Stretching Scholarship Dollars

At Lafayette College, students receiving financial aid don’t have to take any additional steps to manage their funding when participating in Lafayette study abroad programs. “[Their] financial aid package automatically travels with them when they go abroad,” says Rochelle Keesler, the college’s director of international and off-campus education. Even so, “students who were receiving relatively significant financial support to participate in our programs were still withdrawing and telling us money was the issue,” Keesler says.

Lafayette provides tiered support for study abroad programs based on financial need, ranging from 25 to 75 percent of the program fee—which includes many expenses, including airfare, tuition, and housing. But students on full financial aid were still expected to come up with a portion of the fee, and withdrawals were making it difficult for the study abroad office to maintain stable rosters for some programs. Programs to nontraditional destinations such as the college’s Senegal program, which tends to attract a socioeconomically and racially diverse cohort of students, were particularly affected.

The college’s study abroad office shared these concerns with Lafayette’s office of financial aid, which as part of a pilot increased the grant tiers to between 50 percent and the full cost of the program. Attrition rates fell dramatically—one program only had one student out of 24 withdraw, and the Senegal program had its largest cohort to date. 

“We simply had to listen to what our students were telling us and make the right decision to try to rectify the problem.” —Rochelle Keesler

“Sometimes