Chancellor Mark Wrighton and other Washington University leaders noted the progress the University has made toward becoming more affordable while acknowledging the immense difficulties of pursuing need-blind admissions at Tuesday night’s annual tuition forum.

Wrighton, Vice Chancellor of Finance Amy Kweskin and Director of Student Financial Services Mike Runiewicz presented to a group of students on the University’s financial outlook, competitive tuition rank and financial aid policies. After the presentations, Provost Holden Thorp and Associate Vice Chancellor for Student Affairs Rob Wild joined their colleagues to answer questions from the students in the audience.

The administrators specified the importance of tuition in the University’s operating budget, noting that increases in unrestricted philanthropic donation had allowed the University to limit and decrease the cost of attendance for aid-receiving students despite tuition increases.

Wrighton opened the forum by acknowledging the validity of concerns about infinite tuition inflation.

“Doubtless, everyone wonders: when does this end and when are we concerned with the sticker price of Washington University? Increasing tuition can help us sustain what we’ve done and support additional activities programs—at the very least, the people who work here are expecting a big increase in compensation next year,” Wrighton said. “Tuition is not the only revenue stream, but it’s the biggest unrestricted source.”

Kweskin began by mentioning that recent tuition increases are consistent with those of the University’s peer institutions.

“The group of our most competitive peers over the most recent time frame has increased tuition on average at a rate of 4.5 percent per year, and we have too. Our 3.5 percent [tuition] increase last year, I want to note, is the lowest we’ve had since the 1960s,” Kweskin said.

However, Kweskin applauded the school’s improvement in providing more student financial aid over the last decade, which increased from $107 million last year to $118 million this year.

“We’ve seen a growth in these unrestricted source of revenue, tuition and other smaller streams,” Kweskin said. “In counting the total cost with room in board, in 2008, if you were a needy student on average you’d be paying about 55 percent of that total cost. In fiscal year 2017 you’d be only paying about 40 percent of that number, though it is slightly more.”

Later, in response to a student question on admissions policies, Wrighton admitted that admissions consciousness of socioeconomic diversity is deeply tied to University finances.

“We admit based on merit, and when the process is over, we estimate what our tuition revenue would be. If we’re a little over our target in terms of tuition revenue, we might go back and take some talented students to build our socioeconomic diversity,” Wrighton said. “If we’re a little short, we’ll take some applications more seriously from students that come from families that can afford to pay more.”

Wrighton also explained just how far the University is from a need-blind admissions policy.

“We’re need conscious, and I don’t foresee a time when we wouldn’t be. [Need-blind] is a lofty goal, we need to raise the financial aid portion of our endowment to reach it,” he said. “We’re now at about $406 million dollars in financial aid, we reached our last goal, but in approaching need-blind we’d need something like a billion dollars. We’re hoping by the time the campaign ends in 2018, we can add an additional $100 million dollars.”

While all administrators stated a hope to increase the aid available for lower income students, Thorp said he was proud of the school’s commitment to decreasing student debt.

“We do a great job of meeting the need our students have. It would be great to have a higher percentage of our low income students that get in, and we’ve doubled it in the last five years, it’s important that our debt levels are relatively low,” Thorp said.

Runiewicz added that graduation debt rates are lower at Washington University than competitors across both Missouri and the United States.

“Over the last decade, our average borrowing has remained flat. The percentage of students who are graduating debt free has grown rapidly,” Runiewicz said. “The average graduating debt for four-year public and private schools in Missouri was about $26,000, nationally, it’s about $29,000.”

Freshman Alanna Bader found the panel enjoyable and informative, but wished administrators spoke more specifically about steps the school can take to become more affordable.

“I was a little disappointed because I wanted to hear some ideas to improve, obviously we’re trying to compete in tuition and financial aid with higher rank universities, so I was curious about what steps we’re going to actually take,” Bader said. “But overall, I really liked how it was so personal and we could come up and talk to them afterwards, these big, important administrators.”