The Ohio State University at Marion
PAE-10: Affordability and Access Programs

Not currently participating.

University tuition rates are set by senior leadership at the Columbus campus for all six Ohio State University campuses. The current regional campus full-time tuition rate is $3,570 per semester, one of the lowest four-year university tuition rates in Ohio.

According to the Mid Ohio Food Bank, 19.3% Marion County residents live below the poverty line, 1 in 3 children in Marion County are food insecure, with food pantries in the county responding to nearly 75,000 requests for assistance in 2012. At the invitation of the food bank, several Ohio State Marion staff and faculty have become involved with a new initiative sponsored by the food bank entitled “Building a Hunger Movement in Marion County.” This initiative had its first planning meeting in July of 2013, with additional planning meetings scheduled this fall. As this is a new initiative, we will not be able to provide exact details regarding the specific roles that will be played by staff and faculty here, but those details will be included in next year’s version of this report. Beginning five years ago, “Marion Matters,” a local community service organization whose mission it is to assist those living in generational or situational poverty by equipping them with information and resources to successfully meet their life goals, began a program entitled “Bridges Out of Poverty. The program provides extensive training for local educators, human service agency representatives, and other members of the Marion community regarding the culture of poverty, and how to develop and implement effective strategies that can provide low-income individuals with the tools and opportunities they need to elevate themselves and their families out of poverty. Since the inception of the program, over 20 Ohio State Marion faculty and staff have participated.

Eighth Grade Tours: For 17 years, the Marion campus, in cooperation with our co-located technical college, Tri Rivers Career Center (our local JVS), and the 11 middle schools within the Tri Rivers district have run a program entitled “Eighth Grade Tours.” Nearly 1,500 area eighth grade students (most of whom live and attend school in low-SES areas) are brought to campus over six-seven consecutive Fridays each fall to learn about the importance of attending college, interact with college faculty in various “hands-on” sessions related to various academic disciplines, tour campus, and participate in a college planning session where they learn about the recommended courses they should choose to take in high school to better prepare themselves for the rigors of collegiate study or for the job market should they elect not to attend college. I Can Center of Excellence: Also, the Marion campus admission and financial aid staff are active partners with the I Can Center of Excellence, north central Ohio’s primary non-profit college access organization. We are actively involved with I Can and assist them with a variety of programs in the local K-12 schools with the goals of: 1) reducing the high dropout rates in our service area (particularly in the Marion city schools); 2) encouraging more young people to pursue higher education upon graduation from high school; and 3) providing education and assistance for students and their parents with respect to college planning and financial aid. Marion City Schools Science Teacher Project: This initiative began in 2009 with middle school teachers and expanded to the high school two years later. The project as it has developed uses three basic tactics: there is a summer content workshop along with school-year content support by Dr. Gordon Aubrecht, Ohio State Marion professor and Bill Schmitt, head of the science department at Marion Harding High School. The teachers decide what they are missing and work together at grade level to create together new lessons that they then implement in their classes; and teachers analyze formative assessments based on common questions designed by Aubrecht and Schmitt (and modified in response to teacher input). The pedagogical content involves increased use of guided inquiry by teachers, in which students explore phenomena and are checked on their understanding by the teachers. Marion student scores have risen considerably on the OAA and OGT since we began the program. We were asked by the Ohio Department of Education to expand the program to another high-needs district to see whether the success we have had in Marion can be duplicated. We ran two week-long workshops during summer and are working with teachers from South-Western City Schools now on classroom inquiry. P.A.L.S.: The Pride And Life Skills mentoring program (PALS) is a cooperative venture between The Ohio State University at Marion, the Boys & Girls Club of Marion County, and Marion Public Schools to develop a mentoring program that is a win-win situation for both elementary, middle school students, and college students. PALS, connects college students from the Marion campus with grade school children in the Marion area to provide one-on-one mentoring opportunities for kids. The Boys & Girls Club matches program volunteers with school age children and provides each a useful handbook to direct them through the mentoring process. Students earn 1-credit per quarter of independent study by attending mentoring sessions regularly, coming to occasional meetings, and writing a two-page report about their mentoring activities at the end of each semester.

