The history of tuition and financial aid goes something like this.1754: the governors of King's College advertise "tuition in the learned languages" at "only twenty-five shillings per quarter" and reject prominent merchant Edward Antill's suggestion that his gift of £1,200 be put to assisting the education of talented but poor boys.1919: Columbia raises tuition from $150 to $250. Students and parents outraged.1998: tuition at private schools increases to over 50 percent of median income.2001: Princeton comes galloping to the rescue by replacing all loans with grants.2004: Harvard eliminates tuition for families making less than $40,000 a year. Yale, not to be outdone, follows by eliminating tuition for families making less than $45,000 a year.2005: influenced by the generosity of our richer peers, the FAiR coalition is formed at Columbia.Any way you look at it, FAiR is wonderful. Who really thinks their tuition bills are too small? Who doesn't support giving underprivileged students a chance to study here? FAiR has the two symptoms of Santa Claus syndrome-one, nobody really has anything negative to say about it, and two, it's so good that it just might be too good to be true. I support FAiR completely, but there's also reality to consider.Harvard, Yale, and Princeton are able to afford those newfangled policies because they're obscenely wealthy. Harvard's endowment broke $25 billion this year, Yale hit $15 billion, and Princeton reached $11 billion. Columbia, on the other hand, just cracked $5 billion. It doesn't stop there. Harvard's student population is nearly one-third undergraduate. Yale's is nearly one-half. Princeton is almost completely undergraduate. Columbia's undergraduate population, at 5,500, is about one-quarter of its total student population.FAiR faces an uphill battle on two fronts. The size of Columbia's endowment is less than half of that of the closest school with new financial aid policies. Also, the percentage of money in the endowment earmarked for undergraduate programs pales in comparison to other universities.That means Columbia is uncomfortably dependent on tuition, rather than its endowment, to fund financial aid. In 2004, 29 percent of the College and more than half-52 percent-of SEAS financial aid spending came directly from tuition income. Essentially, Columbia "needs" rich students to subsidize poor students and uphold its "need-blind" admissions.Because Columbia's financial aid expenses are directly tied to tuition income, a few things simply can't happen. Eliminating tuition under a certain income threshold is one of them. Replacing loans with grants isn't just fiscally irresponsible, it's financially impossible. I hate to sound pessimistic, but building up undergraduate financial aid requires a long-term commitment that will probably see entire generations graduate before it bears fruit. The goals are perfectly achievable, so long as three principles are upheld: discipline, protection, and independence.Discipline means keeping to a goal, maintaining continuity, and dismissing distractions. A student group dedicated to long-term change in University-wide policies is tremendously weak for the obvious reason that members graduate. Later students might not share the vision or might have radically different goals than earlier students. A key first step is to outline, in writing, a concrete and binding set of objectives and the means to achieve them.Protection means keeping control of what goes where, such as being informed about how Columbia handles gifts. The Senior Fund is a great place to give. General alumni fundraising programs are not. Why? The Senior Fund is a fund "restricted" to supporting student activities, the Core Curriculum, and financial aid. Other alumni fundraising programs usually try to attract "unrestricted" giving. The key difference is that a restricted gift must be invested and primarily intended for a designated purpose, such as financial aid, whereas an unrestricted gift is essentially free cash that might be spent for financial aid, or it might be spent on lawn care, or maybe cleaning supplies for an office at the medical school.Finally, independence means shielding efforts from outside meddling. Consider the Yale class of 1954 which, in 1979, pooled together $380,000. Rather than send it outright to Yale as a 25th reunion gift, they entrusted that sum to a financially adept fellow alum. Yale, sensing a loss of control, panicked, but immediately turned far more attentive to alumni concerns. Twenty-five years later, in time for its 50th reunion, the class of 1954 presented $100 million to Yale and, more importantly, dictated its use: two new science buildings. To maintain focus and precedence, FAiR should ideally remain separate and unbeholden to the administration.To drive a beast, one needs both a carrot and a stick. In this case, the carrot is money. The stick is making sure the money goes where it should. Use both carefully, and at the end of the day, the fields will be plowed and ripe for scholars of all means to come and grow.
Show Me the Money: FAiR Must Consider Feasibility
