What colleges practice "bait and switch" tactics?

ordinarylives
Fri, 16 Mar 2012 09:38:56 +0000

It probably doesn’t happen much at any ranked (national or regional) school. And sometimes, what people might think is bait and switch really isn’t. What feels like bait and switch to a student can be the result of changes that happen at the state or even federal level. I’ll give you several examples.


My school have a very generous need-based award for state residents with a 0 EFC. The EFC of 0 is a requirement established by the donors who funded this award. Well, this year, the fed reduced the amount of income for the auto-zero from 31K to 23K. There will be people who no longer have an EFC of 0 even though income hasn’t changed. They will lose that award. Would you call this bait and switch? THe problem is a result of the change in federal EFC calculations.
I work for a TRIO program. We are allowed to give grants to freshman and sophomores only. This is a federal regulation. We tell students money is available only for first and second year, but they don’t always hear us.
Sometimes, the state runs out of money and the state grants are reduced for second semester. The student then gets a bigger bill.


At the institutional level


Things change - a student with talent money might stop participating in the activity. The institution probably will not replace a talent scholarship with more free money. Merit scholarships aren’t continued if someone misses a required GPA by even a few hundreths of a point.


For schools that might use bait and switch with the fin aid, the exodus of students for financial reasons after the first year would kill an institution’s retention rates, making it harder to recruit and retain students. It’s just not a sustainable practice.