On average, the regional campuses serve a significantly poorer student population than the Columbus campus. For the current aid year, the Expected Family Contribution (EFC) for all Columbus campus undergraduates who submitted a 2013-2014 Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA) is $18,098, compared to $10,062 for Marion campus undergraduates. With years of state cuts to higher education subsidy, which have resulted in tuition rates rising steadily over the past decade, as well as the elimination of several State financial aid programs, including the elimination of Ohio College Opportunity Grant (OCOG) eligibility for students at all of the State’s 23 regional campuses, cuts in Columbus campus-based aid for Ohio State’s regional campus students, and reductions in Federal aid programs, our students are finding it increasingly difficult to pay for their college expenses. We are proud to report that the Marion campus offers the most generous scholarship program of any of the university’s smaller campuses. Due to the generosity of area donors, the Marion campus is able to award over $1,000,000 per year in merit and need-based scholarships and grants to our students. For the 2013-2014 aid year, $1,174,247 has been awarded to 628 students (approximately half of our entire student body). In addition, the GoBuck$ program was established in the Marion City Schools in 2010 through the George and Dorothy Alber Scholarship endowment. "GoBuck$” is a win-win for education in Marion. The pilot program incentivizes attendance, academic achievement, and promotes higher education Imagine getting your first college scholarship before you even learn to read. That is now reality through a partnership between The Ohio State University at Marion and Marion City Schools. The Ohio State University at Marion and Marion City Schools have partnered to institute a pilot program beginning in the 2010-2011 academic school year and beyond that could mean increased attendance and academic performance in Marion City grades K-12, while providing up to $100,000 in scholarships annually to attend college. Ohio State Marion has committed to provide tuition vouchers of $25 and $50 per quarter to Marion students meeting attendance and achievement criteria set forth by the school system. Students have the potential of earning up to $3,300 tuition from kindergarten through high school, if they meet all attendance and achievement criteria set forth by the school. Because cost is often a deterrent for otherwise gifted students to pursue a degree, organizers feel the program will pay dividends well beyond high school graduation. The “GoBuck$” program provides a real dollars and cents incentive for students to achieve in earlier grades, then continue that habit of achievement at The Ohio State University. Additional fundraising efforts have allowed us to pilot the expansion of the Go Bucks program into all of the public high schools in Marion County. The Marion County GoBuck$ program will be piloted in Marion County School 7th grade classrooms in 2013 and be expanded into additional grades as the endowment fund grows. Each school district is determining the criteria by which students may earn $25 certificates for tuition at Ohio State Marion. The object of the program is to encourage college attendance among Marion County K-12 students and eventually increase the bachelor’s degree attainment rate in Marion County.

In addition to the work we do with the I Can Center of Excellence as described in section D above, the Marion campus admission and financial aid staff provides over 30 free college planning and financial aid & FAFSA completion workshops each year, both on campus and on-site at area high schools. Our area high school counselors have been terrific partners in helping to organize and publicize these workshops, which are attended largely by low-income, prospective first-generation college students and their parents.

With the exception of Delaware county, northern Franklin county and some parts of Union county, the rest of our service area (Marion, Morrow, Hardin, Crawford and Wyandot counties), is considered as a moderate-to-low SES area, with low college attendance/graduation rates and stagnant or declining population growth. In addition to all of the recruitment materials we send to high school students, high school counselors, Veterans agencies, human and social service agencies, etc. our admission and student life staff visit all of the schools and agencies in our service area 2-3 times per year to develop relationships with and recruit students. Approximately 75% of our Student Services staff were themselves first-generation college students, and most came from families of modest-to-low means, and particularly sensitive to, and comfortable dealing with prospective students of all ages who are in a low-SES situation.

The Ohio State regional campuses still offer open admission to Ohio residents who have earned a high school diploma or GED.

See section above: "Scholarships for low-income students"