Apropos of Daniel's post (see below) as well as this week's roundtable discussion of money-related issues in higher education, the New York Times reports that as those mysterious endowments are deflating, faculty are being furloughed, and salaries are being trimmed, college admissions staff are accepting more applicants who are "of means" (i.e., candidates who can pay for tuition, fees, and room and board outright without financial aid):
Colleges say they are not backing away from their desire to serve less affluent students; if anything, they say, taking more students who can afford to pay full price or close to it allows them to better afford those who cannot. But they say the inevitable result is that needier students will be shifted down to the less expensive and less prestigious institutions.
I wouldn't want to propose a slippery slope argument, but this strategy seems a dangerous trend to set. The language of "shift[ing] down" students who would rely on full or more financial aid seems euphemistic: we're potentially talking about de-democratizing access to higher education, resulting in lessened diversity in terms of socioeconomic class, race, etc. Furthermore, colleges that have recently committed to reducing student debt by offering more substantial aid packages and/or replacing loans with grants are betraying some defeatist attitudes already:
William D. Adams, the president of Colby College, told students in a letter that the college would continue its new policy of replacing loans with grants this year, but that he could not guarantee that future budgets would be able to afford to do so. Grinnell College in Iowa also intends to meet a promise this year that no student graduates with more than $2,000 a year in loans, but officials say it may be hard to sustain that.
“These are things you’ll have to pry from our hands,” said Seth Allen, Grinnell’s dean of admission and financial aid. “At the same time, you have to be realistic.”
Yet how eerily the term "realistic" sounds like "unfair" or "discriminatory." If this trend expands and continues, wouldn't universities be in danger of regressing, admitting only the wealthy students while denying access to higher education and the opportunity it promises for those who cannot afford it?
This comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteAs I believe Dr. Bridges put it in class, universities’ use of the term “realistic” does sound as if they are giving up. It seems that the universities are saying that with current economic times and dropping government support, they will be unable to reach their goals. The goal they are referring to is their ability to provide a higher education to anyone who shows interest, or at least everyone who has the academic record to show that they merit this higher education.
ReplyDeleteWhat I fail to understand is why universities say that they don’t have enough money to give people need-based financial aid when many are sitting on billion dollar endowments that they aren’t making use of (other than using the interest). These universities have collected these enormous sums of money over large periods of time in order to be able to reach their goals in the future, but it seems that they aren’t willing to sacrifice the prestige associated with the large endowments to provide the financial aid many people need right now.
In response to Philippe's comment, I wonder when things will get bad enough that universities will finally decide to take a chunk out of the endowment. Also, "replacing loans with grants" sounds like a huge lie, because if it were that easy, more people would have grants right now. Admittedly, I would not be here if I didn't recieve all the grants and financial aid that Trinity offered me. It scares me to think that in the near future my acceptance will possibly go to some not-so-smart rich kid with a trust fund, just so Trinity won't have to offer loans to students.
ReplyDelete