The results of the 1998 Survey of Graduate Aid Policies, Practices, and Procedures (SOGAPPP) have been published and are available online in Adobe Acrobat/.pdf format. Key findings appear below.

The survey was undertaken to gain added knowledge and insight into the distribution of financial aid funds to graduate and professional students, and into the financial aid operations and management issues facing financial aid administrations who serve these students.

To obtain this information, NASFAA developed a document to collect information from graduate and professional financial aid offices for the 1997-98 award year. The survey asked aid administrators to provide information for specific programs on tuition and fee charges, distribution of financial aid funds to students, loan packaging policies, need analysis methodologies, use of professional judgment, use of technology in their aid offices, and sources of information on financial aid issues and policies.

Responses were received from 537 programs: 214 graduate programs (programs that lead to a master's or doctoral degree) and 283 professional programs (primarily medical, law, dental, and theology degrees). Forty programs could not be identified and were not included in the analysis. In addition, the number of doctoral programs that responded was too low to generate statistically reliable estimates for this group.

Results of the SOGAPPP should be interpreted with some caution, since the number of respondents from master's degree programs was low, relative to the total number of all such programs at all higher education institutions. Despite this, the survey does provide some important information on financial aid packaging and other issues for graduate and professional financial aid administrators.

While the SOGAPPP has provided some useful indicators on the financial aid packaging and management operations of graduate and professional programs, several knowledge gaps still exist in the graduate and professional financial aid procedures. The SOGAPPP provides little information about the use of research and teaching assistantships, outside sources of aid, and other issues important to graduate and professional financing that the SOGAPPP could not answer. Additional research will be needed to answer these concerns.

SOGAPPP was sponsored by NASFAA's Graduate and Professional Issues Committee, with support from the USA Group Foundation, the Access Group, and the Sallie Mae Education Institute.

• In the 1997-98 award year, student loans were the most widely used form of financial aid for all programs except theology. More than 90% of student aid recipients in dental, medical, and law programs received loans, compared with 60% of those in master's degree programs at private institutions.
• Dental programs at private colleges and universities had the highest average tuition and fee charges ($29,216), followed by medical ($23,424), law ($18,476), and business ($15,285) programs. The average tuition and fee charge for students at public college and university master's degree programs was just $3,407.
• More than 80% of students in the medical, dental, and law programs received some form of financial aid. This compares with about one-half of those in business programs.
• At medical, dental, and law programs, loans accounted for more than 80% of the total amount of financial aid dollars distributed to students in 1997-98. About one-half of the total aid was delivered through the Stafford Unsubsidized Loan Program and private/alternative loans.
• More than 60% of all professional programs at both public and private institutions routinely included at least three loans in the students' financial aid packages. However, programs at public colleges were more likely to include Perkins Loans in their aid packages, while private colleges were more likely to include private/alternative loans, which generally have higher interest rates than Perkins Loans.
• As a result of the prevalence of student loans, cumulative debt (debt for both undergraduate and graduate/professional education) was quite high at professional programs. For those who received their degrees from private colleges and universities, cumulative debt was $123,898 at dental programs, $99,225 at medical programs, and $63,078 at law programs. This compares with debt of $28,809 at private college and university master's programs, and $20,973 at theology programs.
• The types of exit counseling and other financial aid services provided to students differed by institutional type and program level. Financial aid administrators at professional programs in private colleges and universities were more likely to provide individual or group, in-person exit counseling, while those at graduate programs in public institutions were more likely to use exit counseling based on personal computers, videos, or the World Wide Web. This does not, however, imply that one type of exit counseling service was better.
• Most aid administrators reported that they used professional judgment to make adjustments in students' financial aid awards. However, the majority of aid administrators at private professional programs said that they routinely perform professional judgment reviews for all aid applicants, while less than half of those at graduate programs in public colleges and universities perform professional judgment reviews on a routine basis.
• Differences in services provided by graduate and professional programs may have been due to differences in financial aid environments. Forty-three percent of the financial aid administrators at private college professional programs said they were in stand-alone environments, which means they provided services to students in just one specifically defined academic program. Just 26% of the aid administrators at public graduate programs were in stand-alone environments. About 57% of the financial aid administrators at public graduate programs worked in centralized environments; in these environments, one financial aid office serves students from a wide variety of academic disciplines.
• Differences in types of financial aid services provided to students may also have been due to the differences in access to technology available to graduate and professional financial aid offices. A higher percentage of aid administrators at public colleges and universities said that they have access to the World Wide Web, the National Student Loan Data System, and on-line access to students' financial aid accounts. Some aid administrators at private college professional programs did not have access to any of these forms of technology.
• The most widely used sources of information on student financial assistance by graduate and professional program aid administrators were (in order) the U.S. Department of Education, higher education associations, financial aid administrators' colleagues, and student loan lenders.