The Excelsior Promise: A check-in with New York State’s (in)famous free-tuition program
[Disclosure: This writer received an Excelsior Scholarship for three years.]
“Free college” is not synonymous with “free tuition.” Unfortunately, fourth-year SUNY Albany student Alaina Hinkley found that out the hard way.
In 2017, the Staten Island native and her family heard about New York State’s Excelsior Scholarship, a program passed in the 2018 Fiscal Year budget promising tuition-free schooling for students with household incomes of up to $100,000 (a figure that rose to $125,000 in 2019). The state also said that the program would “alleviate the financial stresses of student loans.”
With other award monies already secured, Hinkley had figured that the tuition grant would allow her to go away to college for relatively cheap, something that she previously thought would not be possible.
When visiting Albany for summer orientation before her first semester in Fall 2017, Hinkley had asked a financial aid counselor about being able to use her Excelsior award towards room and board costs. From what she was told, that was possible. August rolled around, and Hinkley and her family found a rude surprise in her semester bill: only $747 worth of Excelsior money was awarded for her first semester.
“They didn’t have the right information for me. I went into college thinking that it was going to be a lot cheaper. If I knew that I probably would have gone to [CUNY] Baruch and stayed home.”
She was understanding of the mistake given that it was the program’s first year in existence, but that doesn’t change that Hinkley only received a meager few hundred dollars of Excelsior money per semester during her first two years of college; in her third year and beyond, awards from other scholarships increased to cover the full amount of the business administration and communications student’s tuition, and Excelsior was no longer applicable.
“My dad was very unhappy, but I had to go, you know, it wasn’t really an option,” Hinkley said. For that first semester, her father took out a home equity loan to help her pay her bill.
At the time of the program’s inception, Governor Andrew Cuomo’s camp stated that more than 940,000 middle-class families and individuals would qualify for the first-in-the-nation program. But, according to the Empire Center for Public Policy, only 20,047 scholarships were awarded for the 2017-18 academic year.
Hinkley is not the only student that has dealt with the woes of the Excelsior Scholarship. Sophia Poznahovska, a senior SUNY New Paltz psychology student from Monroe, has an overall positive view of the program; however, her family has had to strictly watch their finances to ensure that she would maintain eligibility.
Poznahovska was able to live at home throughout her college career and therefore didn’t have to worry about any room and board costs on top of tuition and fees. But, to keep her schooling as low-cost as possible, her parents — who work as a truck driver and an adjunct professor, respectively — really had to figure out their finances, because they were close to the income cap almost every year. With Poznahovska working as a waitress in her first years of college, she also had to carefully keep track of how much money she was bringing in, and even cut down on her hours to ensure that she wouldn’t forfeit a several-thousand dollar scholarship for hourly wages.
Household income isn’t the only requirement for students looking to receive Excelsior aid. As outlined in Section 669-H of the New York State Education Law, prospective beneficiaries must also enroll full-time for at least 12 credits each semester, with a total of 30 credits per academic year. The program takes a “last-dollar” approach when awarding money, meaning that, like in Hinkley’s situation, other scholarships will be deducted from the total tuition cost before any Excelsior award is applied.
The greatest amount that can be awarded to a student per year under Excelsior is either $5,500 or the actual cost of tuition, whichever amount is less. Recipients do not need to worry about tuition rising though, for they can only be charged the SUNY tuition rate from the 2016-17 academic year, equalling $6,470.
Sophia Poznahovska has received the Excelsior Scholarship for her entire college career at SUNY New Paltz. Despite some confusion with the terms, she’s grateful for the opportunity it has afforded her. Photo courtesy of Sophia Poznahovska.
The scholarship also does not allow for breaks in enrollment unless you meet a specific approved reason. For example, if a student has a documentable health or family crisis that causes them to take a leave of absence from their schooling and lose eligibility, they can appeal the loss and have their status reinstated.
One of the largest caveats to the Excelsior Scholarship is the post-graduation residency and work requirement. For the same duration that a student receives an Excelsior award, which if they maintained eligibility throughout their college career is typically either two years or four years, they must both hold a job and live in the state of New York. If they fail to do so, the amount of money they were awarded by the state turns into an interest-free loan that must be paid back within a schedule determined by the corporation.
Aaron Jed, a SUNY Binghamton math student from Sloatsburg, has received the Excelsior scholarship for the full three years that he has been enrolled. While definitely appreciative of the tuition help, he does feel that when he signed the contract to receive aid as a teenager in high school, he might not have fully considered what would be required from him after graduation in exchange for the award.
“When you really think about it, it kind of makes us indentured servants to New York State,” he said.
As a resident of the southern end of Rockland County, it is not a long drive to New Jersey at all from Jed’s home in Sloatsburg. However, despite that short distance, Jed is prohibited from finding employment in the neighboring state unless he decides he’s okay with forfeiting the money that was awarded to him under Excelsior.
“They’re not very specific about it, which is kind of frustrating. But, you know, I got a free education.”
To that extent, Jed added that it was hard to find detailed stipulations of exactly how the working within the state is defined. “Does that mean I can make like $1 in New York over the year and work a job in New Jersey? Or does every single dollar have to be made in New York?”
“They’re not very specific about it, which is kind of frustrating. But, you know, I got a free education,” Poznohovska concurred.
This May, Excelsior’s first class of recipients to utilize the full four-year term of the scholarship will graduate into a very different world than when they signed the Higher Education Services Corporation’s aid contract in Fall 2017.
According to Upwork’s 2020 Future Workforce Pulse Report, at the end of last year, 41.8% of Americans remained working fully remote. In addition, they project that by the end of 2021, 26.7% of the workforce will remain fully remote.
