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NewsvineAs high school seniors across the country anxiously watch their mailboxes during this college admission season, there is a new worry on their minds — the increasing cost of attending private universities. With the fears of middle-class families in mind, however, financial aid offices at private institutions are digging a bit deeper into their pockets to lend a helping hand.
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The latest move comes from Harvard, whose president announced last month a sweeping overhaul of financial aid policies designed to make the Cambridge, Mass. school more affordable for families across the income spectrum, specifically those designated as middle- and upper-middle-income families.
Harvard’s new policy, which will go into effect in the 2008-2009 academic year, will charge such families 10 percent of their family household income per year and will increase total annual aid to $120 million from $98 million. For families earning between $120,000 and $180,000, Harvard’s new policy will largely subsidize the school’s annual cost of more than $45,600.
In an effort to ease the financial burden of education here at Stanford, institutional need-based scholarship funding was increased 15.2 percent for the current academic year to $76 million, up from $66 million last year. Stanford also reduced the amount of home equity assessed in aid calculations by capping the amount considered at 1.5 times the family income, reducing parent contributions by an average of $2,000 per year.
In comparison, Harvard will no longer consider home equity in calculating aid, resulting in an average reduction of $4,000 per year for parents. Harvard officials have said they do not want families borrowing against their homes in order to send students to their university.
Stanford’s Director of Financial Aid Karen Cooper said in an email to The Daily that even without changes, Stanford’s aid program remains strong.
“I believe our financial aid program is one of the strongest in the country and we can all be proud of the University’s commitment to financial aid,” she said.
Cooper also said that “Stanford remains strongly committed to its longstanding policy of admitting talented students regardless of a student’s ability to pay,” a “need blind” admission policy reportedly shared by few other universities in the nation, Harvard included.
Stanford and Harvard are not the only private universities to expand financial aid. Princeton, Yale, Columbia, UPenn and Duke represent a handful of other institutions that have recently increased aid for lower- and middle-class families.
Despite improvements in Stanford’s financial aid program, many early admits remain speculative.
“I would like to see more scholarships/grants instead of jobs/loans in terms of financial aid distribution,” wrote early admit Kyle Wong of Brooklyn, N.Y. in an email to The Daily. “Even though Stanford is my first choice, the smaller the ‘discount,’ the more hesitant I am to attend.”
Another early admit, Troy Wu, who is from Memphis, attributed his hesitation to accept Stanford’s admission offer to relative differences between Stanford’s aid program and those of other competitive universities.
“Stanford’s does not meet par,” Wu wrote in an email weighing Stanford’s program against those at Harvard and Yale. “If Stanford had [Harvard or Yale’s] plan, I would have committed to Stanford the day I got accepted and stopped applying to other schools to compare packages.”
Cooper said any changes to Stanford’s financial aid program will be announced this quarter.
“As we do every year, the University is currently reviewing its financial aid program to consider whether enhancements can be made that will make a Stanford education more accessible and affordable,” she said.
Currently a luxury for private universities, independent control of financial aid programs may face external controls in the future. Members of Congress have recently shed light on the fact that tuition has outpaced inflation by about three percentage points for the past quarter-century. According to The New York Times, Congress is now considering whether universities should be required to spend a minimum amount of endowment earnings on student aid.
Without acknowledging pressure from Congress, Yale announced Monday it will increase the 2008-2009 spending from its endowment by 37 percent to $1.15 billion, a portion of which will be prioritized for financial aid. According to The Wall Street Journal, a similar announcement from Harvard closely followed.