UVa board of visitors votes to end no-loans policy for poor students

CHARLOTTESVILLE — The University of Virginia will drop an original tenet of its financial aid program that assured low-income students could graduate without debt, raising concerns that socioeconomic diversity will suffer in the effort to shore up the finances of AccessUVa.

At its weekend retreat, UVa’s board of visitors with two dissenting votes approved a change that will limit grant awards and include loans for the first time in the aid packages of undergraduates with the most financial need.

In a letter to students and faculty, UVa President Teresa Sullivan said the four-year cap on loans will be $28,000, but the debt total for in-state students likely will be about $14,000 because they pay lower tuition rates.

The change to AccessUVa will be phased in beginning in the 2014-15 academic year, a decade after the program considered among the nation’s most generous began.

“This action raises the cost of a UVa degree substantially for students from low-income families, hurting our diversity and coming at a time when we are already seen as elitist and unwelcoming,” Helen Dragas, the former rector, said by e-mail.

Dragas, who was joined by new board member Kevin Fay in voting against the change, said the decision “seems to go against our mission of affordable excellence as set forth by Jefferson and against our legacy as a source of public good.”

UVa’s Student Council sent a letter to the board before the vote urging it make unrestricted grant aid a budget priority to lessen racial and economic inequities.

But Eric McDaniel, the council’s president, said the council “understands fully that this call was made by the board with the good of the university and its students at its heart.”

Current students will not be affected by the change. UVa spokesman McGregor McCance said that the program’s costs will continue to increase, but not as much as they would have without the loan requirement. By 2017-18, the university projects the change will moderate the escalation of program costs by $6 million per year, he said.

In reauthorizing the program, the university said it will continue its “need blind” admission policy — which means a student’s ability to pay is not a factor in the admission decision — and will meet 100 percent of demonstrated need.

But UVa will standardize need-based aid packages to include federal student loans for all undergraduates. Currently, loans are not part of the aid package for students from families with incomes below 200 percent of federal poverty guidelines, or about $46,100 for a family of four.

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