From the beginning, the University of Michigan has prided itself on being accessible to students from all economic backgrounds. And from the beginning this has posed financial challenges that continue to this day.

The Office of Financial Aid reports that over the last 10 years, the cost of undergraduate attendance at the U-M has risen 90% (to about $12,000 a year) for resident students and 131% (to nearly $22,000) for nonresidents. During that decade, the University has more than doubled student aid from its General Fund while federal dollars have remained essentially the same.

With the General Fund supported principally by tuition, and with tuition currently pushing the limits of affordability, making financial aid all the more necessary, the University finds itself in an institutional catch-22 that has it increasingly looking to private sources to shore up the widening gulf between student need and University resources.

More and more students are turning to loans as a substantial part of financing their education. Nonresident students face an average loan burden of more than $20,000 after earning their undergraduate degrees, while even Michigan residents borrow an average of $8,000. For those who go on to graduate study, debt can end up being much higher.

Scholarships and fellowships can make an important difference for many students throughout the University, as the following stories illustrate:

The O'Leary and Naughton-Briggs Scholarships
Despite higher costs for nonresident students, the U-M's student body comes from all 50 states and over 100 foreign countries. For Katy Bloss, valedictorian of her graduating class at Mariner High School in Cape Coral, Florida, and future pediatric physician, scholarship assistance made attending the U-M possible. Though attracted by Michigan's Inteflex Program, which integrates undergraduate education with medical school in a seven-year course of study, Bloss and her family found Michigan's price tag prohibitive. Only by receiving the first John J. and Mary C. O'Leary Scholarship four years ago did her dream of attending the U-M come true. The O'Learys of Green Valley, Arizona, established the scholarship to assist with tuition costs of high-ability, nonresident undergraduate students with demonstrated need.

Even with the scholarship, Bloss had to work 25 to 30 hours a week at a job for her first three years, leaving no time for extracurricular activities. "I'd have loved to be part of the Marching Band," she says wistfully. She believes, however, that the support she's received has motivated her to work even harder at her studies. "I felt I owed so many people. I've worked for them as well as for myself."

Steve Koch of Ann Arbor, a second-year honors physics major in LS&A who plans a career in research after earning a PhD, did pursue his love of the Michigan Marching Band during his freshman year. But after a rigorous first semester which often included more than 20 hours with the Marching Band and 12 hours at a job each week, Koch was worn out.

"I did all right academically," Koch says, "but I knew I couldn't keep up the pace. I decided I would have to quit the Marching Band." But then he was awarded a $5,120 Sharon Naughton-Briggs Memorial Scholarship, which meant Koch could give up his job and continue with the band without jeopardizing his studies. Koch feels certain his GPA would be significantly lower without his scholarship, and he regularly updates the Naughton family on his progress.

To Doris Naughton, who with other family members established the scholarship in memory of her daughter, Sharon Naughton-Briggs, the scholarship, which varies in amount according to student need, has done "everything we thought it would, and more; we never imagined we'd derive so much pleasure from hearing from the students."

Both the O'Leary and Naughton-Briggs Scholarships are administered by the University's Office of Financial Aid.

Center for the Education of Women Scholarships
Sylvia Brown's path to Michigan followed an untraditional course. A high school dropout, married at 16 and widowed with a young child at 24, she didn't then hold higher education as the priority it is to her now. Though she completed her GED for secondary education and held positions in banking and accounting, as she neared mid-life Brown felt a pull toward greater fulfillment and began to think about college.

Financially destitute by her own description, Brown was told that the Center for the Education of Women (CEW) had a comprehensive support program and could guide her toward resources. CEW staff encouraged her to apply for financial aid, and to Brown's surprise, she received a $3,000 CEW sholarship in 1989.

"It was like a lifeboat," she says. By then she had three children to provide for, and the CEW award helped with costs for child care, books, and transportation. "The scholarship relieved a good deal of financial stress and reduced the amount of time I otherwise would have had to work," Brown says. "Had that need gone unmet and the stress remained, I'd have been unable to excel in my coursework."

And excel she has, earning in 1992 a bachelor's degree in general studies with a concentration in health and social sciences and a minor in organizational behavior. Currently Brown is working towards a master's degree in the School of Social Work with the goal of administering human services programs in a government setting.

The Martin Luther King Scholarship
The Alumni Association administers the Martin Luther King Scholarship, established by the Reunion Committee of Black Graduates to honor the ideals of Martin Luther King and to inspire academic success as well as provide financial assistance.

For Richard Clay of Detroit, who was the top male student at Northwestern High School in 1989, vice president of the school's National Honor Society, a member of the Science and Afro-American History clubs, chosen 1989 Homecoming King–and who has been blind since the age of two–being awarded a $1,000 Martin Luther King Scholarship in 1990 freed him from the need to work during a busy freshman year. It also made him feel supported in his goals and dreams of working throughout his life for human rights.

"The more progress made in human rights," Clay says, "the more progress is made in making Dr. King's dream a reality. Being a Black, totally blind male, I've realized the struggles some people must overcome in order to achieve success."

Chosen a King Scholar "in recognition of high scholastic achievements, community spirit and worthy ideals," Clay plans to earn his teaching certificate as well as a master's in education and hopes one day to add owning his own business to his teaching career. "The King Scholarship–and other financial assistance I've received–helped me get to where I am," he says.

The University's Campaign for Michigan has joined with the Reunion Committee of Black Graduates to raise $1 million for the King endowment fund. Reaching this goal will enable the King Scholar Award program to be expanded to include Hispanic/Latino-American and American Indian students.

Rackham Pre-Doctoral Fellowship Program
The need for financial aid is not limited to undergraduate study. In the Horace H. Rackham School for Graduate Studies, Pre-Doctoral Fellowships are among the School's most prestigious awards. Providing funding to outstanding doctoral candidates to enable them to spend nearly a year working solely on their dissertation research projects, the $25,000 Pre-Doc awards alleviate the need for employment which so often hinders research and delays dissertation completion.

According to Jennifer Stuart '92 PhD, the Pre-Doc Fellowship she received "allowed me to take on a more ambitious doctoral project that otherwise would have been possible. It made available the time and resources necessary for work that meaningfully combined my clinical and academic interests." That mix has proven invaluable to Stuart as she combines professional practice as a psychotherapist with her recent academic appointment as assistant professor of psychology at New York's New School for Social Research.

Another recent Pre-Doc, Daniel Smail, a student in the Medieval History program, says that the fellowship gave him the opportunity to finish his dissertation while extending his knowledge in legal history and legal anthropology. His study of the social organization of medieval Marseille during the Black Death (1347-48), based on a largely unstudied number of primary sources, will, according to Daniel's dissertation chair Professor Diane Hughes, "shape the way medievalists and early modernists characterize in the future the nature of social bonds."

Gifts of any amount can be made to scholarship and fellowship funds. Endowment opportunities begin at the following levels: Need-based or Merit Scholarships................... Athletic Scholarships................ Undergrad Financial Aid (partial....................................... Graduate Fellowships............... $100,000 $  60,000 $  25,000 $250,000 For more information, call the Campaign for Michigan at (313) 998-6000 or the Office of Financial Aid at (313) 763-4119.

The extensive scope and originality of his work would not have been possible, Daniel believes, without the help of his Pre-Doctoral Fellowship. After graduation he plans to teach medieval history and historical anthropology, but he thinks in terms beyond that: "I want to communicate what I find so valuable about history and about ways of thinking historically to a public outside the classroom." It's the public Daniel aspires to reach-both inside and outside the classroom-that benefits in so many ways from the scholastic and career achievements made possible, in part, by financial aid.