More focus on financial aid

Staff Editorial

Recently, several key Washington University administration officials hosted a Student Tuition Forum to discuss concerns that students had over any campus issues relating to tuition or other expenses. We would first like to commend them for making the effort to address student concerns before taking their tuition proposal to the Board of Trustees. Typically this forum is held after the next year’s tuition has been set in stone.

But on one key issue, how to make Washington University tuition more affordable, we were left disappointed. In particular, we do not believe there was any real progress on growing the section of the endowment devoted to financial aid.

This is why we are calling for a capital campaign drive devoted exclusively to financial aid. When pressed on this issue at the Student Tuition Forum on Dec. 5, Chancellor Wrighton responded that he would prefer the University put its efforts toward comprehensive capital campaigns rather than placing an emphasis on financial aid. Why? Because “a comprehensive campaign has several positive outcomes beyond the money,” such as a rise in visibility. However, only $250 million of the University’s $5.5 billion general endowment is currently available for financial aid. This pays out roughly $10 million per year in financial aid.

Chancellor Wrighton may be correct in believing that a capital campaign focused solely on financial may not bring in as much money as a comprehensive campaign, but the public relations benefits of the campaign and its service to the University community will be significant. A casual glance at statistics relating to the University’s socioeconomic diversity has shown us that general capital campaigns like the one completed in June 2004 are not doing enough to help raise financial aid endowments for students. Furthermore, alumni might be willing to donate more generously if they know that the money is going to financial aid as opposed to vague projects.In fact, a casual glance at the percentage of students who receive Pell Grants can tell us that the University’s record on attracting low-income students is terrible, even with the financial aid endowments raised by the general capital campaigns. Pell Grants are need-based college scholarships offered by the federal government to low-income students. Although students with family incomes of up to $50,000 may apply, most scholarships go to students who come from families with incomes below $20,000. For this reason, Pell Grants are viewed as a good indicator of a college’s socioeconomic diversity.

Unfortunately, the numbers on Washington University are not encouraging. According to the Journal of Blacks in Higher Education, the percentage of Washington University students receiving Pell Grants in 2001 was 9.6 percent. In 2007, the Washington Monthly found that this percentage had slid to just above 7 percent (ranking it last out of 242 national universities). So not only does Wash. U. have a low percentage of students receiving Pell Grants, it has actually gotten worse over the past six years.

This is why we believe that Chancellor Wrighton’s allusions to a general capital campaign’s amorphous positive benefits are not a good enough reason to reject a capital campaign oriented toward financial aid. As Wrighton said earlier during his presentation at the Student Tuition Forum, “our biggest opportunity [for more financial aid scholarships] is to receive more gifts like that from Enterprise Rent-a-Car.” Enterprise Rent-a-Car donated $25 million to Washington University to be used exclusively for financial aid scholarships. We see no reason why a large concerted effort should not be made to attract similar gifts.

This is not to denigrate the work that the Washington University administration put into any of the previous capital campaigns. Indeed, we are extremely appreciative of all of the hard work that has gone into improving the school. We believe, however, that more work should go into finding a way to ensure that students from all economic brackets can afford a Washington University education. A capital campaign geared exclusively toward financial aid would be an excellent start.

Correction made at 10:45 a.m., Dec. 11

Leave a Reply