Chapter 5 - Changing Organization of the Indiana Association

return to section index

No chronicle of a state association would be complete without defining the evolution of the formal structure of the organization, its growth, its constitution.

As has been explained earlier, the state association has grown from a membership of four. With the inclusion of private institutions in 1952, membership grew to twenty. By 1954, this grew to twenty-six, then twenty-seven, twenty-nine, thirty. When the State Scholarship Commission emerged in 1965, membership of SAICU grew to thirty-seven. By 1973, it was sixty-two and on January 1, 1985, membership institutions numbered eighty-three.

A current membership breakout shows the following:

30 Public Institutions 4 Hospital Schools of Nursing 33 Private Colleges and Universities 16 Proprietary Institutions 83 Regular Institutional Members

Also, on January 1, 1985, there were eight agency members, twenty-six lenders, and four vendors. In all, 121 institutions and 238 individuals counted themselves as members.

The organization was renamed at least five times. It is somewhat difficult to know which name prevailed in the 1930's, "State Scholarship Committee" in the 1950's, "Indiana Scholarship Testing Program" in 1955, "Scholarship Testing Program of Indiana Colleges and Universities" in 1957, "Scholarship Association of Indiana Colleges and Universities" in 1961, and finally "Indiana Student Financial Aid Association" in 1967. The names were changed because of changing purposes and changing sources of aid.

As an organization, it functioned for a time as a sub-group of the Committee on High School/College Cooperation. This committee later became an affiliate of the National Association of College Admissions Counselors. While a part of the Committee on High School/College Cooperation, the organization admitted into membership only members of that group. When the State Scholarship Commission was established, all accredited institutions in the state became eligible and the organization expanded its membership to include all state scholarship eligible institutions. As the Higher Education Act and it amendments of 1972 made more and more institutions of the state eligible for federal funds, ISFAA expanded its membership.