For Director, the Aid His Office Offers Is More Than Financial

Caesar Storlazzi, the University’s director of Student Financial Services, says that if it weren’t for Yale’s “generous” financial aid program, he wouldn’t be where he is today.

A New Haven native from what he describes as a “working-class” family, he received financial aid as a Yale undergraduate and held a work-study job as a student loan processor. That led to a position collecting student loans after he earned his B.A. in 1975. Shortly afterwards, he became a financial aid officer, and — except for a two-year hiatus from that position to earn his M.M. in 1984 from the Yale School of Music — has devoted his career to ensuring that a Yale education is not beyond the reach of qualified students who want to attend the University.

Named to his current post in 2005, Storlazzi now oversees all University financial aid processes and services. He also offers yearly workshops on financial aid to Yale staff through the University’s Organizational Learning and Development Center.

He has remained active in musical pursuits as an oboist in local symphonies and as a church musician at United Church on the Green in New Haven.

Storlazzi recently took the time to talk to the Yale Bulletin & Calendar about his work and some of the changes that have taken place in financial aid over his Yale career. The following is an edited version of that conversation.

What interested you in a career in financial aid?

Little did I know it then, but I think I was in training for my future profession when I was a Yale undergraduate. Although the cost of a Yale education was a lot less then than it is today, it might have equaled half of my parents’ income. As neither of my parents felt they could fill out the requisite financial aid applications, I did them myself and began learning about the intricacies of the aid process.

My personal experience has given me an understanding of the concerns students and their families have about the cost of a Yale education. I occasionally see students who are experiencing a particular crisis or hardship — sometimes to the extent that they think they have to leave the University. It’s amazing to be able to put a young person’s mind at rest, to say, “You don’t have to worry. Here’s what we can do.” That’s really what this office is about, and the satisfaction that comes from helping in this way is one of the reasons I have remained committed to this work.

With undergraduate tuition and housing costs in excess of $50,000 a year, do many prospective students assume that the cost of a Yale education is beyond their families’ means?

Yale was the first private research university to establish need-blind admissions [in 1966], and it is committed to meeting the full demonstrated financial need of students who are accepted.

We have never wanted Yale to be an elitist institution where only the wealthy or well-to-do middle class could consider coming. We believe that a Yale education must be accessible to anyone who qualifies and wants to come here.

With that in mind, we have at different times revised our financial aid policies so that the cost of attending is not an excessive burden on families and to increase access for low-income students. Keeping Yale accessible has been of utmost concern to President Richard C. Levin and other University officers and to the Office of Undergraduate Admissions.

Some dramatic policy changes were instituted just last year in Yale College. What were they?

Last year, we made sweeping changes that reduced the average cost of a Yale College education by up to 50% for some families with financial need.

We revised the needs analysis formula so that the parent contribution is a lower percentage of a family’s income. Families with total incomes of $60,000 or less do not make any contribution toward the cost of a child’s Yale education. Previously, only families with total incomes of less than $45,000 were exempt from contributing. Families with incomes above $60,000 also saw a reduction in their expected contributions, by 33% or more.

We also reduced sharply the amount students are expected to contribute themselves. Now Yale College students can earn their entire contribution through term-time work, without having to take out loans to meet the cost of his or her education.

In addition, we also reduced the expected contribution from summer earnings for incoming freshmen, changed the way we treat family assets and enhanced the vacation allowance for international students, all with the goal of lessening the burden on students and their families.

How did these enhancements affect the financial aid budget?

These changes resulted in the largest increase in spending for financial aid in the University’s history. The budget grew by about $24 million, to just over $90 million for Yale College students.

The policy changes boosted substantially the number of students receiving financial aid. For many years, about 43% of our students received aid; that number grew to just over 52% last year. This year, the average Yale scholarship for those receiving aid in the Class of 2013 is $34,300.

Another historic change during your tenure here has been in financial aid for international students. How have they benefited?

Eight years ago, we extended the need-blind admissions policy to include all students regardless of nationality. Prior to that year, non-Canadian international students were admitted against a budget target — in other words, admission for these students was not need-blind.

We made this change in order to attract the strongest candidates for undergraduate admission from around the world, in keeping with President Levin’s mission to make Yale a global university.

Beginning with the 2005-2006 academic year, when we calculated financial aid for international students, we funded one round-trip from their home country for each of their years at Yale. Previously, we did not cover their yearly travel. The new policy made a lot more sense, and we have an increasingly global campus community.

Over the last decade or so, your office has also made major changes to improve how it serves students. What are the most significant of these?

We used to have many different offices with responsibilities for the financial needs of students: loan processing, loan collection, student billing, Undergraduate Financial Aid, student employment and so on. These units were not in the same building, and often, students had no idea what office to visit first. They inevitably picked the wrong one, and we’d have to send them back out to get to the right office.

We also used to do all of our financial aid processing using a hand calculator, a pencil and paper. When we wanted to credit a student’s account with a scholarship, we had to type a voucher and send it to student billing. Loans and promissory notes were also done in paper and pen. All of the various units had their own computer databases, which were not linked at all or were only to a very limited degree.

Little by little we realized that in order to get ourselves into the forefront of financial services and student record processing, we had to radically change the way we were doing business.

In 1995, the University installed the Banner system, which created an electronic unity through a student information system in which all of the various offices could “talk” to each other. This allowed us to reach a more efficient, “one-stop shopping” model. Then in 2000 — as part of an initiative to improve student services led by Ernst Huff [associate vice president for student financial and administrative services] — all of the various offices concerned with student finances were consolidated in one location: the Student Financial Services Center at 246 Church St.

These changes make life a whole lot easier for both students and our staffs. We’ve trained our staff in Student Financial Services so they can do “soup-to-nuts” services. Now, if a student comes in about his or her bill, we can talk about what’s missing from the financial aid application or see if there’s something wrong with their loan processing and fix that. We can handle everything that has to do with the financial concerns of that student.

The financial aid application process can feel daunting to college-bound seniors and their parents. What tips would you offer them?

Read the brochures and study the Web for aid requirements (the forms, data, etc.) and application schedules.

In fact, it’s advisable to make a matrix or spreadsheet of the requirements and schedule by school. They are all different.

Second, apply for aid even if you’re not sure you might qualify. Let the experts determine your eligibility by going through a full, formal needs analysis. Check out the school’s website to see if there is an online calculator. Yale has one — new last summer — which allows families to key in their financial numbers and see an estimate of what their parent contribution would be.

Finally, don’t be afraid to ask questions. It’s your family’s financial situation, and you have the right to understand the school’s basis for its decision. Ask for a review, especially if financial data needs to be corrected or amended due to a change in the family circumstances.

Here at Yale Student Financial Services, we realize that families place a lot of trust in us to go over the details, and it is our mission to help!

For more information about Student Financial Services, visit www.yale.edu/sfas.

— By Susan González