However, this shift to remote work as a result of COVID-19 has not changed the terms of the HESC’s Excelsior contract. Speaking on a policy passed down from SUNY Chancellor Jim Malatras’ office, District 103 Assemblymember Kevin A. Cahill (D-Kingston) said that, even if a graduate is living in New York and working from home, if their employer is not in-state, it counts as a violation of their contract.
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Francis Quinonez, an undeclared first-year SUNY New Paltz student from Queens, is very grateful for the tuition assistance that Excelsior has granted her — a deciding factor in why she chose to attend the school to begin with.
With New Paltz being one of the last schools to accept her, Quinonez made a split-second decision to switch from the private college she had previously committed to in Boston and enroll in the cheaper New York State alternative the same day as her acceptance.
Although she hasn’t physically lived on campus for this past academic year due to pandemic-related circumstances, Excelsior student Francis Quinonez says that she does not regret her decision, and has liked her college experience thus far. Photo courtesy of Francis Quinonez
“I had absolutely no idea anything about New Paltz. I did my research that day, and I thought, all I know is it’s cheaper, I’m going to get a degree out of it, so I’m just going to go,” she said. Aside from the difference in private out-of-state tuition to public in-state, Quinonez was also accepted through SUNY’s Educational Opportunity Program (EOP), which offers additional financial aid for expenses related to room and board. “The main focus for me was to pick somewhere where I know I can financially pay either for myself or like, my parents can help me, I get a job, things like that.”
Because of her family’s location in New York, Quinonez says that she has no problem with the scholarship’s post-graduation residency and work requirement. “It was not really a deal breaker for me. I don’t really have family anywhere else, and I don’t plan on going anywhere else,” she said.
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Shannon Dodson , a junior theater student at SUNY New Paltz from Troy, knows from experience the pitfalls of the Excelsior program and eligibility requirements.
Like most financial aid coming from either the federal or state government, Excelsior goes off of the adjusted gross income reported on a student’s Free Application for Federal Student Aid, known colloquially to college students and their families as the FAFSA. To continue to receive any type of governmental aid for the entirety of their college career, a student has to fill out a new FAFSA every year, inputting tax information that illustrates their household income from the previous year each time.
Shannon Dodson, a SUNY New Paltz student, has never been eligible for the Excelsior Scholarship, despite extenuating circumstances. Photo courtesy of Shannon Dodson.
When Dodson filled out the FAFSA that would determine her financial aid for the 2020-21 academic year, which became available in October of 2019, the form asked for her household’s adjusted gross income from the year 2018. As for many other families, their financial situation changed in 2020 from the COVID-19 pandemic. For Dodson, her family’s 2018 income placed them at just $3,000 to $5,000 above the eligibility cut-off. However, after her father lost his job in 2020, the money that the state expected Dodson’s family to have was no longer available.[MW4]
Dodson’s father made the majority of her household’s money, and since losing his job, she estimates that her family’s income has dropped from just over the $125,000 threshold to somewhere in the $45,000 to $50,000 range between her mother’s income and unemployment.
“Even when my dad was employed, we made like $3,000 to $5,000 more than the threshold. So we didn’t qualify for Excelsior my first two years, but my dad lost his job during COVID and is still currently unemployed, and he’s actually been sick for the past year, year and a half, so he’s probably going to be out of work for at least the next year if not more, and we still don’t qualify for Excelsior because of how FAFSA works.”
Dodson estimates at the moment, she owes between $40-45,000 in student loans, but by the time she graduates, her debt will be closer to $60,000 in total if her aid does not change for her senior year. She currently receives a $500 per semester scholarship through the school and was allotted $1,500 from the college under the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security (CARES) Act, but has not reached out to HESC yet.
“A $5,000 tuition though, pales by comparison to the $25,000 it actually costs per year to put a person through public higher education in this state.”
Under Section 3.2.2 of HESC’s Excelsior Scholarship Eligibility Manual, it states that an applicant may be able to appeal to use their household’s current year or prior year income on their application in the case of death, disability, divorce or separation of a member whose income normally contributes to that of the overall household. However, there is nothing in that section that specifically accommodates long-term unemployment.
New York State District 103 Assemblymember Cahill, who holds a seat on the assembly’s Standing Committee on Higher Education, believes that not only does the financial eligibility criteria for state-funded tuition relief programs need to be reassessed, but what expenses the award money can be applied to altogether.
Cahill says that they should be tailored to better match the actual cost of college, which goes beyond tuition to include mandatory fees, and to better accommodate the large group of students who are in need of aid.
“Quite frankly, $125,000 a year does not give you enough money to put your children through school. $150,000 a year really does not give you enough money to put your children through school. A $5,000 tuition though, pales by comparison to the $25,000 it actually costs per year to put a person through public higher education in this state,” Cahill said.
Prior to COVID-19, Cuomo’s Executive Budget for fiscal year 2021 included a proposal to increase the income cap for the scholarship to $135,000 in the 2021-2022 academic year, and to $150,000 in the 2022-23 term. This ultimately did not go through because of the pandemic, and the fiscal year 2022 budget does not include any stipulations for raising the income limit or expanding the funding to cover other expenses besides tuition.
For Hinkley, Poznahovska, Jed and Quinonez, there is a common theme that as far as financial aid goes, something is better than nothing. But, when coupled with stories like Hinkley’s loss of eligibility from other scholarships and Dodson’s drowning in debt due to her inability to obtain award monies — despite her dad becoming both sick and unemployed in the midst of the pandemic — it is clear that New York State has room for improvement in order to fully fulfill its promise to middle-class college students.