It doesn't take a college degree to understand why some Hispanic students don't pursue one from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln - even if they are college-eligible.
For the average Nebraskan family, it takes one year's income to afford a four-year education at UNL, according to the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development's February 2005 report.
A college education is even more financially elusive for many of the state's Hispanic students, considering their families earn less than the average Nebraskan family.
While the University of Nebraska Board of Regents can't control the economic climate, it can control how much tuition revenue is allocated for need-based financial aid.
And those funds are too meager for the university to effectively recruit Hispanics and bring diversity to campus, said Alan Cerveny, UNL's dean of admissions.
``We need a heck of a lot more need-based scholarships and financial aid available,'' he said.
The problem, he said, is that the board has not implemented a formula that provides a certain percentage of tuition revenue to need-based grant programs.
Instead, the amount is fixed and any adjustments have to be authorized by the regents.
The regents also set the tuition rate each June. Between 2002 and 2005, tuition was increased by more than 45 percent.
And at several board meetings, Regent Drew Miller of Papillion has strongly stated his support of merit-based aid programs over need-based aid. The regent maintains that students who do not qualify for merit-based aid or cannot afford attending NU should attend less expensive colleges or community colleges.
But Craig Munier, UNL's director of scholarships and financial aid, couldn't disagree more.
``I really think that a need-based grant-allocation policy is very much needed at the university system if we want to do everything we can to ensure access for everyone who's academically qualified to be here,'' he said.
Such a system is already in place for merit-based scholarships, such as the Regent's Scholarship and New Nebraskan Scholarship for out-of-state students.
The Legislature isn't exactly making need-based funding a No. 1 priority either.
The Legislature did reform the Nebraska State Grant Program in 2002-03, shifting money to schools enrolling the most low-income students and nearly tripling state grant funding to UNL for the next term.
But if it hadn't done so, there's no telling how many fewer Hispanic students would be on campus, Cerveny said.
Despite pumping an additional $1.2 million into UNL's financial aid pool since 2002-03, state funds and university sources generated only about $5.7 million in need-based aid this year - not enough, according to Cerveny.
Nebraska ranks 41st in the nation in state appropriations for financial aid, according to Nebraska's Coordinating Commission for Postsecondary Education.
The Board of Regents does provide a tuition-assistance program that, when combined with grants from federal or state sources, provides financial assistance worth at least 30 credit hours of tuition.
But there are stipulations. To qualify, students must be full-time, in-state students who also qualify for the Federal Pell Grant Program at any level.
The last stipulation rules out many low-income students -including 3,000 to 4,000 UNL students - because only families with less than roughly $40,000 in yearly income are eligible for Pell grants, Munier said.
``So there's a growing concern that because of those restrictions, there are students who just barely miss the Pell grant program but still have large amounts of financial need that we're not able to address and help,'' Munier said.
Cerveny agreed.
``We do a pretty good job of helping the neediest of students,'' he said.But the ones the university can't help, he said, are often minorities.
