Hendershot: New Financial Aid Plan for 2023
By: Malak Kamel
@MK_Malak
Following news that a new financial aid approach is currently in progress, The Caravan sat down with Associate Dean of Undergraduate Studies and the Academy of Liberal Arts Matthew Hendershot to discuss the details of this plan in more depth, including what the plan entails, when it is expected to be implemented, and what impact it aims to have on the AUC community.
The Caravan: Why did the university decide to pursue a new financial aid approach?
Hendershot: There has been broad multi stakeholder concerns about “are we really using our financial support in the best way?” A lot of people were looking at the process and saying “you know we don’t think we’re doing as good as we possibly could, we think there’s room for improvement.” These voices were coming from students, faculty and parents. There was just a lot of conversation. The administration did not only hear this, but they saw it themselves. They put a task force together a couple of years ago and they started looking into the issue and they said “yeah there’s a lot of room for improvement.” That’s when I got involved. I was tasked by the Provost to work with the Office of Student Financial Affairs and Scholarship to really look into this in greater depth.
How is this new approach different from the already existing one?
We want to have a kind of mindset where we tell students [to] worry about admissions, worry about achieving your excellence, worry about becoming a great student, worry about achieving AUC standards, but don’t worry about tuition. What we want to see is that students, throughout their schooling years – they know that if they strive for excellence, and they work really hard, and they try to raise themselves to the standard of AUC excellence that they have a chance of getting into AUC. We want to get a message out to students saying we offer over a thousand scholarships to help promising students, promising scholars of tomorrow, [get] a chance to study at AUC. We do not really have that unified message right now in our current plan.
Sometimes our current approach maybe makes it so that need versus merit – they’re against each other. It’s like one or another. One’s going to hold the other hostage. That’s not what we want. We need an integrated system that learns to work with these in harmony together.
When is the new financial aid approach expected to be implemented?
In Fall of 2023. This gives us time to make sure that all parties understand how the new system works. Even if we have a great plan, it has to be coordinated with all these different areas of the university far in advance. And you know materials need to be changed, processes need to be changed and we have to build the new rubrics. And sometimes these small details can make an excellent plan not start so well. Imagine if we really have 1000 or more students supported by scholarships but somehow that message doesn’t really get to schools throughout Egypt and the region. That would undermine the plan’s scope.
If we start in Fall 2023, it will be close to Fall 2028 that really it’s fully implemented to the whole student body. So really it’s a long term plan. We don’t want to do anything hasty that might have negative unintended consequences to existing students.
What impact do you think it will have on the AUC community?
Ultimately, what we’d like to see is that this helps the AUC achieve its mission and vision better; to be the most excellent educational institution in the country and in the region. I think it will help us get there. Why? Because I think it will help us attract more applicants and it will help us attract better applicants to AUC. If we have more and better applicants apply[ing], that’s obviously a win for the university. The stronger our students, the stronger our reputation. The more we can achieve, the more we can do and the more students go on to achieve.
Also, with that, it’s going to help us get more international students. The stronger our reputation is internationally, the more we internationalize our campus. The more we internationalize our campus, again, it is a win for the whole AUC family.
We don’t want the change to hurt any existing students, so when the plan does launch, it will only launch for new incoming students. So, existing students will continue forward on the plan they came in on, so as to make sure that no harm is done to any existing student.
What has been most encouraging to you throughout the whole process?
As a general rule, we, as humans- we sometimes resist change. This is just a kind of human reality. Changes bring uncertainty. As I talked with probably 20 different focus groups, and so many stakeholders, what I personally have been so encouraged by was the enthusiasm. How many people were like finally we need to do this, this is so good, this is great, this is what we needed at AUC. Normally when you’re presenting something for a change, you can expect more push back and more resistance. Seeing the enthusiasm and optimism from people makes me feel like we’re on track, we’re moving in the right direction. We’ve heard what the stakeholders have said, we’ve listened carefully and we’ve hopefully come up with a plan based on everybody’s input that says, “Indeed, AUC, we are a great institution, but we think we can do better in this area”.
