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Foundation's first fund raiser in 21 years
Northshore Scholarship Foundation
plans to "Narrow the Gap" in costs
First-year college-bound students are
pulling together last minute checklists this month, and shoring up their
finances in preparation for an exciting new experience in their lives
come August and September. A number of them will be fortified with
scholarships from their hometown.
All
of them will be faced with the challenge of reaching college graduation
as debt-free as possible. With higher education costs spiraling upward
year by year, more and more young people who are considering college may
find it out of reach for them. Those already in college are concerned
that they may not have the finances to finish.
At the annual
breakfast celebrating the Northshore Scholarship Foundation’s 21st
year providing community-generated scholarships, 1964 Bothell High
School grad Bill Fassett drove home this point, this concern about the
need for private scholarship aid as a means of encouraging students to
take the college plunge. Bill earned a doctorate at the University of
Washington before joining the WSU faculty. He recently stepped down as
Dean of the School of Pharmacy at Washington State University.
Dr. Fassett told those assembled, “private
support is more essential now than ever before. I am of a generation
that benefited from living in a state that valued state-supported
college and university education. My classmates and I paid about 20 per
cent of the cost of attending the University of Washington. This allowed
me to work my way through college without having significant family
wealth and without having to accumulate much in the way of student
debt.”
“It
is no longer the case that Washington pays most of the cost of public
higher education,” he continued. “Student tuition accounted for more
than half of the cost of attendance at Washington’s four-year
universities and colleges during the last biennium, and the Legislature
has just budgeted for additional tuition hikes, and kept about half of
the increase for use in the (state’s) general fund.”
“Baccalaureate
graduates at UW and WSU graduate with between $20,000 and $40,000 of
debt, and professional degree graduates, such as my students in
pharmacy, often graduate $80,000 in debt.
“I
can assure you that every scholarship is important to its recipients --
often making a crucial difference in the student’s ability to start or
stay in college.”
Bill
Fassett with John B. Hughes and Eric Barnum at scholarship breakfast
Since
1999, the state has offered $500 and $1,000 two-year grants to members
of low and middle-income families under a Promise Scholars program. In
April of this year, the state higher education agency sent out
applications to 11,000 graduating seniors across the state. They had to
send out letters a week later retracting the offer when the Legislature
failed to fund the awards!
The
college aid picture is not likely to get much better.
However,
our three area service clubs that support and manage the Foundation are
acting to do their part in “narrowing the gap” between the cost
realities of college and the value of the scholarships offered through
Kiwanis, two Rotary clubs and the Foundation itself. The clubs and the
Foundation open a campaign this month to raise $35,000 to assure that
every one of their 2006 scholarships will be at least $1,750 – about
the cost of one quarter’s tuition at one of the six state-funded
four-year universities. The Foundation’s average scholarship value for
31 of its 43 endowments was $1,224 in 2005.
A
total of 88 students received $123,475 in private scholarship support
this year. The recipients will go to 41 different colleges and pursue
some 43 fields of study.
It’s
an enviable record for the community Foundation, having awarded nearly
1,000 scholarships since it was organized in 1984. The total distributed
will reach $1 million in 2006 and the Foundation has accumulated
income-generating assets totaling $1,075,000.
However,
as impressive as these achievements may be, the Foundation trustees
realize that the gap continues to widen between the value of each
Foundation scholarship and the cost of college today and in the future.
For the first time in its 21-year history, the Northshore Scholarship
Foundation is appealing to the community for contributions, seeking
additional money to increase the value of the more than 80 scholarships it
will award in the spring of 2006. As a second goal, it hopes to raise
additional funds to increase 31 underfunded scholarship endowments to a
level where each will be self-funding annually near the $2,000 level.
That will take an additional $400,000.
The Foundation and its supporters are convinced that providing the
opportunity for more young people to succeed in an ever-globalizing
world will require greater private support for continued access to the
world of higher education.
To learn how to contribute to this effort, check out
Narrow
the Gap
I hope you will
do both.
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