I’ve been collecting a series of links for various blog posts and came across a bookmark to an OSU Admissions Blog post about the 2007 online admissions application.
The second paragraph in the post states:
Please note a new policy for this year: the Admissions office will no longer print paper applications but offer online or pdf versions on our website. There are a few reasons behind this change. 1)Almost 90% of students apply online; 2) Admissions is undertaking a new document imaging project to handle the more labor-intensive data entry of paper applications; 3) turnaround times on electronic (online) applications are quicker, and 4) we like trees.
I am concerned about the 10% of students who do not file online applications. Are these students evidence of the digital divide or is it an issue of economics?
The OSU Admissions Application costs $50. According to the OSU Admissions Online Application:
Prospective students completing our online application for admission are required to use a valid Visa, MasterCard, or Discover credit card to pay the non-refundable application fee. If you do not have access to a credit card, please apply for admission with the paper forms available at http://oregonstate.edu/admissions/publications/.
What happens if you do not have $50? Is the $50 application fee a barrier for students who hope to attend OSU who have high financial need?
I surfed the Oregon internets for a bit and stumbled upon a deferral form at the Oregon University System web site. According to the deferral form, students can qualify to have their application fee deferred until they are enrolled. The nice thing about this form is that students with high financial need can have their fee billed to their student account. Since most students with financial need receive financial aid, the application fee will be paid for by aid awards and not by the student or their family.
There is a caveat to using the deferral form. The form states that students have to send the form with their completed admission application. Presumably this is talking about the paper version of the Admissions application. I realize that a print-ready version of the application is readily available on the OSU Admissions website. However, I could not find any information about the fee deferral on the OSU website. I did find information on the deferral if I searched for “fee waiver” on the Admissions site, but I wonder how many students/families will find that search result? Another search via the OSU Homepage for “deferral” resulted in a link to the OUS deferral form.
I realize that OSU is becoming more efficient with its admissions processes. Online submissions are easier to process and do save trees. However, I wonder what will happen to the 10% who do not apply online and whether or not the $50 application fee is a barrier for students who never find out about the deferral form…
Eric,
The questions you have raised are all ones that we in the Admissions office have discussed. We feel as if we are able to accomodate student needs while moving to efficiencies that are necessitated by the current climate of more and more limited resources.
The fee deferral form is seemingly well known by high school counselors in Oregon as evidenced by the questions and requests for them. That being said, the number of fee deferrals OSU annually processes equals less than 1% of our total number of applications. The fee deferral covers most TRIO-type programs, free/reduced lunch, federal/state assistance and also any student that qualifies for the College Board fee waiver to take the SAT.
The application fee of $50 is used to cover the expenses generated in the processing of an application: staff, paper, technology, postage, etc. Even at $50, the Admissions office ends up absorbing some of those costs to keep the fee somewhat reasonable at the current level.
The decision to not print paper applications was made after tracking the numbers of students who applied online. In the last few years, the numbers have gone from 65% to almost 90% which tells us that students are utilizing the online version. Also, when we made the move to exclusively online applications for our Degree Partnership Programs (DPP), there was no measureable negative result. We process 1-2 applications manually per year for extreme cases but othewise have not heard any complaints. Considering DPP serves community college students, many of whom choose community college due to financial constraints, we think the barrier is not as prominent as once thought.
Blake Vawter
Associate Director of Admissions
Oregon State University
Blake and Eric,
First of all, I have to complement Blake for being so responsive so quickly. Since I’m an OUS/OSU employee, that’s very heartening. However, I too am concerned about the 10% who , for whatever reason, have not been comfortable applying online. Having worked extensively with technology at OSU and previously at Washington State University, and having experienced budget cuts every year that I’ve worked in higher education since 1993, I understand the need for efficiencies. Indeed, online admission applications will certainly be more efficient and help keep our costs down.
However, some of the non-traditional students that I’ve worked with and taught have had some very real issues with digital literacy. Recently I’ve worked with two students, both of them women in their forties, who had never learned how to word process documents. For both, just drafting documents was tedious–to the point of being counterproductive.
I wonder to what extent we provide this type of student with a subtle disincentive to apply to OSU when we stop offering traditional paper options.
Dennis Bennett