A draft of GW’s next strategic plan lists meeting undergraduate students’ full demonstrated financial need as a goal for officials, which experts say the University could achieve by admitting fewer students who rely on financial aid and setting aside additional funds to supplement tuition payments.
University President Ellen Granberg and Provost Chris Bracey earlier this month released a draft framework for the University’s first strategic plan since 2020 that includes a goal to create a “multiyear strategy” that meets the “full” demonstrated financial need of residential undergraduate students. Higher education experts said the goal to meet students’ full demonstrated financial need could mean the University sets aside a certain amount of financial aid available for students, like loans or grants, and enrolls less students that require financial assistance.
Officials outlined three “institutional priorities” in the strategic plan set to launch this fall, including generating scholarship with impact, preparing students to be strong and resilient leaders and strengthening the University’s foundation for excellence. Under each priority, officials detailed between three and five goals that would help achieve each priority.
University spokesperson Shannon McClendon said the University understands paying for college is “one of the biggest” financial decisions families and students “ever make.” She said the University is considering steps to meet the full demonstrated financial need of residential undergraduate students to “expand access” and “ensure” all admits are able to attend GW.
“While we currently meet the full need of most of our Pell Grant-eligible students, the strategic framework being developed aims to extend this commitment to the remaining residential undergraduate students with demonstrated unmet financial need,” McClendon said.
McClendon said the draft strategic framework is a “living document,” and the University encourages students, faculty and staff to share feedback and ask questions to the steering committee at one of their five upcoming briefings.
Officials announced last month that undergraduate tuition will increase by 3.5 percent for the 2025-26 academic year, bringing the price of tuition to roughly $70,000 per year and the total cost of attendance, which includes tuition, fees, room and board, to more than $94,000. Full-time undergraduate students’ average cost of attendance with financial aid was $45,466 for the 2023-24 academic year.
Madhavi Venkatesan, an associate teaching professor of economics at Northeastern University, said the University’s goal is “very ambiguous” because it could mean that the University sets aside a certain amount of money per year for financial assistance or admits more students that don’t show demonstrated financial need.
She said universities meeting financial aid does not necessarily mean the University will have a more economically diverse population because the University could admit more students that don’t demonstrate financial need, maintaining a lack of economic diversity.
“What you might start to see is if it’s a situation where some institutions do provide a desirable financial package to create a more heterogeneous financial mix in a student body, you’ll see that occur there,” Venkatesan said. “If some institutions don’t, and they’ll have a more homogeneous mix.”
GW is not a need-blind institution, meaning officials consider a students’ ability to pay tuition when assessing their application. The University said in 2013 that hundreds of undergraduate applicants were put on the waitlist by admissions representatives each year because they couldn’t afford to pay GW’s tuition.
Nine of GW’s peer schools meet students’ demonstrated financial need, including Wake Forest and Georgetown universities. Syracuse University, Tulane University and the University of Pittsburgh are among GW’s peer schools that do not meet 100 percent of students’ demonstrated financial need.
Venkatesan said the last strategic plan under former University President Thomas LeBlanc called for decreased enrollment and the promotion of STEM programs, meaning the University would admit less students and would not have had to support students in terms of financial aid, which could contribute to a less economically diverse student population.
LeBlanc’s plan included a 20/30 initiative to cut undergraduate enrollment by 20 percent while increasing the University’s portion of STEM majors to 30 percent, which was rendered “obsolete” by University officials due to the COVID-19 pandemic after critics of the plan said it lacked community input.
More than 100 faculty called on the Board of Trustees in a March 2020 petition to meet the full demonstrated financial need of students as an alternative to LeBlanc’s 20/30 Plan in order to achieve his strategic plan’s overarching goals of “preeminence as a comprehensive, global research university.”
Kevin Lang, a professor of economics at Boston University, said demonstrated financial need can be determined by the Free Application for Federal Student Aid that students apply for, which calculates the gap between the cost of attendance and the amount the students’ family is expected to pay. He said universities can fundraise to increase their endowments with donated money that “explicitly” goes toward student financial aid in the form of grants to meet students’ demonstrated need.
Lang said he expects federal funding for universities to decline amid Trump’s administration targeting universities that have diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives through federal funding cuts.
“I think that we’re going to see a lot of universities struggling to balance their budgets, and so we’re going to see a lot of cutbacks in various elements,” Lang said.
Lang said universities reliant on federal funding will “presumably” find other sources of funding and cuts to its budget to make as a result of funding being pulled. He said universities will have to “adapt dramatically” if these cuts are more permanent by finding other revenue sources.
“You can survive a hit of multiple million dollars for a year,” Lang said. “Most universities didn’t collapse during COVID.”
Bracey, Chief Financial Officer Bruno Fernandes and Chief of Staff Scott Mory released a statement earlier this month to announce the University is redesigning their budget model process over the next two years, eyeing to adopt it in fiscal year 2027. Officials said in the statement that the University launched the initiative fall 2024 to “evolve” the current budget model to “better align” financial allocations with academic, research and strategic priorities, which have “changed dramatically” since 2016.
Officials said the University last updated its budget model in 2016 and had plans to revisit the model in 2020, but the COVID-19 pandemic disrupted officials’ plans because of other priorities.
Tal Gross, a professor of markets, public policy and law at Boston University, said universities try to balance goals “behind the scenes,” like not charging “middle income” families too much while maintaining tuition revenue and maintaining their endowments.
Gross said universities create benchmarks for themselves regarding how much financial aid they offer, like grants, loans and average cost of attendance, while keeping their revenue up to evaluate good U.S News and World Report rankings.
Gross said universities can increase revenue by keeping the sticker price of tuition the same but offering less financial aid when redesigning their budget model. He said institutions could also admit more full-pay students that don’t receive institutional aid, which is a “sensitive” option.
“Another possibility, which is harder to discuss or is sensitive, is to try to admit more full-pay students, wealthier students, international students, who are typically full-pay and get their financial aid, you know, in their home country,” Gross said.
