most impact from the drop in aid and said that they tend to come from lower socioeconomic groups.

“There has been a disproportionate impact on multicultural students.

“What we’re asking is that the poorest students—some of whom are multicultural and some of whom are white—who have the least ability to pay it, to find an extra $4,000 to come to the university,” Weede said. “It’s just not plausible.”

Financial aid makes up a majority of the university budget, with 92 percent of students receiving some sort of aid from the university.

Making up the difference from state cuts would be difficult, if not impossible, Weede said.

“We, as a university, just don’t have a way or the means to make that up,” Weede said. “When we try and move money from budgets to find this money, we take away from something else. There’s no easy way to do this.

“It looks really fine and seems like a good idea to just do that, until it’s your budget that’s being changed.”

How Butler stacks up

Butler’s multicultural rate is slightly below similar universities, Weede said. He said the cost of the university is one to be considered when looking at the hard numbers.

“It’s easy to look at other universities with higher rates and be surprised that ours is low,” Weede said. “Our cost is a factor. So if anything happens that would hinder a student’s ability to pay for the university, we’re less likely to get that student to come to Butler.”

Past and future of Multicultural enrollment

In the past four years, multicultural enrollment has been on a steady increase but still is behind other similar universities.

Butler’s history in recruiting and enrolling diverse students is one that has faced changes in recent decades.

Between the 1920s and the 60s, university policies–including one that put a quota on how many multicultural students were admitted each year–built a barrier between multicultural communities and the university.

It wasn’t until around 1986 that the university made a mindful effort to appeal  to and recruit more multicultural students from around the country, Valerie Davidson, director of diversity programs, said.

“Under [former university President John G.] Johnson, administrators really started to look at how to better the university’s relationship with the community,” Davidson said. “They wanted to really start breaking down those invisible barriers.”

When Johnson became university president in 1978, he was one of the first university presidents to consciously improve appeal to   multicultural students.

Johnson said after his inauguration that one of the guidelines for developing his administrative policies was a desire “to attract highly qualified young people who represent a broad segment of economic and cultural backgrounds.”

Under Johnson, a diversity program and task force were created to increase multicultural recruitment and enrollment, including changes in academic programs and outreach efforts.

“With the changes the university has made, the perception that people have of Butler has changed,” Davidson said. “The university has become a community partner and has encouraged interaction, which has helped create a better view of the campus.”

Multicultural recruitment efforts have been successful, Weede said. The university has seen an increase in both acceptance rates and applications received by minorities.

“We’ve seen the acceptance go up,” Weede said. “Now we’re just waiting to see the enrollment catch up. We’ve all been working hard to make sure that can get done.”

Davidson echoed Weede’s sentiment.

“Recruitment has a big job in front of them,” she said. “We’re competing for students from the same pool of applicants, so we just need to keep finding creative ways to create relationships with different potential students.”

The Collegian contacted, but was unable to meet with, officials from admissions and financial aid.