TRAVIS LEFEVRE
The Scallion Editor
The Excelsior scholarship went into full effect this semester with approximately 12 percent of Fredonia’s 4,631 undergraduates qualifying for the program.
In order to be deemed eligible for the scholarship for this current academic year, your aggregated gross income, or (AGI) must be below $100,000.
Based on information provided by SUNY, a total of 45,281 students were deemed eligible to receive the Excelsior scholarship.
According to a statement from Cedric Howard, vice president of Enrollment and Student Services, 65 percent of Fredonia students who filed FAFSA (roughly 3,010 undergraduates) are above the $100,000 mark.
As a “last dollar in” scholarship that is only applied after other scholarships take effect, the final number of Excelsior recipients at Fredonia, 557 in total, is only around 61 percent of the 899 students who were originally deemed eligible for the scholarship.
If a student’s bill is completely covered by TAP, the Pell Grant, or any other form of financial aid, the Excelsior scholarship will not be applied to their bill.
In a press release from Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s office from Oct. 1, the Excelsior scholarship is described as a “first-in-the-nation program providing cost-free tuition.”
It could be argued that, due to the requirement that students must work in New York State for the same number of years they received the scholarship, the Excelsior scholarship isn’t necessarily “cost-free.” If students were to leave New York state early, the scholarship would be converted to a interest-free loan.
The press release also hints that the scholarship played a large role in the fact that 210,000 students in New York state will be going to a SUNY or CUNY school tuition-free.
The press release from Cuomo’s office states that there are approximately 22,000 scholarship recipients. While this is a relatively high number, it only contributes 10 percent to the 210,000 students who are in higher education tuition-free.
Currently, funding for the Excelsior scholarship comes from a $87 million fixed allocation fund. According to the office of Sen. Catharine Young, the state budget has $163 million in funding for this program.