Aid offices shed cold image for games, personal approach

In the past, when Northeastern University students and parents sought help paying tuition, assistants greeted them from behind an imposing desk on a raised platform. Other students waiting in the cramped financial aid office could hear as their peers revealed money troubles.

As college costs rise and more students apply for aid, administrators at all types of colleges are scrambling to demystify the process and shed the image of financial aid offices and their advisers as cold and intimidating. Two years ago, Northeastern renovated its financial service center to give it warmth, hoping to soothe the nerves of students and parents wrestling with how to pay for school.

Now, the assistants sit at eye level with Northeastern students, next to a bowl of mint chocolates wrapped in fake $100 bills, and counselors help students resolve more personal financial matters in private offices.

If students must wait, they don't have to sit idle, staring at the waiting room's violet and blue walls. They can play chess or checkers, or fiddle with wooden Jenga blocks. They can work on a book of New York Times crossword puzzles, or read the latest issues of Time, Rolling Stone, or the Improper Bostonian.

''We're not that administrative office -- that bureaucratic red tape place they never want to go," said Gail Holt, Northeastern's senior associate financial aid director. ''The students here are not just a bunch of income numbers."

Money, financial aid officers acknowledge, is a delicate, at times awkward, subject to discuss. When a student applies for aid, strangers probe into the family's income and assets, including the make and year of cars, home value, medical expenses, welfare benefits, and child support. By becoming more student-friendly, college officials say, they hope to attract a wider range of applicants and increase the number of accepted students who enroll in their schools.

Colleges are addressing how their offices look, as well as how they treat students and their families. They've lengthened office and phone hours, hosted workshops to help families fill out the complicated forms, and created online calculators so students can estimate how much they'll be expected to contribute.

Northeastern, along with its office renovation, added staff to decrease students' wait time. The university has 19 financial counselors, five more than two years ago. At Northeastern, 75 percent of its 14,600 undergraduates receive some type of financial aid.

''The monetary thing, it's not the easiest for me," said Jeff Fredrickson, a third-year Northeastern student who dropped in to the financial aid office when he toured the school as a prospective freshman. ''When I think of money, I think of gray-haired people in stuffy suits. But it was really nice having someone who was pretty cool explain what everything was."

Fredrickson, 21, sought out the same adviser recently when he wanted to know how moving to an off-campus apartment next semester would affect his aid. The university now subsidizes half of his room and board.

Students at MIT get their financial aid questions answered on the Internet -- sometimes within seconds. Financial aid director Daniel T. Barkowitz blended technology with his personal touch when he started a popular blog in October to answer questions, dispel rumors, and correct misinformation. He writes from his office as well as from home in his pajamas, lacing his responses with humor and even sharing his poetry and brain teasers.

''How do you try to make something that's so serious, so stuffy, so buttoned-up into something that's more user-friendly and try to alleviate some of the stress?" said Barkowitz, whom students have nicknamed the ''Money Man."

To spice up his columns on financial aid, Barkowitz peppers his writing with pop cultural references, such as ''Data, More Data and Even More Brent Spiner," a reference to the actor who portrays the Star Trek character. More than half of MIT's 4,100 undergraduates receive financial aid from the university.

Dave McClain filed the required financial aid forms online after his daughter applied to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and was overwhelmed at first. ''It's scary the amount of information they need," said McClain, who lives in Lowell, Mich. ''We thought we could do it in 10 minutes but realized we needed our W-2, bank statements, tax returns, how many miles were on our cars. . . ."

He found the MIT financial aid director's blog comforting when he couldn't understand why the university wanted noncustodial parent tax information; he and his wife have been married for 25 years. Within two hours, Barkowitz cleared up the error.

Other schools are also blending technology with other methods to create convenience for students. In recent years, colleges, including Tufts University, North Shore Community College, and Keene State College in New Hampshire, have consolidated their financial aid, bursar, and registrar's offices into a single space so students don't have to trek all over campus to make sure their aid is processed, pay their bills, and straighten out their registration.

By September, the University of Massachusetts at Amherst will allow families to apply for loans, view financial aid awards, and pay university bills online.

''We're always trying to look for better ways to do traditional business," said Ken Burnham, the university's director of financial aid and career services. ''The better we do in communication and self-service, the less we have traffic at the counters."

Financial aid, though, is a complex process that lasts years beyond the initial application, said Sherry Andersen, financial aid director at Cape Cod Community College and president of the Massachusetts Association of Student Financial Aid Administrators.

It's not enough to woo students to come into the offices. Administrators increasingly realize that their relationships with students have to continue long after students receive loans, grants, or campus-provided jobs. More universities are training their aid officers in financial planning so they can offer budgeting advice and help keep students out of debt.

''The easier you can make it," Andersen said, ''the more likely students will make it through the system."

Tracy Jan can be reached at tjan@globe.com.