When it comes to financial aid, a student’s status as “needy” is frequently not a term describing their own financial situation, but refers to their family’s.

In fact, a student’s status as “needy” during their college years might give them an immediate financial advantage over others upon graduation. This advantage would be compared to a student whose parents were financially healthy but who did not contribute financially to their child’s college education. If that student then supported the education by acquiring loans, the student would have more to pay back than those who were able to receive some gift aid in the form of a need-based grant because they are needy.

Jerry Augsburger, Student Financial Aid Office director, has no problem with that. “The person who is coming from a substantial background—a substantial financial background—no matter how you slice it, is going to have much better resources available to them sooner or later. Whether the parents choose to support that person at this moment in time or not, that person has far more options available to him to aspire to a college education than the person who is coming from a genuine poverty family background who had no other options.

“The parents do not have the option to choose not to support the child in that case; they are totally unable to,” Augsburger said. “And if that child ever comes to college, which is not very likely, and if after a time is able to complete a college degree, that person is never going to have any support from any other direction than whatever they are able to generate through their own efforts,” he said.

“The person who is coming from a relatively well-off family which, for whatever reason, has opted not to give a blank check to their child, whether or not they are sent off with any money, that person is miles ahead of a genuinely needy student to begin with,” Augsburger said.

“To think that both of those students ought to leave college at a similar debt level, I think, would be preposterous and totally foreign to what we as financial aid people would hope would occur.

“You have to remember that the major foundation of all these need-based programs that we work with and have a high commitment too, is that the family has a responsibility to provide support to the degree that they are able to do so, not to the degree that they are willing to do so,” he added.

“We’re here to serve all students, but our focal point is on needy students, and even more focused on the extremely needy student as related to the kind of economic background that the student is coming from.

“We are committed to that sort of thing, and that’s something where there are a lot of people who feel that things shouldn’t be that way,” Augsburger said. “There are people who feel (this way): Shouldn’t a student who comes from a middle class or even a wealthy background who, for whatever reason, is not receiving financial assistance from his family, shouldn’t that person be equally eligible for these goodies that we’re handling as this other student we’re handling who is also needy and who is coming from this impoverished background?”

How impoverished can a person’s background be where they can still make it to college?

“We see people coming from the most dire of financial backgrounds: their families are living from hand to mouth, they’re living on welfare payments which do not provide for even the basic necessities in most cases,” Augsburger said.

“But such a person still, to even come to a place like Northern, presumably has had to graduate from high school and has presumably had to show some evidence that they could benefit from a college education. And no matter how bad that impoverished background might be, they’ve been able to make it through those obstacles to high school graduation,” said Augsburger.

“Another thing,” he continued, “students from a background like that, generally speaking, are not being encouraged to think of college, whereas for most people who come from middle or upper class families, college is something that is just pretty much expected from day one. Those are additional hurdles that certain students have to overcome.”

“But if they’ve been able to overcome those hurdles and actually get here, then we have a commitment to try our best to put together a financial aid package which will help that student meet expenses,” Augsburger said.

“And for that we come up with what we refer to as our standard budget. This year the standard budget is $7,400. We feel that a student should be able to make it through a two-semester academic year for around $7,400, and this includes tuition, fees, books, room and board, a small travel allowance and a somewhat larger miscellaneous allowance for such things as dry cleaning, laundry, clothing replacement and a bit of recreation,” Augsburger said.

Loans would make up some of that money and “the Pell Grant is $2,300 this year, if you are an impoverished person going to NIU or any college. That is gift aid; that is money they never have to pay back,” Augsburger said.

Basically, all students can get sufficient loans to cover their college costs at NIU. “Virtually any student can get a loan of one type or another. The need-based loans have the better loan conditions as far as interest rates and pay-back,” Augsburger said.

“Typically, with the need-based loans, a student doesn’t have to pay any interest while he or she remains in school, and only has to pay interest when the loan enters a repayment phase. Whereas with the non-need-based loans, typically, the borrower has to start paying interest as soon as they take out the loan. And usually the interest rate is a bit higher also,” Augsburger said.

But if loans could cover everything, aren’t need-based grants and gift aid programs unnecessary?

Augsburger believes they are necessary. “I think that if the gift aid programs were to disappear, college enrollment would be seriously affected relative to the impoverished person who has no resources themselves and can expect no resources from poverty stricken parents.

“Such a person is not likely to want to go out and borrow $7,000 or more a year to attend college and get in so far over their head that they never have a hope of paying it back,” Augsburger said.