Grinnell College, a small liberal arts college nestled between Des Moines and Iowa City, Iowa, announced Wednesday that it has revolutionized its financial aid system to completely eliminate loans from students’ financial aid packages.
Since the early 1980s, the college has had a need-blind admissions policy, which is when an applicant’s ability to pay for their education will not be a factor in the admission decision. But when COVID-19 ravaged the country — and the world — officials said they realized they needed to ensure students and families would be taken care of. They convened focus groups and found student loans were still a main source of stress for students, even up to 10 years after they graduated.
The college’s leaders discerned that they had spent over $10 million in the spring to get students through the pandemic shutdown.
“No one really knows how long this pandemic is going to last,” said Dr. Anne Harris, president of Grinnell College, who is concerned about the pandemic and its ongoing economic impact. She said she is especially worried about how the pandemic might affect current and future students’ access to higher education.
“We are seeing first-generation students and students of color are having reduced access to higher ed, especially small liberal arts colleges,” she added.
According to Grinnell’s website, 15% of Grinnell students are first-generation and 26% are domestic students of color.
“One of our goals really was, ‘OK, roll your sleeves up.’ How do we maintain access to a Grinnell education for as many students as possible?” Harris said. “The pandemic has made me value [our campus] model that much more, and therefore value the access to that model that much more. We have to maintain the multiplicity of that model; we have to maintain the diverse model that our students bring. Everything we’ve seen out in the world was telling us access was going to get harder, and we wanted to preserve that access.”
