Aid, Discrimination, and Justice

As we wait for the big announcement on financial aid that Columbia is expected to make early this week, we need to remember that the students’ reaction matters. This particular policy change may be driven more by competition with the rest of the Ivy League than by student pressure, but we know from experience that students can impact the University’s aid policy. The campaign for Financial Aid Reform, FAiR, succeeded in 2006 in replacing loans with grants for Columbia College and School of Engineering and Applied Science students with yearly family incomes under $50,000. A fight in 1992-3 succeeded in preserving need-blind admissions for SEAS and CC students, which the University had announced an intention to eliminate, by means of massive protests and a blockade of Low Library.

What, then, should the student reaction be to the newest changes—complacency or further demands? Assuming that Columbia will indeed expand financial aid, how do we judge whether it has taken a real step forward or made only a token gesture?

We should not simply compare numbers—such as the income cutoff for grants or the total expenditure—with equivalent figures from other schools. We also need to examine the fairness of Columbia’s policy with regard to different categories of student.

The General Studies Student Council is right to decry the situation of GS students. Unlike their counterparts in CC, SEAS, and Barnard, GS students that are U.S. citizens are not accepted on a need-blind basis, and the University does not guarantee to meet what it acknowledges is the financial need of even the most attractive GS applicants. International students—even in BC, CC, and SEAS—face a similar problem, though it has received less attention recently, perhaps because they lack a student government body to represent their interests. They are also not granted need-blind admissions—while Columbia does promise to meet international students’ “demonstrated financial need,” it states explicitly that they are less likely to be admitted should they request financial aid.

This results in a situation where, while 50 percent of Columbia undergraduates receive financial aid, only 10 percent of international students do, and while CC students graduate with $16,358 in debt on average, according to a GSSC survey GS students graduate with $60,000 in debt on average. Numbers like these have countless effects on an individual level. Some are obvious: a heavily indebted student may be forced to choose a career in finance rather than one in public service, regardless of his or her personal desires and whether or not the world really needs another i-banker. Some are subtler: Venezuelan Columbia students with whom I have discussed socialist Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez, have been almost uniformly hostile to his government, despite the fact that he received 60 percent of the vote in both 2000 and 2004 (the 60 percent that elected him are, by and large, poor Venezuelans who cannot afford to attend Columbia).

Unequal treatment with regard to need-blind admissions seems an injustice for simple and fundamental reasons—neither the age of GS students nor the place of birth of international students is an attribute which could ethically justify discrimination. How has this policy lasted so long? Are there other, perhaps more ethically relevant, distinguishing attributes of these student populations?

I can think of just one additional disparity: GS, which was founded to serve returning soldiers after the Second World War, has an entirely disproportionate number of military veterans. The CU Military Veterans estimate that there are 70-80 vets in GS, but know of none currently attending SEAS, BC, or CC. But this disparity does not exactly reflect well on the status quo.

Nevertheless, let us concede that the existence of some good reason for separate policies for GS and international students remains conceivable. Even if such a reason exists, current policy is indefensible. A reasonable policy would not, even as a side effect, ensure that international students are drawn largely from foreign elites, nor would it add extra burdens for students whose lives have not followed a conventional U.S. elite or upwardly mobile educational path by going straight from high school to a prestigious college.

Of course, it may be that these consequences of current policy are not side effects. Perhaps Columbia’s goal is in fact only to train the next generation of the ruling and managerial classes for the U.S. and its allies and client states. In that case, existing financial aid policy is well tailored to its purpose—but that purpose is not one that students should accept.

A substantial expansion of financial aid for GS and international students would indeed require a substantial amount of money. But as Columbia is spending millions on an expansion into West Harlem that will displace thousands of low-income residents, there is little plausibility to the claim that the money for financial aid just isn’t there. Harvard, Yale, Princeton, and Dartmouth all manage to provide need-blind admissions and full financial aid for international students. And in the worst case, if equality in financial aid policy for GS and international students must come at the expense of increased financial aid for BC, SEAS, and CC students, so be it. It’s a matter of justice.

David Judd is a senior in the school of Engineering and Applied Science majoring in computer science. The Point, However runs alternate Mondays. Opinion@columbiaspectator.com">Opinion@columbiaspectator.com