The 20-year-old President’s Scholars Program at California State University, Long Beach will be seeing large structure and benefit changes come fall 2016.
President Jane Close Conoley said that the changes are pending and will not affect the current scholars on campus right now.
“We are telling students that they will be eligible for scholarships that would be as much as full tuition and full housing [for] up to two years,” Conoley said.
Conoley said that a big change is that there would not be a promise for full tuition and full housing for four years.
Founded by President Robert Maxson 20 years ago, CSULB’s President’s Scholars Program has also provided students with priority registration, small classes, faculty mentors, opportunities to travel and many more other privileges.
She also said that the organizational needs now are not to support a small number of academically talented students, but to invest in programs that the larger student population has access to.
“[The changes] are a big concern to me because the reason that I chose to be a part of this program was because it gave me a full ride, and that was just something that I couldn’t turn down,” first year international studies and economics major Julia Jaynes said. “It feels like a disservice to me.”
By 2017, the university will develop a strategy to invite very high-performing students to be a part of the scholars program, Conoley said.
“The other thing is that the President’s Scholars program in its current form benefited only freshmen coming in from high school,” Conoley said. “Actually a majority of our students are transfer students. The President’s Scholars program was never available.”
Conoley said that in her dream world, CSULB would have an honors program that is very adaptable to every major in a few years.
“We think that this is a fair thing to do, rather than just putting our resources into freshmen,” Conoley said. “There’s two populations in the school and that may have grown over time, too.”
Conoley said that there are three sources of funding for the program as of now. The first source comes from endowments that equal up to $400,000 a year. The second source would be from private fundraisers, which raise up to $350,000 a year. Lastly, the university receives $450,000 a year through donations – the source that is dwindling the most.
“[The program] was working in the early years of the program because tuition was so low and housing was not charging the president’s scholars,” Conoley said. “They were just going in for free and with different financial changes and the recession, we are losing 25 percent of our budget. That just doesn’t work anymore.”
The program is built around the endowment income and the private fundraising, which will equal to around $700,000 to $750,000 a year, Conoley said.
Conoley said that CSULB will continue to invest university resources within the next three years and have already calculated what they had to save and find. But, as the funding package changes, they get to a situation where they are totally privately funded.
“There will be, over time, an increase in the number of President’s Scholars, but we will be teaching them in the Honors Program how to write applications to be Rhodes Scholars,” Conoley said. “We think that they will be supported for four years, but we want to teach them how to go out and get money.”
During a Town Hall meeting last month, Conoley stated that change is needed for financial and organizational reasons. However, she said that she does not want to lose the best features and guiding principles of the program.
Jaynes said that Maxson enriched the opportunity of giving extremely high achieving students the ability to come to this school and creating a better learning environment for students and the professors that challenge them.
“The program is being diluted, but on the other hand I do think that CSULB needs to offer more opportunities for students,” Jaynes said. “This is something that you worked so hard for, so you want an outcome from all your hard work and you’re willing to give back for the opportunity.”
Conoley said that the program wants to work towards struggling students, average students and top students.
“We want to find programs that can cover all spectrums of students,” Conoley said.