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Wednesday, April 16, 2008
By Rodrigo Haro
Collumnist
The elite colleges and universities across the country, like Harvard and Stanford, are offering free tuition to middle-income students.
But, what does that mean for public universities like our own?
And, is this bail-out of the middle and high-middle class by the elite universities leaving low income students behind?
Last December Harvard announced “that it would significantly increase the financial aid it offers to nearly all middle-class and upper-middle-class students, expanding on efforts it made three years ago to make its campus affordable for low-income students” according to the New York Times.
In 2004, Harvard announced that “families that earn less than $40,000 a year don't have to contribute a penny to their kids' education” according to Nathan Thornburgh from Time Magazine. Last year, that requisite was increased to families earning less than $60,000 and in the process “eliminating loans and asking students from families with salaries between $120,000 and $180,000 to pay no more than 10 percent of their family's income to attend” and also “a small group of elite private colleges—including Yale, Pomona, Swarthmore and, most recently, Stanford—announced their own generous financial aid packages for the middle-income families” according to Newsweek.
But this new found affordability of the elite universities in the country is putting extra pressure on state universities, like our own, to attract and keep talented students. Marco Jose Sanchez from the AP explains in Newsweek magazine that this financial bailout puts extra “pressure on flagship public schools, which traditionally educate some of the brightest, although not necessarily the richest, kids.” He goes on to explain that “Formerly, a high-achieving middle-class kid from Lansing, Mich., might get accepted at both Harvard and the University of Michigan but opt to stay in-state and graduate debt-free. Now it may be cheaper for that student to attend Harvard.”
And, certainly tuition increases by public universities are not aiding the process of keeping talented students. While the elite private universities are offering free and substantially reduced tuition our public state universities, like the University of Illinois which approved tuition and fee increases last month, are increasing their tuition due to a lack of public funding.
Not only are talented students looking beyond their state university for an affordable education but, due to this new focus on middle and high-income students funding for low-income students is disappearing at the elite and public colleges and universities. According to Thornburgh “a growing number of public colleges and less elite private schools” are offering “new scholarships that used to be based on need but now are based on merit.” Thornburgh goes on to say that “Although need-based grants still make up the overwhelming majority of all scholarships, the giving has been tilting slowly but surely toward the best and the brightest”.
Economist Ronald Ehrenberg, director of the Cornell Higher Education Research Institute stated that the increased affordability of the elite colleges will force the less prestigious schools to “sweeten the [financial aid] packages in order to lure top middle-class kids by taking money away from students who really need it: low-income students."
While the increased financial aid by colleges and universities across the country deserves an applause public state universities should not forget their commitment to low-income students, since public universities are sometimes the only viable and practical choice for their education.
